The Rossiya Bank (Bank Rossiya (), in Russian: Акционерный коммерческий банк Россия, АКБ Россия) is a Russian joint stock bank founded on June 27, 1990. The company's headquarters are in Saint Petersburg. The bank has been associated with the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia. The Pandora Papers leak revealed that the bank built a network of shadow companies that kept offshore wealth for Russian elites. History Communist Party ownership and 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt On August 23, 1990, a secret memorandum from Vladimir A. Ivashko, who was Gorbachev's deputy general secretary, was issued to organize the transfer of CPSU funds, CPSU financing and support of its operations through associations, ventures, foundations, etc. which are to act as invisible economics. Bank Rossiya was one of the hundreds of entreprises that CPSU financiers used to funnel the party gold away. In 1990, the CPSU committee of the Leningrad Oblast became Rossiya Bank largest shareholder (48.4%), but after the coup attempt in August 1991 the bank's activity was frozen on 2 September 1991 as it was CPSU-related. It was the first commercial bank to hold accounts for the foreign economic operations of both the regional committee of the CPSU and the local management of the KGB. In December 1991 its activity was resumed, as the shares had been redeemed on 29 December 1991 by some member ventures of the Leningrad Association of Joint Ventures, shares of which were held by Vladimir Yakunin, Yuriy Kovalchuk, Mikhail Markov, Viktor Myachin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Yury Nikolayev. JV Neva Chance The Austrian Russian joint venture JV Neva Chance received funds from the Revival of St. Petersburg Foundation (), which was co-founded by Anatoly Sobchak and its CEO Alexander Margolis (). A Los Angeles branch of the St. Petersburg Foundation was established by Mark Davidovich Lvovich (; b. Soviet Union), also known as Mark Neumann (), who founded and headed the California firm Trada that received several hundred thousand dollars of "funds of UNI-REM" () which Sergei Bagaev (), a colleague of Anatoly Sobchak at Leningrad University, headed. Leon Weinstein (), an assistant to Neuman at the Los Angeles branch, and his wife Gulnara Afanasyeva () were active with the St. Petersburg Foundation when it sponsored Sobchak's visit to Los Angeles. JV Neva Chance established thirty companies including JV Casino Neva. Putin's capital support from Leningrad casinos Beginning in 1991, Vladimir Putin was St Petersburg's chairman