Spain’s High Court will investigate allegations that Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman acted to depress the share price of DIA when trying to take control of the supermarket chain, a court document seen by Reuters showed, Reuters reported. Fridman’s LetterOne fund denied the allegations on Tuesday, saying in a statement they were “untrue and defamatory”. LetterOne rescued DIA from the brink of insolvency this year after the retailer’s market value fell by 90% in 2018 as it lost out to rising competition.

Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman is facing questioning in Spain over allegations he illegally laid “economic siege” to an acquisition target while camouflaging his true role, according to court documents seen by the Financial Times. An anti-corruption prosecutor suspects Mr Fridman broke the country’s criminal code in 2016 in an attempt to take control of Zed World Wide, a Spanish mobile content and services business that later declared insolvency, the Financial Times reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Maduro briefly discussed Caracas’ debt obligations to Russia last week during a visit to Moscow by the Venezuelan leader, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, without providing details, Reuters reported. Close ally Moscow has acted as a lender of last resort for Caracas, with the Russian government and oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM) providing at least $17 billion in loans and credit lines since 2006. In November 2017, Russia agreed to restructure Venezuela’s sovereign debt of $3.15 billion, with repayments over 10 years.

Three major Russian companies have tapped the Eurobond market this month and more are expected to join them, capitalising on lower borrowing costs as global central banks cut rates, Reuters reported. After the summer lull, Russian companies stepped up activity on the Eurobond market and raised $1.6 billion in Eurobonds in the first three weeks of September. Russia’s steelmaker Severstal, petrochemicals company Sibur, and pipe producer Chelpipe launched dollar-denominated Eurobonds. Eurobond issuance has been supported by a flurry of global central bank policy easings.

Russia’s largest lender Sberbank does not see itself as the future owner of the Antipinsky oil refinery, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, Sberbank deputy board chairman Anatoly Popov said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The refinery, which has a capacity of 9 million tonnes per year, filed for bankruptcy in May after having halted operations on several occasions because of a lack of funds to pay for crude oil deliveries. Sberbank had been its main creditor.

When Ayuka Tserenov lost his job as a loan officer at the giant Kremlin-run lender Sberbank three years ago, he found himself staring at nearly Rbs3.5m ($52,760) in debt, the Financial Times reported. He had taken out a Rbs2.5m loan from his employer to buy an apartment in his southern hometown of Elista when he and his wife had their first child. Mr Tserenov’s Rbs40,000 monthly wage was not enough to cover the down payment, so he took out another Rbs250,000 from another bank, then went deeper into debt to cover further living expenses.

Russian coal and steel producer Mechel has asked state-controlled lenders Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank for more time to make its debt repayments, the banks and company said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Mechel, which had already postponed debt repayments to 2020-2022 following lengthy restructuring talks with Russian state banks earlier this year, is now asking to push payments back to 2024-2026, an executive at Sberbank, one of its key lenders, said.

President Vladimir Putin has given officials until the end of August to make proposals on how Russia should assess commercial borrowers' risks under new international rules that the domestic banking sector plans to adopt, Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin said, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. The central bank is voluntarily signing the sector up to the Basel III reforms, aimed at strengthening the regulation, supervision and risk management of banks and due to be fully implemented within the European Union by 2027.

A Spanish court has summoned Mikhail Fridman, who controls retailer DIA, to appear before it next month in an investigation into the bankruptcy of digital entertainment firm Zed Worldwide, a judicial source said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Fridman had been called to the Madrid-based Audiencia Nacional major crimes court on Sept. 12 after a Spanish anti-graft prosecutor alleged that the Russian tycoon had played a role in Zed’s bankruptcy, the judicial source told Reuters. A spokesman for Fridman said he had not received any legal notification regarding the summons.

The growth in consumer lending has alarmed some economic policy officials, who note that a growing number of Russians are using a quick swipe of plastic or relying on payday lenders to cope with hard times brought on by Western sanctions and slumping prices for oil, one of the country’s major export commodities, the International New York Times reported. The spending has lifted the economy but with ballooning consumer debt that could help start a recession.