‘Alfa Capital’s customers first started to complain about a month ago when they found it difficult to get the investments they’d made into the cooperative back,’ says Accord Invest’s Deputy GD Konstantin Selyanin.

The anonymous dissatisfied customers report they had invested some money in this consumer cooperative but were never able to get their money back when the time came. The investors say their money could have been refused to them due to financial troubles that, in their, turn, had been caused by the recent arrest and temporary freeze of the company’s accounts. In the meantime, the cooperative’s top executives are not available for comment or feedback.

‘Any pyramid scheme is doomed to failure at some point or another. Quite often, though, such a company closes down only to reappear under a new guise. This particular pyramid is remarkably the hardest nut to crack, as it has already become notorious as Capital, Capital Plus, and four or five other names,’ Konstantin Selyanin observes.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service is sure to have already laid a number of claims against Alfa Capital, he believes.

‘A pyramid scheme fails in either of the two cases: it may collapse under its own weight (when the company cannot pay its investors back) or it may be prosecuted by the law-enforcement agencies. Alfa Capital has been affected by both factors, apparently,’ Selyanin notes.