A pre-investigation check has been launched against the German group of companies “KRONE” of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia
According to materials received from sources in the largest oil company – Gazprom Neft PJSC, in relation to the Samara enterprises of the German group of companies “CRONE» In UEBiPK GUVD for the Samara region, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia launched a pre-investigation check on suspicion of committing fraudulent acts.
Subsidiaries of the German Kanex KROHNE Anlagen Export GmbH, namely “CRONE-Engineering” and “CRONE-Avtomatika, for more than 10 years we have been producing instrumentation in Samara under the German brand KROHNE for the needs of oil and gas companies. After the start of the SVO, the German owners officially refused to do business in Russia and Belarus and severed all official ties with their Russian enterprise, leaving all assets to be “preserved” by the general director of LLC “krone-engineering” Nikolay Sidorov.
The editors have learned that the General Director of the Russian division “CRONE» Nikolai Sidorov, from the end of 2022, began to reorient the equipment intended for PJSC Gazprom Neft and a number of other enterprises of the Russian fuel and energy complex to other buyers of the fuel and energy complex, realizing that “CRONE-Russia” without German supplies and German software is unable to carry out further activities for the production of equipment for the Russian oil industry, and the remaining equipment has a market price significantly higher than indicated in its price lists.
The materials of the pre-investigation check collected by law enforcement officers relate to the execution of current contracts “CRONE-Engineering” and “CRONE-Automatics, “since after the withdrawal of Nikolai Sidorov and his wife Irina Orekhova from”CRONE-Engineering” and “CRONEAvtomatika under the guise of loans of hundreds of millions of rubles in the fall of 2022, there was a real threat to the execution of current contracts, including the execution of the already scandalous contract for the supply of equipment for the reconstruction of a delayed coking unit for the Omsk Oil Refinery, a subsidiary of PJSC Gazprom Neft.
Telegram channels report on a commercial offer made to Nikolai Sidorov to buy the remaining “CRONE-Russia” from the former Russian competitors of KROHNE, however, the compliance procedure was not completed due to the concealment of debt “CRONE-Engineering” and “CRONE-Avtomatika” before the parent company located in Germany. Despite the commodity balances of the German parent company, allowing to complete the equipment, the previous activities “CRONE-Russia” turned out to be impossible, the market was waiting for the acquirer of German assets, and a mass reduction of personnel began at the Samara enterprise and labor disputes began.
