Gazprombank

Gazprombank, or GPB (JSC), is a private-owned Russian bank, the third largest bank in the country by assets. Since November 2014, Yuri Shamalov's Gazfond is its largest shareholder. Gazprombank is one of the main channels for payments for Russian oil and gas. The bank’s principal business areas are corporate banking, retail banking, investment banking and depository services. Its banking activities also include securities trading, foreign exchange operations, precious metals operations, clearing operations and settlement services. The bank has a distribution network of 43 branches and over 260 banking outlets located throughout the Russian Federation. GPB also has ownership interests in three other Russian banks. In addition, Gazprombank is represented in the market of Belarus through ownership interests in foreign bank: Belgazprombank (Belarus). Gazprombank (Switzerland) Ltd announced it was ceasing to trade in October 2022. Gazprombank also has representative offices in Mongolia, China and India. History In August 2005 for 37.22 billion rubles, Gazprombank purchased Gazprom Media, the largest Russian media holding, which includes the former Media Most holdings of Vladimir Gusinsky including the Sem Days publishing house, Echo of Moscow, both the NTV channel and NTV Plus, and Izvestia newspaper, from the bank's parent company Gazprom. After Gazprom-Media took over "Media Most" in 2000, Gazprom-Media received Filipp Bobkov's entire former KGB 5th directorate (Political police) which was responsible for disinformation, control of dissidents, and executions including all of its employees, its database and the Filipp Bobkov founded security service that was accused of attempting an assassination in 1994 of Boris Berezovsky. The entire archive of 5th KGB Main Directorate was taken to Media-Most.