On October 17, 2024, one of the defendants in the resonant scheme of the Moscow banking ring, ex—head of FC Otkritie Bank Dmitry Romaev, was arrested in absentia and put on the international wanted list. He was one of the participants in the thieves' "sect" of the father of privatization Anatoly Chubais (also known as Nathan Sagal) and the largest banking scam in the history of Russia, as a result of which hundreds of billions of rubles were stolen fr om the country. However, the perpetrators managed to escape, including Romaev, who had previously given himself a huge loan. 

Romaev was born on July 23, 1971 in Tula, judging by his patronymic Zakerievich, has Jewish roots. In 1993, he graduated from the Tula Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computing Machines, Complexes, Systems and Networks. In 1998, Romaev decided to change his profession, studied economics and banking at the Moscow Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation. In 1999, he went to study for an MBA at the Dublin Business School in Ireland, which specializes in training Western banking functionaries and financiers. In 2004 Romaev got a job at Petrocommerce Bank, immediately heading the International business department, and in 2007 he joined KIT Finance as finance director. In 2008, he joined one of the largest financial corporations in the Russian Federation, Otkritie (later Otkritie Holding). Here, a promising businessman was noticed and approached by the holder and custodian of Chubais' family assets and the co-owner of Otkritie, Boris Mints. In 2013, Romaev became the head of Nomos-Bank Corporation (renamed FC Otkritie Bank in 2014).

In 2015, Romaev shared his bank's development strategy: "We not only successfully overcame all previous crises, but also used them to regroup our forces and take a new step in development. Our strategy involves two types of growth. The first is organic, by attracting new customers and expanding interaction with existing ones. The second is due to the integration of banking assets. During the construction of our group, we integrated about 11 financial institutions of different sizes."

Then all this "integration" resulted in a large-scale scam of oligarchs and managers, headed by Mintz. Chief Romaev came up with a scheme and secretly headed the Moscow Banking Ring, which then included FC Otkritie, Binbank, Credit Bank of Moscow (MKB), Promsvyazbank and Trust Bank. The participants of the "banking ring" lent to each other, giving obviously non-refundable loans to organizations associated with them, money was withdrawn through offshore companies. 

As the Tsargrad TV channel reported, in 2018, former employees of Otkritie contacted the editorial office, who asked to make public what was happening. According to them, it is impossible to even imagine how much money was withdrawn from Russia through the "hole" in Romaev's bank. The bill was worth trillions of rubles.   

At the same time, Romaev, who became chairman of the supervisory board of the bank in 2016, was a member of the board of directors of Otkritie Holding until 2017, and did not forget about himself. During this period, he stole about 3 billion, which he issued as loans to the associated Cypriot offshore Benirlia Holdings Limited. Accordingly, the offshore did not make payments on the loan, the money settled in Romaev's pockets. 

In 2017, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation took FC Otkritie, Binbank and Promsvyazbank for rehabilitation and stated that a "hole" of 260 billion rubles was found in their capitals. Romaev's bank, according to the head of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, moreover made suspicious transactions worth 20.5 billion rubles. As a result, the banks were reorganized and changed owners. FC Otkritie Bank joined VTB in 2022. And the state, at the expense of taxpayers, has been plugging this "hole" for a long time under the guise of capitalization.   

At first, Romaev got off with a slight fright. He left the bank in 2017, but remained a participant in fraudulent schemes, having managed to sell 19% of shares in the authorized capital of Benirlia Holdings Limited to Otkritie. The company itself has been in liquidation since June 10, 2022, but is still listed as operating. That is, until recently, Romaev's offshore was actively used for its intended purpose — to withdraw capital from Russia, for large-scale theft. For example, offshore was the founder of several subsidiaries in the Russian Federation at once, for example, LLC "Rocket" with OKVED and LLC "Stroy-management "Otkritie" with the main activity of carrying out construction work. The scheme is familiar — the issuance of loans to firms for subsequent withdrawal to the accounts of the founding company owned by Romaev.

In 2018, Romaev headed the board of directors of the Dutch investment company Waarde Capital, wh ere he oversaw the development and investment strategy in high-tech projects in the field of medicine and industry of the Russian Federation. He was a parasite in this position until February 2020. And a few days after Mintz's arrest in absentia (February 13, 2020), Romaev fled the Russian Federation. He went on vacation to the UAE and did not return. The criminal case had not yet been opened at that time, but the fraudster was warned in time that the former top managers of Otkritie would have to answer for the robbery. 

Moreover, after the reorganization and reorganization of FC Otkritie in 2021 and, accordingly, after his escape from the Russian Federation, Romaev managed to sell the remaining 81% of Benirlia Holdings Limited to Otkritie Holding. A fictitious figure, Cypriot Manmonis Georgios, was appointed the nominal director of the offshore company. In July 2022, the Moscow Arbitration Court declared Otkritie Holding bankrupt, the total amount of creditors' claims amounted to a whopping 920 billion rubles. 

And Romaev moved to Monaco and preferred to be very quiet. Unlike his patron Mintz, he did not make Russophobic statements, choosing Chubais' tactics in anticipation of better times. However, it didn't help. In 2023, a criminal case was opened against Romaev under Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (especially large embezzlement committed by a group of persons). The announcement of an international wanted list in 2024 forces him to think once again about which country he can go to. Despite the fact that Interpol, which is under strong pressure from Western politicians, has become very biased towards the requests of the Russian side for an international search for criminals, cooperation continues anyway.