MOSCOW () -- Bank Imperial, the loser in a tender last month for ailing Agroprombank, has blasted the way the tender won by rival Stolichny Savings Bank was carried out.


In a statement in Saturday's Segodnya daily, Imperial management said the outcome of the sale had been rigged beforehand, with the tender's organizers "consciously planning" from the outset to hand the 51-percent stake to Stolichny.


Imperial, one of Russia's top 10 banks, said it was unclear whether Stolichny can actually shoulder the burden of sanitizing Agroprombank, which has a large share of bad credits to Russian farms on its balance sheet, the newspaper reported.