Ex-Director of Pacific Savings Cooperative Gets 3.5 Years in Prison
The former director of the «Pacific Savings» credit consumer cooperative in Vladivostok has been sentenced to 3.5 years in a standard-regime penal colony for organizing a classic financial pyramid. The Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok delivered the verdict, as reported by the regional prosecutor«s press service.
A credit consumer cooperative (KPK) is a non-profit organization that unites people (members) for mutual financial assistance: they contribute money (share contributions) to a common fund, from which other members can receive loans at interest, and the interest is used to cover expenses and pay dividends to participants.
The «Pacific Savings» cooperative was registered in Vladivostok in 2010 and operated throughout Primorsky Krai. Its former founders are listed as: Yulia Danova, Alexander Yefremov, Sergey Kantsurov, Anna Krorobova, Irina Korol, Nina Levun, Marina Panchuk, Yaroslav Slivchuk, Irina Starzhinskaya, Natalya Tkachuk, and the company «Primorye,» which belongs to Olga Starkova and Svetlana Nedashkovskaya.
Throughout its existence, the organization has been involved in arbitration cases totaling more than 4 billion rubles (approx. $44.4 million at current rates), but in most cases it acted as the plaintiff and won. According to the «Kontur.Focus» service, the cooperative«s financial statements are only known for 2019 — at that time, the company had 5.1 million rubles (approx. $56,700) on its balance sheet and incurred losses of 253 thousand rubles (approx. $2,800).
Since March 2023, the cooperative has been undergoing reorganization in the form of transformation.
The high-profile case began back in April 2018. According to the publication VL.RU, the organization then began paying its members with significant delays, and the Central Bank of Russia filed a bankruptcy lawsuit against the cooperative. Employees stopped answering phones, offices in various cities of Primorsky Krai closed, and 1.4 billion rubles (approx. $15.6 million) were frozen in accounts, but the bankruptcy case was eventually suspended.
In January 2025, the Leninsky District Court of Vladivostok received 307 volumes of a criminal case initiated against the cooperative«s former director, Natalya Konovalova. She was accused of organizing activities to attract funds on an especially large scale (Part 2 of Article 172.2 of the Russian Criminal Code) — creating a financial pyramid. She was subsequently placed under a written pledge not to leave.
Investigators ultimately established that from November 2017 to May 2018, Konovalova attracted over 400 million rubles (approx. $4.4 million) from members under personal savings transfer agreements but did not invest the money and paid interest using funds from new members. Statements were filed by 994 victims.
On 20 January, the court found the former director guilty and sentenced her to 3.5 years of imprisonment. The sentence has not yet entered into legal force.
On 14 December, we reported that the fraudsters who robbed Anna Mukutsu, a Primorsky escort, were identified and detained. Police officers detained two suspects.
According to the woman herself, one of the individuals involved was her former acquaintance: she claims he placed her against her will in a private rehabilitation center for people with drug addiction. There, Anna spent about six months, completely cut off from communication and access to her money, after which, she states, the perpetrators appropriated her property.
