As several sources told Rucriminal.info, banker Andrey Shlyakhovoy is the creator of many channels for the shadow export of dual-use sanctioned goods to Russia. This person has been confidently sitting on two chairs for a long time. While engaged in such business, he has been living in Spain for several years.

Andrey Zakharovich Shlyakhovoy was not only able to transfer significant financial resources from the banking institutions that previously belonged to him to Europe, but also to create a system of illegal payment for sanctioned goods through his API BANK ad Belgrade (https://www.apibank.rs/).

Until 2018, API BANK was proudly called VTB Banka ad Belgrade and was the Serbian subsidiary of the Russian state-owned bank VTB. VTB Banka changed its name after its sale to a Russian investor. Shlyakhovyi was greatly assisted in acquiring the bank by Maria Stepina, a private banking consultant who headed its board after the deal to acquire the credit institution was concluded. 

Currently, the main business of API BANK is the gray conversion of Russian rubles into euros, through the Serbian dinar. Erste Group Bank AG and some other European banks operating on the Serbian market act as regular partners in these transactions. Also, through various schemes with the help of these banks, API BANK is used to pay for gray contracts of large Russian corporations for the purchase of various dual-use goods.   

According to a source of Rucriminal.info, former Russian banker Shlyakhovoy, despite his academic degree of Doctor of Economics and the honorary title of "Honored Economist of the Russian Federation", was a natural "black mark" of the Russian banking system. No matter what credit institution he appeared in, everything ended with the loss of the license. 

According to a number of experts, Shlyakhovoy, under the cover of some very influential forces, carried out systematic activities to deliberately bankrupt credit and financial institutions. Thus, his victims were KB Agrosoyuz, Arksbank and Baikalbank, as well as UM-Bank. 

Shlyakhovoy gained control over KB Agrosoyuz at the end of 2017. And after some time, the bank began to have problems. Immediately after that, Shlyakhovoy left the bank’s shareholders. And literally a few days later, the Central Bank inspected the bank, during which not only serious problems with assets were revealed, but also the disappearance of cash worth more than one and a half billion rubles. 

True, there is a funny story going around the market about how, on the eve of the revocation of the license of KB Agrosoyuz, its employees took 1.5 billion rubles in various currencies from the bank cash desk in half an hour. A criminal case was even opened on this matter, which sank into obscurity.

And after the revocation of Agrosoyuz’s banking license, the temporary administration appointed to the bank found signs of theft of 7 billion rubles through fictitious loans. And after the bank was declared bankrupt, the size of the "hole" in its capital grew to more than 15 billion rubles.

The same thing happened with UM-Bank. In 2015, it was sold to Andrey Shlyakhov by former Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Valery Yazev. In March 2017, the bank changed its registration to Moscow. In mid-November 2018, the Bank of Russia revoked UM-Bank’s license for numerous violations, including "implementing transactions to withdraw liquid assets to the detriment of the interests of creditors and depositors." The comments to the order to revoke UM-Bank’s license emphasized that "signs of criminal offenses" were found in the actions of its management. In 2019, the Moscow Arbitration Court granted the Bank of Russia’s claim for the forced liquidation of UM-Bank.  

There is a well-known story about a strange deal made in the office of the Agrosoyuz bank under the control of Shlyakhov. As a result of this operation, a certain businessman lost 200 million rubles in cash and real estate in the Moscow region worth $12 million. The investigation into this case was never carried out.

Or another widely known story about how Andrey Shlyakhovoy cheated the son of the head of AFK Sistema Vladimir Yevtushenkov out of 1 billion rubles in a real estate deal. And he got absolutely nothing for that either. 

Considering that Andrei Zakharovich and his clan members have enough of their own Russian business, but creditors have not yet “squeezed” it out for all of his “exploits,” there is a guess that the banker has a serious power “roof.”

It is simply impossible to explain situations in any other way, as a result of which someone else would have long ago dragged out an existence in places not so remote. 

They say that behind Shlyakhov there is a certain powerful Russian special service, in whose interests he maintained and most likely maintains business contacts with the leadership of... North Korea.

Thus, Shlyakhovoy was a participant in one extremely interesting operation, when in the summer of 2018, a large sum was transferred to a North Korean bank through the controlled bank Agrosoyuz in violation of the sanctions regime imposed by the UN. According to a source of Rucriminal.info, this money could have been intended to finance the assassination attempt on the brother of the DPRK leader Kim Jong Nam, who was killed in Malaysia.