Amsterdam Trade Bank

Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB) is a commercial bank registered in The Netherlands. The bank focuses on providing trade financing for companies wishing to do business in former Soviet states. ATB is supervised by De Nederlandsche Bank and owned by the corporate treasury of Alfa Group.

Amsterdam Trade Bank N.V. (ATB)
TypeSubsidiary
IndustryFinancial services
Founded1994 (1994)
Headquarters
Amsterdam
,
Netherlands
Key people
Ron Emerson (Chairman)
Harris Antoniou (CEO)
Revenue €103.1 million (2010)
€32.8 million (2010)
€8.16 million (2010)
Number of employees
200 (2014)
Websitewww.amsterdamtradebank.com

History

The company was founded in 1994 through Alexander Smolensky as Stolichny Bank International, a subsidiary of the Russian SBS-AGRO Bank (Russian: СБС-Агро)[lower-alpha 1] to provide trade financing for companies wishing to do business in former Soviet Union.[1] In addition to the Netherlands branch, Stolichny Bank International had other international branches in Kazakhstan and Macedonia.[2] Following the 1998 Russian financial crisis, SBS-AGRO, which was Russia's largest private bank, went through restructuring.[1]

In 2001 it became a subsidiary of Russian private investment consortium Alfa Group through ABH Holdings S.A. a limited liability company (Luxembourg) and its subsidiary ABH Financial Limited which controls Alfa-Bank's assets in Russia, Netherlands, and Cyprus.[3][4][lower-alpha 2] In October 2019, Mikhail Fridman admitted that through his Alfa-Bank he owns a minority stake in ATB.[5][6]

Controversies

In 2004 and again in 2007, an ATB account of the Bahamas company Sevenkey Limited, which is beneficially owned by Igor Shuvalov through his wife Olga Shuvalova, was used to transfer very large sums of United States dollars with the Cyprus company Gallagher Holdings Limited, which is closely associated with Alisher Usmanov, and a Latvian bank account of the British Virgin Islands company Unicast Technologies Corporation, which is closely associated with Eugene Shvidler.[7][8][9][10] Usmanov used the money from the 2004 transactions to purchase his stake in the Anglo-Dutch steel firm Corus Group.

In 2017 the international investigative journalist collaboration claimed ATB had aided in a money laundering scheme, something the bank denied.[11] It has since placed a heavier emphasis on its compliance department.

Corporate governance

Acting directors of ATB in 2018 are:

  • Harris Antoniou (CEO)
  • Eric Steeghs (CFO)
  • Peter Ullmann (CRO)

There are also a number of non-acting directors in Supervisory Board.

Notes
  1. In 1996 after Stolichny Savings Bank (SBS) (Russian: Столичный банк сбережений, English Capital Savings Bank) bought the state-owned Agroprombank (Russian: Агропромбанк), SBS-AGRO was the new merger of the two banks.[1]
  2. In 2015, ABH Holdings had four subsidiaries: ABH Financial Limited which controls assets in Russia, the Netherlands, and Cyprus and operates mainly through JSC Alfa-Bank; ABH Ukraine Limited; ABH Kazakhstan Limited; and ABH Belarus Limited.[4]

References
  1. Higgins, Andrew (4 October 2000). "A Russian Banker Rebounds By Outfoxing His Creditors". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 21 March 2000. Retrieved 5 February 2021. Archived website is in Russian.
  2. Скворцов, Ярослав (Skvortsov, Yaroslav) (19 May 2003). "Борьба за престол Александра Павловича" [Fight for the throne of Alexander Pavlovich]. Грани.ру (Grani.ru) (in Russian). Archived from the original on 20 May 2003. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  3. "Moody's downgrades Amsterdam Trade Bank's deposit ratings to B2, negative outlook". Moody's. October 23, 2015.
  4. "ABH Holdings S.A. Luxembourg". Luxembourg At a Glance. 22 October 2015. Archived from the original on 22 October 2015. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  5. Злобин, Андрей (Zlobin, Andrey); Березанская, Елена (Berezanskaya, Elena) (21 October 2019). "Фамилия, имя, друзья Путина: как прошло заседание мадридского суда с участием Михаила Фридмана" [Surname, name, friends of Putin: how was the meeting of the Madrid court with the participation of Mikhail Fridman]. Forbes.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  6. "Fridman niega ante el juez haber tenido capacidad decisoria alguna en las mercantiles implicadas en la asfixia de Zed" [Fridman denies before the judge having had any decision-making capacity in the mercantile companies involved in the asphyxia of Zed] (in Spanish). Europa Press. 21 October 2019. Archived from the original on 21 October 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  7. Alpert, Bill (3 December 2011). "How a Putin Aide Gained $119 Million". Barron's. Retrieved 25 January 2021.
  8. "A Golden Sevenkey". Wall Street Journal. December 2011. Archived from the original on 6 February 2021. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  9. Иваницкая, Надежда (Ivanitskaya, Nadezhda) (3 May 2012). "Траст, который лопнул" [Trust that burst]. Forbes.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  10. Weiss, Michael (29 October 2014). "The Kremlin's $220 Million Man: Igor Shuvalov, Russia's deputy prime minister, is supposed to have the cleanest hands in the Kremlin. So where'd he get a quarter of a billion dollars?". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 27 December 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  11. Janene Pieters (March 21, 2017). "Dutch banks accused of aiding Russian Money laundering scheme". NLTimes.
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