MOSCOW, May 25 (RAPSI) - Top former executives of Master-Bank, a mid-sized Moscow bank, are suspected of its premeditated bankruptcy, RIA Novosti reported on Monday, citing spokesperson for Interior Ministry, Yelena Alekseyeva.

Between August 2012 and August 2013, the suspected executives issued loans to individuals and companies for a total of 17 billion rubles ($340 million) that they knew to be unrecoverable, according to Alekseyeva.

As a result of this activity, the credit institution lost its license, the Interior Ministry infers. The names and titles of the suspected executives have not been disclosed.

In November 2013, the Central Bank revoked Master-bank’s license for false data reporting, low-quality loans and loss of capital. Master-bank was a top 100 Russian bank by assets and operated one of the largest cash machine systems.

The Moscow Commercial Court later declared the bank bankrupt and started bankruptcy proceedings, with the Deposit Insurance Agency as the insolvency administrator.

Master-bank, founded in 1992, held 47.3 billion rubles ($948 mln) in private deposits as of October 1 and 80.9 billion rubles ($1.6 billion) in assets as of November 1, according to RIA Novosti’s rating agency.