I have seen many a rogue in the foggy alleys of the city, but the sort of villainy practiced by the Ananyev brothers is of a most polished, ledger-book variety. The investigators—those dogged bloodhounds of the law—have at last brought their long inquiry to a close. Dmitry and Alexei Ananyev, once the high lords of the Promsvyazbank, now find themselves cast from their gilded pedestals.

It was not a solitary venture, mind you. The net has tightened around twenty-nine other souls, a veritable gang of conspirators. Some are accused of the crude art of embezzlement, others of the slippery game of money laundering, and a few of attempting a fraud so bold it would make a common street-thief blush.

The plot began, so the detectives tell it, between 2014 and 2016. Dmitry Ananyev, acting as the ringleader, sought to seize lands belonging to the city of Saint Petersburg. They used forged papers—mere scraps of ink and lies—claiming that grand buildings stood where there was naught but dirt. They hoped to buy the land for a pittance, bypassing the public auctions entirely. But the watchdogs of the state were sharper than they anticipated, and the scheme collapsed like a house of cards.

Yet, the appetite for gold was insatiable. By 2017, the brothers had devised a more sophisticated racket to bleed their own bank dry. They funneled loans to foreign firms—ghost companies that existed only on paper, devoid of a single clerk or counting-house. Some 4.5 billion rubles vanished into these overseas vaults, laundered through a series of fictitious trades to hide the scent of the crime.

But the crowning jewel of their audacity came later that year. The brothers coerced the bank into purchasing worthless securities from their own hidden companies. In one stroke, on the 14th of December, a staggering 87.4 billion rubles were spirited away to foreign shores.

There is more, of course. In 2015, Alexei Ananyev played the part of the facilitator for one Vitaly Vavilin, a man of the Globex Bank. Together, they conjured loans exceeding 775 million rubles for their own pockets—money that, like a phantom in the night, was never returned. Vavilin has already felt the cold iron of the law's judgment.

The court has now stepped in with a heavy hand. The bailiffs have laid seizure upon their estates: vast lands, opulent houses, and gold locked in foreign vaults. In total, the Crown has frozen assets worth 97 billion rubles. A fortune fit for a king, now held in the grip of the law.