The head of Rosfinmonitoring, Chikhanchin, told Putin about a criminal group that embezzled 100 million rubles by compiling fake participant lists in the Pushkin Map project. The transcript of the meeting was published on the Kremlin website.
“Where there is a budget, there is always a criminal. The Pushkin Map project was launched. . But then a criminal group appeared that made extras and embezzled 100 million rubles. Now it has appeared. <…> They made imaginary lists of people who supposedly should have received these aids, but there were none.”
said Chikhanchin.
“Dead souls?” the president asked. “Dead souls,” replied Chikhanchin.
According to the head of Rosfinmonitoring, criminals and assets have already been arrested and the FSB has joined the case.
“The situation was roughly the same as with tourist reimbursement,” he added.
The “Pushkin Card” is a program that promotes cultural events, giving young people aged 14 to 22 free access to theaters, museums and concert halls across the country. To do this, they are issued a plastic card worth 5 thousand rubles. The program was launched in Russia on September 1, 2021.
At the end of 2022, Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of the State Duma Information Policy Committee reportedIn connection with the theft of money from Pushkin Cards, a fraud case was opened in Samara. The attackers were detained, the damage from their actions is estimated at 15 million rubles. According to Khinshtein, the criminals organized the “New Time Theater”, which participated in the program. According to reports, the performances there allegedly went to a full house, and the cost of tickets is about 3 thousand rubles. But in fact, the halls were empty, and the scammers asked the students for a password on their Pushkin Cards and bought tickets to this theater through them, giving the students 1.5-2 thousand rubles.
shadow sector
Chikhanchin also spoke to the President about the growth in the use of cryptocurrency for illegal purposes. In particular, the fact of “providing [средств] from the crypt of a Ukrainian terrorist nationalist organization.”
According to Chikhanchin, 4.5 billion rubles were returned to the state from the shadow finance sector during the year, more than 100 criminal cases were opened on violations. Chikhanchin told Putin that most of the crimes were organized abroad.
“As a rule, beneficiaries and owners are overseas. In particular, the accused are citizens of Ukraine, Latvia, Great Britain, Bulgaria and other countries. But to date, 11 financial pyramids have been closed and more than 60 criminal cases related to them are currently under investigation,” he said.
tour scammers
RBC in May 2022 Wrote About the fraud scheme involving tourist refunds: travel agents arranged fictitious trips to extras and then received refunds from the government. The publication got acquainted with the advice of Rosfinmonitoring, which was sent to banks to prevent crimes.
The travel refund program has been in place since August 2020 and was launched to support the Russian tourism industry during the COVID-19 pandemic. It involves the transfer of monetary rewards to Mir cards when paying for tourist trips around the country and fulfilling certain conditions.
A representative for Rosfinmonitoring later told RBC that the service is “working systematically to assess the potential risks of all government support programs, including the tourist refund program.”
As stated in the letter from Rosfinmonitoring, participants in the program can be travel agents and individuals – customers or employees of these companies and people associated with their management or owners.