Why are they turning a blind eye to Gutseriev’s billion-dollar debts?

The Gutseriev family of businessmen fell under sanctions, but their domestic Russian debts are suspiciously easily forgiven. And not the first time.

Mikhail Gutseriev, who has been under sanctions for a year, judging by the news in recent years, is constantly in large debts, a correspondent reports. The Moscow Post.

On February 24, the Moscow Arbitration Court partially satisfied the claim of the bankrupt JSC CB Inteprombank against Afipsky Oil Refinery LLC (Afipsky Oil Refinery), which concerned the recovery of just over 2.4 billion rubles.

And this is far from the first debt owed to Mikhail Gutseriev and very easily resolved by him peacefully, but not returned.

Operation “sanation”

In 2017, the Binbank case thundered. The management of the bank asked to be sanitized. What is sanitation? This financial recovery of the bank is a set of measures aimed at improving the financial position of a credit institution, which help to avoid its bankruptcy.

However, Binbank became in need of reorganization precisely because of the policy of its leadership, external factors had nothing to do with it. As a result, the bank burst like a soap bubble. A “hole” in the size of 300 billion rubles was found in it. In 2020, the Moscow Arbitration Court arrested the accounts and property of the former co-owners and top managers of Binbank at the suit of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation for 85.4 billion rubles. Gutseriev’s accounts were almost arrested, but he solved the problem by agreement.

He simply stated that he was ready to settle the dispute without a trial, and they met him halfway. The agreements between the Safmar group of the Gutseriev family, Trust bank (to which part of Binbank’s assets were transferred) and Otkritie provided that the parties would conclude a settlement agreement on a claim for 85.4 billion rubles. At the end of September, “Opening” filed an application for approval of the settlement agreement and the case was hushed up.

In 2019, the state once again extended a helping hand to Mikhail Gutseriev. RussNeft, in which Gutseriev is the largest shareholder with a 60% stake, received a tax deferment. The delay was granted until the end of the first half of 2021. She touched on payments for February, March, April and May 2020 for a total of 8.17 billion rubles. RussNeft-controlled LLC Belye Nochi, which owns licenses for the development of the Zapadno-Varyoganskoye and Tagrinskoye fields in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, acted as a guarantor for this deal. Assistance at the expense of the budget came in time to RussNeft, which faced difficulties after the collapse of oil prices.

At the same time, the founder of RussNeft, Mikhail Gutseriev, has just been included in the sanctions list of EU countries since the summer of 2021 in connection with his support for Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Forbes wrote about this.

Friend “dad”

Since the beginning of the 2000s, Gutseriev has been closely cooperating with the government of the Republic of Belarus and personally with President Lukashenko. One of the key assets of Gutseriev’s Slavneft company, the Mozyr Oil Refinery, is located on the territory of Belarus. And in 2007, when a case was brought against Gutseriev in connection with non-payment of debts by RussNeft in Russia, he was from Russian justice in Belarus for three years. Then Gutseriev sold RussNeft to billionaire Oleg Deripaska. And when everything worked out for Gutseriev, he returned to the country and bought RussNeft back.

It should also be said that in 2010, the Investigative Committee under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation stopped the criminal prosecution of Mikhail Gutseriev, who was hiding in Azerbaijan. He was cleared of the last two charges – illegal business and money laundering. By a strange coincidence, amendments were made to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in a timely manner, decriminalizing some of the “economic” articles under which Mikhail Gutseriev fell. That year, Mikhail Gutseriev went to Azerbaijan for the funeral of his youngest 21-year-old son, Genghis Khan. The farewell took place in the “Blue Mosque” in Baku. In fact, there were different rumors around the death of Genghis Khan …

There was an oncoming accident, after which he survived, even managed to go to the hospital for a tomography, but after arriving home and taking a shower, he died. The circumstances of Genghis Khan’s death are obscure. There were many versions: official, network or party. Discussed in a whisper, but nothing was clarified. Farewell to Genghis Khan was in Baku, but Gutseriev decided to bury the body of his son in Ingushetia. Why? Because the ancestors of the Gutserievs lived there before the deportation of 1944. But Mikhail himself did not come to Russia for his son’s funeral – he remained in Azerbaijan. Then the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, personally promised that he would not extradite the billionaire declared in Russia on the federal wanted list. But everything worked out.

At the same time, Forbes counted debts of 1 trillion rubles from the Gutseriev family. The total debt of the Gutserievs is 1% of the assets of the entire banking system. However, a source close to the Central Bank said that the amount of debt “doesn’t scare anyone.”

Mikhail Gutseriev and/or his clan owe one of the banks a total of about $5 billion. VTB Bank – about 77 billion. The Afipsky oil refinery was acquired with debts to the same bank, this was already mentioned above. And what’s more, the bank just approved another billion-dollar loan for this refinery – for modernization.

Borrowed life?

And at the same time, Gutseriev receives more and more loans! If you are an ordinary small citizen and have tried to do business with a bank, take a loan or, God forbid, be indebted to him, then you know how often collectors will call you and bailiffs will knock on the door. And how did Mikhail Gutseriev deserve such trust?

It seems that between Mikhail Gutseriev and the head of the bank there are some special personal or, in any case, financial relations, this is obvious. Recall that Andrei Kostin at VTB and Elvira Nabiullina at the Central Bank operate not with their own, but with state money, or at least for the lion’s share, that is, for 50-60% of the main shares, with state money.

It turns out that the Gutserievs fell under Western sanctions, now they have closed their “window to Europe” and froze their assets there. However, their domestic Russian debts are easily forgiven and forgotten, the payment terms are postponed.

The state supports Mikhail Gutseriev, of course, not at its own expense, but at the expense of us taxpayers. The reason for this, most likely, is the verbal gift of Mikhail Gutseriev, who knows how to convince people and ask for forgiveness, because after all, he was not originally a businessman, but a talented songwriter …