A special administration for liquidation of Tajprombank has not been able to pay out savings to the bank’s customers for already a year as the Ministry of Finance prohibits the sale of the failed bank’s assets.
Tajprombank was founded in October 1995 as an all-purpose retail bank. The controlling shares of the company were held by Jamshed Ziyoyev.
Signs the bank was in distress began to emerge in 2015. In the middle of 2016, Ziyoyev was removed as head of the bank, which was placed under crisis administration. In December the same year, the National Bank of Tajikistan (NBT) declared it was refinancing Tajprombank to the tune of 450 million somoni and reappointed Ziyoyev to his old job and ordered him to restore the lender to health.
The bailout money was raised through the emission of somoni-denominated sovereign bonds that were converted into liquid cash by the National Bank.
The bank, for its part, submitted all the documentation on its assets to the Ministry of Finance as collateral, a source at the special administration told Asia-Plus in an interview. .
But then in February 2017, the NBT decided to shutter Tajprombank, together with another recipient of bailout funds, Fononbank.
“However, the Ministry of Finance has not yet returned the bank documentation,” said the source. “Moreover, the Ministry of Finance has applied to the Ministry of Justice requesting to put ban on the sale of Tajprombank’s assets as the bank owes 117 million somoni to the Ministry of Finance. This money is reportedly not guaranteed by collateral property, and therefore, sale of 113 facilities worth totaling 572 million somoni has been banned.”
Over this period, the deposits of physical entities left at the bank in liquidation have reportedly decreased from nearly 300 million somoni to 98 million somoni and the number of depositors has reduced from 5,800 to 677.
As of January 1, 2018, savings of legal entities left at the bank amount to 50.7 million somoni.
Over the period of the activity of the special administration commission, the bank has fulfilled its obligations completely towards 5,218 legal and physical entities and partially towards 677 entities.
By December 31, 2017, Tajprombank’s assets have reportedly amounted to 612 million somoni, while its obligations to its customers have amounted to 626 million somoni by December 31, 2017.
The special commission has reportedly conducted 19 auctions so far and the bank’s assets worth totaling nearly 37 million have been sold by those auctions.
Assets on Tajprombank’s books include dozens of offices and an unspecified number of residential properties.
