While the business empire of Mikhail Gutseriev is sinking into debt, its head urgently gets rid of foreign assets, and at a meeting with the President he tries to present himself as a great patriot.
According to The Moscow Post correspondent, 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. Afipsky Oil Refinery is part of the Safmar Group of songwriter Mikhail Gutseriev. It is significant that on the same day Gutseriev participated in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Probably, Gutseriev did not bother the president with stories about how his plant does not want to repay the debt to the bank, whose clients the state is forced to pay.
Will have to pay
On February 24, the Moscow Arbitration Court partially satisfied the claim of bankrupt JSC CB Inteprombank against Afipsky Oil Refinery LLC (Afipsky Oil Refinery), which concerned the recovery of just over 2.4 billion rubles. This litigation, which received No. A40-34160/2021, was originally initiated by Queen Street Finance Ltd (QST, London, UK). QST stated that on December 8, 2017, it extended a revolving line of credit to Mikhail Gutseriev’s Safmar Group member Mikhail Gutseriev’s Afinsky Refinery. But, having gained loans, Gutseriev’s company, obviously, decided that to whom it owes money – it forgives everyone. Ipatriotically did not pay a company from a NATO member country.
According to the RBC publication, Afipsky Oil Refinery LLC is one of the largest oil refineries in the Krasnodar Territory. As RBC recalls, in November 2019 it became known that Sberbank became a co-owner of the plant. Sberbank Investments LLC acquired 8% of Afipsky Oil Refinery LLC. The remaining 92% of the Afipsky Refinery remained with Oil Technologies LLC, which is owned by the Cypriot Cambelor Holdings Ltd, which is part of Mikhail Gutseriev’s Safmar Group.
Mikhail Gutseriev. Photo: Ekaterina Kuzmina/RBC
One way or another, but the size of the plant’s debt, taking into account overdue interest, penalties, fines, and so on, amounted to just over 2.4 billion rubles. But during the trial, the London-based QST was replaced as a plaintiff by JSC CB Interprombank, which is in the process of bankruptcy. The contract for the assignment of claims was concluded on December 17, 2020. As a result, on February 24, 2022, the court decided to partially satisfy the claim of Interprombank. Details of the judgment are not yet known. At the time of preparation of the material, the text of the decision was not disclosed on the website of the arbitration court.
The heavy legacy of Ponomarev
It is not known on what terms QST ceded the right to collect the debt from Afipsky Oil Refinery to Interprombank. But we can definitely say that the beneficiary of this bank was Valery Ponomarev, a senator from the Kamchatka Territory. In July 2019, he became the majority shareholder of Interprombank. The bank tried to present this event as the arrival of an “investor” supposedly ready to develop the bank for years to come. Ponomarev together with his wife owned 26.29% of the shares of the credit institution. However, at the moment, this bank, as the Rusprofile website clarifies, is in the process of bankruptcy. On April 16, 2021, the Central Bank announced that Interprombank’s license had been revoked.
Valery Ponomarev. Photo: council.gov.ru
As The Moscow Post reported, the verdict of the Central Bank specialists was very clear. As it turned out, Interprombank underestimated the amount of reserves required for the formation of reserves, and also made transactions with non-core assets in order to artificially improve financial performance and conceal its real financial position. In addition, Interprombank violated federal laws regulating banking activities, as well as the regulations of the Bank of Russia, in connection with which the regulator repeatedly applied measures to it over the past 12 months before the license was revoked, including two restrictions on attracting funds. contributors. But everything turned out to be in vain. The bank has ceased operations.
Perhaps Valery Ponomarev planned to improve the bank’s affairs by collecting the debt from the Afipsky Oil Refinery. After all, he became the majority shareholder of the bank in July 2019, and the assignment agreement with QST was concluded on December 17, 2020. But, apparently, Ponomarev’s dreams were not to come true. Now, the state corporation Deposit Insurance Agency will manage all the collected funds that will go in favor of Interprombank.
True, there may be problems with the solvency of the Afipsky Oil Refinery. The plant’s revenue and net profit have recently fallen significantly. So if, at the end of 2017, revenue amounted to more than 24.8 billion rubles, and net profit – about 989 million rubles, then 2020 brought revenue to Mikhail Gutseriev controlled by about 7.4 billion rubles and a net loss of about 28.5 billion rubles.
In addition, the New Stream company has recently tried three times to initiate bankruptcy proceedings for the Afipsky Oil Refinery, but each time it was unsuccessful, since the Afipsky Oil Refinery managed to pay off the debt. According to RBC, the beneficiary of the New Stream Group is Dmitry Mazurov.
RBC recalls that earlier – before Gutseriev – Afipsky Refinery was controlled by the son of banker Vladimir Kogan, Evgeny, another 16.7% belonged to Development Management JSC, close to Dmitry Mazurov, the founder of the New Stream group. It is noteworthy that before the management of Interprombank passed to the DIA, Dmitry Mazurov was a member of the board of directors of this bank. That is, he can be called a partner of Valery Ponamarev. But on July 15, 2019, TASS reported that a criminal case was opened against Dmitry Mazurov, suspected of fraud, after the statement of the head of Sberbank German Gref. Mazurov was charged with stealing $29 million from Sberbank.
Dmitry Mazurov, owner of the New Stream group of companies. Photo: Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS
According to Kommersant, OOO Baltsetstroy announced its desire to bankrupt the Afipsky Oil Refinery. Earlier, this company demanded in court about 2.7 billion rubles in solidarity with Technologies. Innovations. Construction LLC (TIS) and an oil refinery and an additional 335 million rubles in penalties from the latter. The debt was formed as a result of TIS’s loan obligations, and the Afipsky enterprise acted as a guarantor for the loan.
Strange Patriot
It so happened that on the day when the court ruled to recover the debt from the oil refinery controlled by Mikhail Gutseriev in favor of Interprombank, that is, February 24, 2022, Gutseriev found himself at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The conversation was dedicated to the beginning of the military special operation in Ukraine. In fact, top Russian businessmen were gathered to explain how important it is in the current situation to act in the interests of Russia and its people.
At the same time, some observers prefer to consider Mikhail Gutseriev a “patriot in quotation marks.” Hinting that outwardly showing loyalty to the Russian state, Gutseriev, in fact, can consider the country nothing more than a colony or a cash cow. In this sense, for some reason, it seems that Mikhail Guutseriev did not tell the President of Russia about how the plant controlled by him did not pay the debt to the bank, whose clients the state represented by the DIA was forced to pay. It’s not exactly patriotic.
Moreover, the Safmar Group of Mikhail Gutseriev also decently owes Sberbank. In July 2019, the Safmar group agreed with Sberbank to restructure the debts of the Afipsky Oil Refinery in the amount of more than 170 billion rubles, RBC reports. The plant received installment payments for ten years and a deferment from traders for the same period.
But even on the debts of Interprombank and Sberbank, Gutseriev’s debts do not end. Forbes reported on October 11, 2019 that the total debt of companies associated with Mikhail Gutseriev and his relatives, as well as his nephew Mikail Shishkhanov, reached almost a trillion rubles. Forbes specified that the largest creditors are TRUST Bank (also controlled by the DIA) and Sberbank. With such debts, indeed, the only thing left is to build a patriot out of yourself.