MOSCOW, June 20 – RAPSI. The Moscow Commercial Court has declared AMT Bank bankrupt on Wednesday.
A one-year bankruptcy procedure has been opened in the bank.
The bankruptcy application was submitted by the Deposit Insurance Agency, which was assigned as the bank’s liquidator.
On April 1, the bank's net assets, including its reserves, stood at 8.57 billion rubles ($264.97 million), but its debt amounted to 32 billion rubles ($989.4 million) as per its debt schedule. Meanwhile, the first priority claims against the bank total 15.46 billion rubles ($478 million).
The bank's shortage of funds led to the bankruptcy application.
According to the agency’s preliminary assessments, the payments to AMT Bank’s depositors will be the largest in the agency’s history, totaling 13 billion rubles ($401.94 million).
The record was previously held by Monetny Dom bank, which was part of the banking group belonging to businessman Matvey Urin.
According to the RIA Analytics Economic Research Center, AMT was the seventy-first top bank in Russia in terms of assets on April 1, 2011.
According to the bank's website, businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov owns a 19.7 percent share in the bank.Ablyazov has been residing in the UK since 2009. The police have opened a criminal case against him on suspicion of fraud and funds divestiture via fly-by-night companies.
Ablyazov received a 22-month custodial sentence for breaching court orders and is now hiding from justice. The bank hopes to secure and enforce court decisions to return $5 billion.