The head of VTB Bank, Andrey Kostin, who is under EU and US sanctions, is associated with a network of offshore companies that own Russian and European real estate, as well as other assets worth more than $130 million, according to an OCCRP (Corruption and Organized Crime Research Center) investigation and "Important stories" .

These are houses, apartments, investment companies and hotels. The property is controlled through firms set up by Costin's confidant, Eric White, the son of a prominent Canadian communist.

White is mentioned in Pandora's Archive documents. This is 12 million documents with data on the owners of offshore companies from around the world. The Canadian is listed as the actual owner of offshore companies established in the British Virgin Islands. Those, in turn, owned firms mainly in Cyprus, which owned luxury real estate in Russia and Europe. And this network was used in the interests of the head of VTB Andrey Kostin. His acquaintance confirmed to Important Stories that Eric White is Kostin's confidant in terms of managing and owning property.

According to journalists, Eric White is the son of the Canadian communist Bert White. Eric moved to the Soviet Union as a boy in 1966 and was educated at the boarding school for the children of foreign communist leaders Interdom. After leaving school in 1973, White Jr. stayed in Russia to study history at Moscow State University. Then he moved to Canada and went into business.

In 2015, Eric White obtained Cypriot citizenship and bought a villa next door to a house owned by the deputy head of the former subsidiary of VTB Bank in Cyprus, RCB Cyprus, Vladimir Popov. A significant share of RCB in 2009 was with its top managers, say "Important Stories". Sources connected with VTB then said that in fact this Cypriot bank had moved away from the state-owned VTB and went to Kostin's people. As it turned out, some companies associated with Andrey Kostin, from an offshore network managed by White, received millions of dollars in loans from RCB Cyprus.

“White could have acted as Kostin’s confidant,” Tamara Makarenko, an expert in the business intelligence sector with extensive experience in investigating oligarchs, notes in the investigation. In her opinion, property ownership schemes suggest such an idea. The oligarchs used similar schemes to hide their assets.