Afriland case in the DRC: the good deals of Russian Kirill Parinov
The Afriland First Bank CD, in Kinshasa.
© RFI / Sonia Rolley
Text by: Sonia Rolley Follow
3 min
Since Friday, several media including RFI have been investigating the revelations made by two former employees of Afriland First Bank CD, a subsidiary of a Cameroonian bank in the DRC.
These whistleblowers were sentenced to death on the initiative of the bank, which accuses them of theft, forgery and use of forgery and criminal association.
For Afriland First Bank, the documents sent to the press and to NGOs have been falsified, even if they are thousands of pages long.
RFI took an interest in an Afriland client, a Russian lawyer, Kirill Parinov.
Publicity
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Despite the withdrawal limit imposed by the Central Bank of the DRC to $ 10,000, Kirill Parinov managed to withdraw in cash, in a few months, nearly $ 50 million from his account.
Officially Kirill Parinov is the head of three companies in the DRC.
It is on the account of Riverside Project Management that he will withdraw most of the $ 48.5 million between September 16, 2019 and February 18, 2020.
This company, Riverside Project Management, was created three weeks before the first withdrawal, on August 22, 2019 with a share capital of just $ 4,000.
Its subject remains vague: personal services NCA (for "not elsewhere classified"), which therefore does not fall into any established category.
Finance the construction of a corniche in Kinshasa?
Kirill Parinov himself is quite a mystery.
A Russian business lawyer specializing in international mergers and acquisitions, he is not known as a businessman in the DRC.
However, Kirill Parinov is associated with Startstone DRC at the origin of the project to build a cornice in Kinshasa, a project valued at more than a billion dollars.
According to the deputy general manager of Afriland First Bank, these withdrawals would have aimed to pay for the current expropriations and the delivery of construction machinery.
The information surprises the government side, which ensures that this project has not started and that the evictions it should require will cost little more than $ 7 million.
Kirill Parinov's partner on this project, Brazzaville businessman Serge Pereira, himself says he does not know anything about these withdrawals.
► Requested by RFI, Kirill Parinov remained unreachable to answer questions from the editorial staff.
Note that Kirill Parinov is presented in some economic articles - until March 2019 - as a member of an advisory board of
Black Cube
, the Israeli spy company.
Questioned by RFI, the latter denies that Kirill Parinov did more than offer him clients in 2017 and 2018. Black Cube denies in any case any link with the latter's money withdrawals from Afriland First Bank.
► the whole survey on Afriland First Bank CD can be
read here
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