Story By: Zoey McDougall, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A Russian bank has been blasted for refusing to hire LGBT people and those with a media background after an HR document was reportedly leaked online.

Tinkoff Bank, which is headquartered in the Russian capital Moscow, was founded by billionaire businessman Oleg Tinkov in 2006.

The commercial bank has been accused of issuing guidelines that exclude the hiring of LGBT people and workers from North Caucasus and Azerbaijan.

The only exceptions are Armenians and people from the Dagestan Republic in south-western Russia, according to the leaked document.

Instructions also reportedly stated that people with a background in the media are not welcome to work at the bank.

According to reports, the document was made public on Google Docs by a bank employee. It is not known if this was done intentionally or if the document was genuine.

Bank bosses have stressed that it was written without senior management involvement.

Tinkoff Bank also issued a statement strongly opposing the document’s contents, which they say fly in the face of the company’s true values.

The statement also said that the employee responsible for making the document public was not fired over the incident.

Dashing 50-year-old billionaire Oleg Tinkov is a Russian entrepreneur and cycling sponsor with an estimated fortune of 1.2 billion USD (904 million GBP).

In 2016, he was ranked Russia’s 79th richest person.