‘The officers of Yekaterinburg’s Leninskiy District division of Department of Internal Affairs did some drilling within the area right next to our bank’s premises on March 4, 2009. About forty people were involved in the procedure altogether, and it took them around thirty minutes to set the ‘hostages’ free,’ Security Director of Bank Société Générale Vostok’s Yekaterinburg branch Igor Kochegarov said to an UrBC reporter.

Meanwhile, a great deal of local dwellers could see a group of militiamen accompanying a few handcuffed people into the car downtown on that same day. All this was happening next to Bank Société Générale Vostok’s office entrance.

‘However, we are a bit unhappy with the fact that the bank was not informed of the upcoming drill’s details beforehand. We did have a preliminary talk with the division’s head and we were told about the drills, yet no one expected the operations to reach such a grand and serious scale,’ Kochegarov added.