Finance

Finance

Over 1 billion stolen from Russian Pension Fund

17 November 2009 16:29 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA-Economics. Perpetrators in Russia tried to steal 1.25 billion rubles (about $43,598,821 as of November 17, 2009) from the accounts at the Pension Fund of Russia (PFR), as reported by the Russian information agency.
However, most of the funds have been prevented from the thief, Ecommerce-journal reported.

â€œOn Monday, November 16, PFR quickly contacted the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the federal prosecutors reporting the fact of two transactions made from the accounts of the pension fund held with the central bank,â€ said the agency. Copies of these transactions were sent by the central bank to the PFR.

â€œThese payment orders request a payment on 1 billion 250 million rubles that were not sanctioned by the PFR,â€ said the fund representative.

The investigation established that on November 13 an unknown person handed in the two payment orders that had been purportedly drawn by the PFR. The central bank started transferring the amount against these warrants. Later, it was determined that the signatures of PFR officials as well as its stamps and Budget Classification Codes on the warrants were fake, as reported by the agency.