Intrigues and books of the publisher Novikov

While Oleg Novikov talks about millions of Russian readers, hundreds of millions of rubles he received under government contracts may end up on distant offshore shores.

On the eve of the well-known and very controversial Russian businessman, beneficiary and President of the publishing group “Eksmo-AST” Oleg Novikov gave a sweeping an interview in which he talked about the Russian book market. This market, and this is obvious without any experts, is going through hard times, but specifically Oleg Novikov and his assets are doing just fine.

The fact is that Oleg Novikov achieved high results, as they say, by working with his elbows in a dense ring of competitors. And, as many believe, using methods that are far from always worthy of a decent businessman.

How it was and how the Eksmo-AST publishing group and its main beneficiary Oleg Novikov live today – in the material correspondent of The Moscow Post.

In his interview at the Kommersant site, Oleg Novikov complains that the Russian book market is small – only about 100 billion rubles a year. Apparently, its complete monopolization is the goal of the businessman, given that many competitors left the market with the direct participation of Novikov.

Today, the group consists of many assets, the main of which are two: this is Eksmo Publishing LLC itself and LLC “AST Publishing House” Both structures literally bathe in government contracts.

The first LLC has a total amount of government contracts of 652 million rubles. Financial indicators are simply excellent – 907 million rubles of net profit with 12 billion rubles of revenue for 2021.

Photo: Rusprofile. en

The second LLC of state contracts got them for a more modest, but still solid amount of 435 million rubles. Financial indicators for 2021 should also please Mr. Novikov: 6 billion rubles in revenue, 847 million rubles in net income.

Photo: Rusprofile. en

Only one publication can boast of large volumes of state contracts and income – the state-owned GK “Prosveshchenie”. With one small but significant difference: Enlightenment is tied to Russian market players, including the state. Whereas funds from government contracts and other income from Eksmo and AST can flow offshore – after all, both companies, with Novikov’s easy suggestion, were tied to foreign capital.

Among the co-owners of Eksmo, there are two offshore companies at once: Cyprus “Company Sevorn Limited” and the Seychellois company “Redcliffe Holding Limited”. In Cyprus and the Seychelles, they also know how to read – and also count Russian money?

Photo: Rusprofile. en

In the ACT, the situation is similar, only there are even more foreigners. These are the Cypriot “Pasilo Investments Limited”, the Panamanian company “Promirex Corp” and the organization from the Seychelles “M.R.K. Alliance S.A. Limited”.

Photo: Rusprofile. en

Before that, there were other offshore companies in the same Eksmo, for example, the Virginian BVO BVO Kohler Hole. Mr. Novikov himself was among the founders. But, perhaps, the geopolitical hype that has risen around Russia and sanctions pressure on Russian business forced him to withdraw from the founders of the company in April 2022. ” class=”include-img” loading=”lazy” title=”Intrigues and books by the publisher Novikov” type=”image/png” alt=”Intrigues and books by the publisher Novikov” />

Photo : Rusprofile.ru

And in May of the same year, he also left the post of general director of the structure. However, few doubt that he was and remains a key beneficiary of the group.

In any case, it turns out that the call of the President of Russia to responsible businessmen to “deoffshorize” their assets was never heard by Oleg Novikov.

“Clearing the clearing”

Meanwhile, Oleg Novikov continues to actively expand his business, buying up everything that lies badly and belongs to his area of ​​​​interest. Recently, The Moscow Post wrote an article, recalling that over the past two years he has become the majority owner of the Tver Polygraph Combine and Pareto-Print, and also bought most of the shares of the scandalous Mozhaysk Polygraphic Combine.

The latter used to be owned Rodionov Publishing House (IDR), which was actually forced to withdraw from the big business game. After that, half of the structure went to the well-known oligarch Iskander Makhmudov. He and his partner Andrei Bokarev wanted to sell 50% of the IDR back in the 2000s, but in the end the sale dragged on until the mid-10s and beyond. And in 2017, a major scandal erupted with the director general of the IDR.

The Summa company, the chairman of the board of directors of which was the well-known businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov, who has now been sentenced to a long term, from the pre-trial detention center, said that the general director of the IDR, Yevgeny Feldman, extorted $200,000 from Summa for not publishing certain critical articles. As a result, they began to try to attribute blackmail attempts to other figures to Feldman.

Even a criminal case was opened, Feldman was taken into custody. But in the end, the case was closed due to the lack of corpus delicti – the accusations were not confirmed. But “under the guise” of the scandal, Oleg Novikov somehow managed to buy the Mozhaisk plant from the IDR, and even for 500 million rubles, ridiculous for such an asset. So rumors spread on the market that Magomedov's “attack” on Feldman could almost be coordinated with Novikov's step.

The IDR itself was liquidated in 2019 – one less competitor.

But these are recent acquisitions. But once Eksmo had a main competitor – that same AST publishing house. And even then, they tried to attribute hostile takeovers to Mr. Novikov.

For example, he bought AST in 2013, according to rough estimates, for only $5 million. Everyone in the market was simply dumbfounded, because in the previous year, AST's revenue was almost a quarter of a billion dollars. Those. the purchase price was clearly underestimated.

There is no reliable information about why the former owner of AST, Yakov Helemsky, agreed to such, apparently, an unprofitable deal. However, according to evil tongues, allegedly Novikov could initiate some kind of criminal proceedings against Helemsky, or give a threat of this kind.

All this is unproven, but something else is known. At about the same time, a powerful “attack” began on the AST along the lines of the Federal Tax Service. The publishing house was preparing to present almost 6.7 billion rubles. Vedomosti wrote about it. Everything looked very strange – as if the claims were saved up, saved up, and dumped out at one very necessary moment for Novikov.

As a result, Helemsky lost his billion dollar business almost for a penny, and the Eksmo-AST United Publishing Group became the largest player in the book market of the Russian Federation. that Oleg Novikov is just a shrewd businessman who senses where the wind is blowing from. But after all and to it most claims could arise. This concerns the bundle and taxes, and the circulation of the publishing house, which exceeded all conceivable limits.

As Skandaly.ru wrote, back in 2003, law enforcement officers suspected Eksmo of fraud in the book market. The fact is that many times more books were allegedly released for sale than indicated in the imprint. Naturally, no taxes and royalties could be received from such “left” circulations.

As a result, the treasury could miss taxes by about $ 3 million. And illegal products could be sold through one-day firms, from where it is very easy to withdraw money . They even brought criminal charges under Art. 173 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“illegal entrepreneurship”). But it, apparently, did not end with anything.

Is Oleg Novikov a shrewd businessman, or a man who achieves his goal at any cost? Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina/RBC

Meanwhile, if Oleg Novikov even hypothetically could do something like this, it is understandable why his competitors, who prefer to operate in the legal field, turned out to be so helpless in business – confrontation with “Eksmo”. And given the offshore nature of the ownership of Eksmo-AST today, it is not difficult to guess where the “unearned penny”, if any, could really flow away.

But now, when there is no one on the horizon of book publishers except Oleg Novikov, he enthusiastically talks about the interest of Russians in literature. And, especially, to the most successful author of the publishing house – the writer Daria Dontsova, who even today, having hundreds of millions of copies behind her, works tirelessly, bringing fame and money to the publishing house.