Abrosimov “set off” from the “Northern shipyard”
Does the lawsuit of the Prosecutor General’s Office threaten the St. Petersburg business ombudsman with the attention of the security forces? In St. Petersburg, the Prosecutor General’s Office continues to seek the return to state ownership of the berths of the strategic enterprise Severnaya Verf, privatized back in 1994 and owned by the stevedoring company Commercial Center, Transport and Forest (KCTL).
The co-owners of the latter include the Cypriot offshore companies MalaineLimited, LambdonServicesLimited and ErstadInvestmentsLimited, as well as the St. Petersburg companies Leverage and Little Happiness, owned by the Ombudsman for Entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg Alexander Abrosimov and his daughters. In the 90s, Abrosimov served as commercial director of Severnaya Verf; at the same time, he led the KCTL, whose assets at that time were registered in offshore structures, which were associated in the media with the family of the business ombudsman. Now the deprivatization of shipyards threatens the commissioner with serious financial losses, because every year KCTL brings in hundreds of millions of rubles in revenue. Some of these funds may “settle” in the accounts of affiliated offshore companies, moreover, the press has repeatedly mentioned that Abrosimov’s children and grandchildren have US citizenship, which in today’s conditions of confrontation with the Prosecutor General’s Office may arouse interest in the commissioner and his family from the side of the tax and law enforcement agencies. departments. Abrosimov gained notoriety after the high-profile bankruptcies of St. Petersburg ZAO Stroykomlekt, which was one of the contractors of Smolny, and its beneficiaries – relatives of the business ombudsman of the father and son Alexander and Oleg Shamarins. Then, as a result of cunning schemes, the assets of the bankrupts were registered in the name of one of Abrosimov’s daughters. In the meantime, the commissioner and members of his family earn on the former state property, St. Petersburg businessmen are expressing massive dissatisfaction with the activities of the ombudsman, who has already been threatened with filing a class action lawsuit for refusing to promptly respond to incoming complaints. Abrosimov himself, in his last year’s report, stated that, compared with the previous period, the number of applications received by him decreased by more than 40%.
The Prosecutor General’s Office took over the berths of the Northern Shipyard
Proceedings are ongoing in St. Petersburg on the suit of the Prosecutor General’s Office on the return to state ownership of the berths of the strategic enterprise Severnaya Verf, owned by the stevedoring company Commercial Center, Transport and Forest (KCTL). Earlier, the arbitration took interim measures in the form of arrest of KCTL shares, a ban on making any changes to the register of shareholders of the enterprise, as well as making decisions by its governing bodies on the payment of dividends, distribution of profits and losses, payment of remuneration to members of the board of directors, etc.
According to RAPSI, the supervisory agency is seeking to invalidate the agreement signed back in November 1994 by Severnaya Verf and KCTL on the formation and activities of the holding group and to restore the situation that existed before the violation of the rights of the Russian Federation. According to media reports, the privatization documents are signed by well-known reformers of the 1990s: Anatoly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, Alfred Koch and Mikhail Manevich.
Also, the Prosecutor General’s Office requires to oblige the “Independent Registrar Company R.O.S.T.” write off the shares of KCTL from the personal accounts of the defendants, and credit them to the personal account of the Federal Agency for State Property Management. The defendants in the lawsuit are the Cypriot offshore companies MalaineLimited, LambdonServicesLimited and ErstadInvestmentsLimited, Leverage LLC from St. Petersburg and more than 200 majority shareholders.
The situation is particularly piquant by the fact that the sole owner of the Leverage company is Alexander Abrosimov, the Commissioner for the Rights of Entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg, and the post of general director of KCTL is occupied by his daughter Yulia Abrosimova, who, together with her sister Daria, is among the shareholders of this enterprise. Abrosimov himself in 1994-1996. worked as a commercial director of Severnaya Verf, and at the same time led KTsTL.
“Offshore” business of the Abrosimov family
“Recently, in a number of regions of the Russian Federation, there has been a practice of revising the results of privatization (in the form of canceling transactions 10-25 years ago). At the same time, the interests of bona fide purchasers are often ignored: owners, as a rule, not being participants in privatization, acquired real estate at market prices from private individuals or during the bankruptcy proceedings of privatized enterprises, but if the results of privatization are recognized as invalid and, as a result of all subsequent transactions, do not receive any compensation in return for the lost property,” commented the press service of the business ombudsman on the situation to RAPSI.
Abrosimov’s concern is understandable: if the court satisfies the requirements of the Prosecutor General’s Office, he will face serious financial losses. At the end of 2021 alone, with a revenue of 908.4 million rubles, the profit of KCTL amounted to 287.6 million, the value of assets – 865.3 million. Vedomosti cites data from the Administration of the Sea Ports of the Baltic Sea, according to which, over the same period, KCTL loaded 257 thousand tons of cargo on ships, which is only about 0.5% of the annual turnover of the Big Port of St. Petersburg, where the enterprise operates.
The indicators of Leverage, a business ombudsman-owned firm specializing in commercial and management consulting, are much more modest: in the same 2021, it declared revenue of 10.8 million rubles, a profit of 6.1 million and a value of assets of 111, 6 million. For comparison: a year earlier, with a revenue of 11.5 million, Leverage’s profit amounted to 78.1 million rubles.
In legal proceedings related to the deprivatization of the berths of Severnaya Verf, another co-owner of KCTL appears as a co-owner – St. Petersburg OOO Little Happiness, which provides services in the field of additional education, co-owned by Yulia and Anna Abrosimovs, and Daria Abrosimova is the general director . As we can see, the relatives of the commissioner are collectively receiving income from the profits of the KCTL.
