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HSBC pushed the VK Fintech Stenn in Administration last year after he discovered that it had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a web of linked companies in countries such as Serbia, whose names often resembled those of large, well -known companies.
London High Court documents obtained by the Financial Times show that HSBC claimed that Stenn received the money from companies with similar names such as “Blue-Chip Companies”, such as Electronics Group Foxconn, but that was not related to the larger companies. Millions were also received from a company that was exclusively owned by a villager in a remote region of China.
The documents shed new light on the events that led to Stenn’s collapse, which specialized in invoice financing and once had a appreciation of $ 900 million and partnerships with international banks such as Citigroup. The information raises further questions about the supervision of a company that was regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority for anti-money laundering programs.
Stenn had placed his two British units in administration in December after a request to the London High Court from HSBC Innovation Bank, the former Silicon Valley Bank UK, one of the Fintech’s Lenders.
The FT reported earlier that a reference to Stenn in an American criminal indictment of a Russian money laundering schedule led HSBC to encourage potentially suspicious transactions. Stenn was not accused of misconduct in the case.
In a written entry to the court, the HSBC lawyers stated that it had issued a standard message on a loan of $ 35 million to Stenn after an investigation discovered that “payments were not made by the large blue chip companies mentioned on the invoices” .
“Instead, payments made by companies established in countries such as Serbia that have no connections with the Blue chip companies mentioned on the invoices and often do not submit accounts before they are placed in forced liquidation by regulators,” wrote HSBC lawyers, “HSBC lawyers,” wrote HSBC lawyers, “claim that” there could be no conceivable statement or justification “for the transactions.
The Serbian companies include companies with similar names such as Spain’s largest oil company Repsol and Hon Hai Precision Industry, the Taiwanese electronic production companies that are generally known as Foxconn.
These Serbian companies also include a company with a similar name such as a technology group based in Singapore. The companies all had connections with two Serbian persons mentioned in the document and all three companies were placed in “compulsory liquidation”, the lawyers of HSBC claimed in the documents.
“It seems very unlikely that the Taiwanese electronics component manufacturer, the Singapore technology company and the Spanish multinational energy and petrochemical company would all have group companies with” the same Serbian person, the written arguments of HSBC, not mentioned that none of the three large groups Even seemed to have Serbian subsidiaries.
Stenn also received payments from a “Zalando se limited” included in Hong Kong, the director and shareholder in Germany “had no ties with Zalando SE”. The German Online Retailer “also has no activities in Hong Kong,” said the bank’s entry.
One of the directors of Zalando Se Limited was a director of Green Bean Trading Limited, another company in Hong Kong that paid $ 1.6 million in Stenn’s bank accounts at Citigroup. The only shareholder of Green Bean was a person based in the Chinese province of Liaoning.
“This address is located in what seems to be a remote village in China, consisting of very small homes,” said the bank of the bank’s bank. “It seems unlikely that a legitimate company that makes substantial payments would have a single shareholder in a small rural village.”
HSBC claimed that Stenn’s invoicing problems were “extensive and systemic”, and noted that the total value of the invoices it had marked in 2023 and 2024 and exceeded $ 220 million.
Stenn did not oppose HSBC’s application and the two most important British units were placed in administration the same day. Earlier this month, the Stenn manager wrote in a report that it was aware of “accusations on potential irregularities prior to insolvency”.
Stenn’s founder and Chief Executive Greg Karpovsky was previously involved in a Russian invoice financing company that later collapsed in the midst of fraud.
Karpovsky told the FT in December that he denied “any misconduct in connection with Stenn”, while “any potential misconduct” in his previous Russian affairs “turned out to have taken place long after my departure from the company”.