Pigs as collateral

Bloomberg reports that as much as 25% of all loans made by the Russian banking system can become problem loans. As an example, National Reserve Bank seized collateral of 40,450 pigs offered against a loan from a cash-strapped borrower:

“We had a court decision to take away the collateral, which is the pigs,” Lebedev, 49, said in an interview in Moscow. The borrower, a farm near Samara on the Volga river, agreed “with the local authorities to establish a quarantine” against African swine fever. The former KGB officer is still waiting to collect the pigs offered against a loan of 100 million rubles ($3.5 million).