OAO Rosbank reports some forged bank guarantees are used in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk by unidentified swindlers.

‘It is reported that increasingly more forged bank guarantees are used to deceive people. The trick works like this: swindlers offer the Russian and foreign businesses representatives fictitious bank guarantees for a certain commission off the total amount. The papers involve figures of up to ?250m’ the bank warns.

For one, the forgers are said to be operating in such Russian cities as Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Irkutsk, Perm, Ulyanovsk, Yekaterinburg, and Yaroslavl as well as in Great Britain, Latvia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine.

‘Our bank does not and cannot produce any guarantees meant for public offering. We only offer guarantees to a particular customer after an agreement has been signed for a specific transaction and for a specific time period. These guarantees can never be sold or transferred to a third party,’ Rosbank says.