The question of the day is for the Central Bank: who pulled out the 3 trillion rubles worth of cash?

Economist, author of the popular channel "Project Kino" Alexey Mineyev asked an extremely curious question:

“So, against the backdrop of a triumphant fall in the share of cash settlements to 30% by the end of 2020, having fallen by another 5 pp. over the year, the amount of cash on hand, for no reason at all, suddenly increased by 30% during 2020, and moreover, 90% of the new cash on hand was five (bills of 5 thousand rubles)!

The increase in cash in hand amounted to 20 thousand per brother. Well, if it is equally divided by 145 million people.

If you do not see an increase in cash at home, do not despair. You are not alone. Four out of five see in their hands the same or less cash, and not more (the survey was conducted by 21 channels, 4 thousand people answered).

So, on average for all citizens, cash on hand did not grow. Which is logical. The share of non-cash payments is growing at a record, as Nabiullina reports. Revenues have fallen, and even Putin already knows this. The volume of term deposits decreased by 10%. Although the growth in balances on simple accounts, the growth corresponds to the volume of mortgage loans issued by 3.5 trillion rubles. in 2020

Nevertheless, someone, a third of the value of Gazprom - by 2.9 trillion rubles, or $ 40 billion - got hold of cash, five thousandths!

Moreover, in previous years, the increase in cash averaged 6 times less, 0.5 trillion rubles each. for 10 years, with an increase in the share of five thousandths from 40% in 2010 to 80% as of January 1, 2021! Such an increase of five thousandths is evidence that cash rubles are more and more simply stored as a long-term trend, and not used for calculations. Interestingly, the demand for cash in 2020 was in line with the 2019 level and was less than the demand for cash in 2018! (Central Bank analytics) Maybe because if they went to buy dollars, the average monthly demand at the level of about $ 4 billion would roughly double.

How did you manage to cash out such volumes? After all, control today by the tax authorities, the Central Bank is huge. Cash out on the market expensive - 20%. Not 0.5% -1%, as in the 90s, when there was no control.

Now wealthy Russians have forgotten when the last time they used cash. Ordinary people have not increased their cash either. Savings are eaten. Oligarchs don't care about cash; Potanin had a fortune of $ 30 billion yesterday.

How Colonel Zakharchenko kept one and a half tons of cash - it became known back in 2016. So this happens for sure, this is an established fact.

100 colonels Zakharchenko, 5 billion rubles each. - 1 trillion accumulates. So there are 300 people? Looks unlikely, since all of them together, acting not in collusion, would certainly increase the demand for cash. After all, their rubles would double the demand within a year. This means that there are many fewer of them, and they all acted in collusion, albeit for a year. But it was in 2020, before it was different. The volumes were 5-6 times less. Other then “Colonels Zakharchenko” worked in 2020, and those that previously continued to work, too, as an annual background.

And, of course, the survey mentioned above is central to this whole reflection. Without a survey that concluded “Only one in five sees an increase in cash in his hands”, we could have the illusion “Maybe we all have more cash? Well, really?... The prices are going up too!"

So who stowed the $ 40 billion in ruble cash?

Such is the "conspiracy theory". A very purely Russian story. The more you correlate the facts, the more in the logic of 2020. But we will observe, as Venediktov says..."