Stenn crashes after Russia money laundering case

After being mentioned in the US criminal case, lenders started querying potentially suspicious transactions, as detailed by the Financial Times, citing individuals familiar with the circumstances. Specialised in invoice financing and having collaborations with international financial institutions like Citi and Barclays, as well as a valuation of USD 900 million, Stenn had two of its units in the UK put into administration after HSBC Innovation Bank, one of its lenders, prompted an application to London’s High Court.

HSBC started investigating possibly suspicious transactions at Stenn after the US regulators released criminal accusations in a money laundering case. According to the above-mentioned sources, this included providing reference to Stenn and its Russian founder and chief executive Greg Karpovsky. However, Stenn and its founder were not directly accused of any misconduct in the US criminal case, in which they were not placed as the defendants. The reference to them triggered HSBC, whose main exposure to Stenn was via a revolving credit facility signed with Silicon Valley Bank UK, taken over by the financial institution after the crash of the US regional bank in 2023, to analyse the fintech company’s dealings that exposed potentially suspicious transactions.

Stenn’s possible involvement in the case

As part of the US case, authorities claimed that Stenn Assets UK, one of the unities placed into administration, secured USD 1.7 million in October 2020 from a Singaporean company linked to Feliks Medvedev, a Russian individual who pleaded guilty to conducting an unlicensed money transferring business that sent over USD 150 million in Russian money. Greg Karpovsky’s email address was included in another indictment as being related to a trading account at a Singaporean metals exchange that was also leveraged in the scheme. Besides Medvedev, US regulators prosecuted two other Russian individuals for supposedly participating in the scheme, charging them with several offences, including money laundering. At the same time, the US Treasury sanctioned one of these alleged co-conspirators and their company in 2023.

Furthermore, in a comment offered to the Financial Times, Greg Karpovsky underlined its cooperation with Stenn’s administrators, however, he did not want to comment on the process. Additionally, Karpovsky strongly denied the allegations regarding any wrongdoings in connection with Stenn. At the time of the announcement, no comments on the matter were provided by Citi, HSBC, Barclays, and Centerbridge.