![]() The woman had the misfortune of opening the door into an argument on the landing outside of her apartment. He came to collect the remainder of her debt-300 rubles (five dollars). In the beginning of April, in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, a 22-year-old male debt collector was arrested for breaking the finger of a 46-year-old woman who took a micro-loan from the “Russian Standard” bank. Kolesnichenko, the police said, the debt collectors were let go. They had been fired, the company said, and whatever unlawful acts they did, they did it on their own initiative.īecause there was no physical violence against Mrs. The “Sentinel Credit Management” collection agency said they were not responsible for the acts of their-former-employees. Last February, two of the debt collectors were arrested while painting threats on the walls, kicking at her apartment door and shouting threats. In Mrs. Kolesnichenko’s case (the woman whose husband worked at the furniture assembly plant in Moscow), the collectors promised to burn her children. In April, in Omsk, the brother of a debtor was threatened with murder if he didn’t pay his brother’s debt himself. The 5,000-rubles micro-loan ($80) quickly turned into a nightmare for the daughter, as collectors called with the promise to toss acid on her face. The credit company “Home Money” put the wrong address on the contract.ģ2-year-old Svetlana from Krasnodar also never took a loan-her mother did. ![]() Galina Yakovleva, retiree from Novosibirsk, said somebody painted the wall of the lobby entrance with the word “THIEF”-directed at her. It took hours for the parents to open the door-with the help of their neighbors. Threatening violence, they cut the phone line for every apartment, filled the keyholes of all the apartments on the landing with the glue and left the child trapped in the apartment. In Yekaterinburg, in late February, debt collectors came to the apartment of a borrower where a teenage child was home alone. Ugly graffiti-“thief” and “rat” being most popular-are sprayed all over the stairwell. The electricity or phone cables can be cut, all the peepholes and keyholes can be sprayed with space-filling foam or vandalized in some other way. The collector was sentenced to one year in prison but was released in the courtroom because of the amnesty for first-time offenders that was put into effect to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory in WWII.Ī two-year-old victim of debt collectors.Īlmost always, the neighbors do suffer one way or another. “Your neighbors will regret your stupidity.” “Your exemplary execution will be shown on TV.” When banks and micro-loan companies find clients in default, they sell the loans to debt collectors whose activity in Russia is not regulated by law. This means that over the course of one year a loan of 100,000 rubles ($1,560) will cost the borrower 830,000 rubles ($13,000) at the rate of two percent a day or 1,560,000 rubles ($24,400) at the rate of four percent a day. The catch? Russian micro-loan companies extend loans with interest rates of two to four percent… a day. For many, a micro-loan comes as an immediate solution to make ends meet, and in Russia, all one needs for such a loan is a passport and a cell phone. Almost seven million are now considered to be in default, having missed three or more months of payments. Rather, an uprising will come from the millions of terrorized victims of debt collectors.įorty million Russians carry bank loans and mortgages and after the country’s economy plummeted with the free-fall of oil prices, a quarter of these borrowers have missed at least one payment. ![]()
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