An expatriate relocation Web site, settler-international.com, has this to say about Russian banks: "Do not open a bank account in a Russian bank : you might not see your deposit again." Russia's Central Bank, aware of the dismal lack of professionalism, the venality, and the criminal predilections of Russian "bankers" (and their Western accomplices) - is offering "complementary vocational training" in the framework of its Banking School. It is somewhat ironic that the institution suspected of abusing billions of US dollars in IMF funds by "parking" them in obscure off-shore havens - seeks to better the corrupt banking system in Russia. I. The Banks On paper, Russia has more than 1,300 banks. Yet, with the exception of the 20-odd (two new ones were added last year) state-owned (and, implicitly, state-guaranteed) outfits - e.g., the mammoth Sberbank (the savings bank, 61% owned by the Central Bank) - very few provide minimal services, such as corporate finance and retail banking. The surviving part of the private banking sector ("Alfa Bank", "MDM Bank") is composed of dwarfish entities with limited offerings. They are unable to compete with the statal behemoths in a market tilted in the latters' favor by both regulation and habit. The Agency for the Reconstruction of Credit Organizations (ARCO) - established after the seismic shock of 1998 - did little to restructure the sector and did nothing to prevent asset stripping. More than one third of the banks are insolvent - but were never bankrupted. The presence of a few foreign banks and the emergence of non-bank financing (e.g., insurance) are rays of hope in an otherwise soporific scene. Despite the fact that most medium and large corporations in Russia own licensed "banks" (really, outsourced treasury operations) - more than 90% of corporate finance in 2000-2001 was in the form of equity finance, corporate bonds, and (mainly) reinvested retained earnings. Some corporate bond issues are as large as $100 million (with 18-months maturity) and the corporate bond market may quintuple to $10 billion in a year or two, reports "The Economist", quoting Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank. Still, that bank credits are not available to small and medium enterprises retards growth, as Stanley Fischer pointed out in his speech to the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, in June 2001, when he was still the First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF. Last week, the OECD warned Russia that its economic growth may suffer without reforms to the banking sector.