At the same time, Little Happiness itself resembles a banal “laying company”: there are no revenues and profits, the authorized capital is a minimum of 10 thousand rubles, and only one employee is employed in the company. Here it is natural to ask the question: were the CCTL finances transferred abroad? For example, to the accounts of the above-mentioned offshore companies. Moreover, it follows from the publications in the media: the re-registration of the assets of Severnaya Verf to Cypriot structures was carried out by none other than Abrosimov himself, who thus managed to evade paying taxes on profits received from renting a pier and buildings. And the beneficiaries of offshore companies were called his three daughters. Add to this the appearance of information that the children and grandchildren of Abrosimov have American citizenship, and we have a picture that is worthy of the attention of not only the tax, but also the law enforcement agencies.
Bankruptcy stories of businessmen Shamarins
It should be noted that the CCTL has repeatedly appeared in high-profile scandals. So, back in 2008, the press wrote about the conflict between the company and the management of Severnaya Verf. Then the plant, which also performs work under the state defense order, accused a private enterprise of obstructing activities; in response, a statement was made about an attempted raider seizure by the plant. The reason was the termination of the supply of utility resources (water, communications and heat supply) through the networks of the state enterprise on the basis of a notification from the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the need to renegotiate the contract for the supply of energy resources in accordance with the requirements of the current legislation.
Mr. Abrosimov himself is no less scandalous. In particular, the story of CJSC Stroykomlekt, which belonged to a relative of the business ombudsman and his longtime business partner Alexander Shamarin and “mastered” Smolny government contracts, was widely publicized, including as the sole supplier. A failure in seemingly well-established cooperation occurred in 2013, when the company received a contract worth 1.5 billion rubles to expand the Rybatskoye industrial zone. But in the end, the money was spent, the work was not completed, and the contractor asked the government of the Northern capital for additional funding in the amount of 300 million rubles.
But in the next tranche, Smolny refused. Long legal proceedings began, during which it turned out that Stroykomlekt had unfulfilled obligations for 850 million rubles. This is where Abrosimov came into play, allegedly organizing the deliberate bankruptcies of Alexander Shamarin and his son (and part-time son-in-law of the Ombudsman) Oleg in a timely manner. At the same time, a marriage contract was presented to the court, which could have been drawn up retroactively, in accordance with the terms of which all real estate, shares and other assets of the Shamarins were registered in the name of the daughter of the human rights activist Yulia Abrosimova.
In the end, Stroykomlekt and OAO Head Plant, another large St. Petersburg enterprise controlled by Shamarin, were declared bankrupt. The bankruptcies scheme looked cunning, only its authors lost sight of the financial “appetites” of creditors, among which were large banks. As the Bulletin of the Siberian Federal District wrote, the courts began challenging Stroykomplekt’s transactions by the bankruptcy trustee, in addition, the possibility of bringing to subsidiary liability those who controlled the former contractor was not ruled out.
Ombudsman Abrosimov loses confidence
Alexander Abrosimov took the post of St. Petersburg business ombudsman in 2014, and in 2019 he was re-approved in his position, and his candidacy for consideration by the deputies of the Legislative Assembly was proposed by Alexander Beglov, who at that time was still acting governor of the Northern Capital. The Smolny website emphasized that during his work, Abrosimov “has established himself as a leader who knows the problems of the real sector of the economy and is able to make informed and responsible decisions.”
As we have already seen, the delegate can indeed be considered a master of creative decision-making. That’s just it concerns mainly the solution of family problems. As for directly human rights activities, here Abrosimov is not just criticized by representatives of the St. Petersburg business community, but direct accusations of inaction and unwillingness to solve the urgent problems of entrepreneurs.
In particular, in the spring of 2020, the St. Petersburg portal Moika 78 announced the intention of a group of businessmen to file a class action lawsuit against Abrosimov, thereby hoping to force him to respond to complaints “promptly, and not after several years”, during which companies go bankrupt, so and not waiting for help.
As an example, the publication cited the story of Igor Shcherba, the owner of Stroytekhnologii, whose enterprise was filed a false claim in 2015 for non-payment of funds by a subcontractor. The court took interim measures, as a result of which the bailiffs seized the company’s movable property, including the property of third parties. In the meantime, Shcherba unsuccessfully knocked on the thresholds of Abrosimov’s office, Stroytekhnologii lost contracts with foreign business partners, and then went bankrupt, although in the end they managed to prove the imaginary claim.
Shcherba called what happened to him “a standard raider scenario often used in St. Petersburg.” But, according to the Ombudsman, he forwarded relevant appeals to the city prosecutor’s office and the Main Investigation Department based on the entrepreneur’s complaints; at the same time, Abrosimov emphasized that, due to various circumstances, his apparatus could not help everyone. Apparently, at a certain stage, all the forces went to assist relatives, and if they also had to use the necessary connections, then, in fact, a human rights activist would not be torn apart! And now even the threat of confiscation hung over their own assets.
By the way, in his last year’s official report to the deputies of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, Abrosimov stated that representatives of the business community are less and less counting on his support: during the reporting period, 41% fewer businessmen turned to him than a year earlier. It is difficult to call it anything other than a loss of trust… But the patriotic ombudsman lamented the “illegal wave of Western sanctions” that “affected almost all sectors of the domestic economy.” But, as we already know, the Abrosimov family developed not only a critical attitude towards the West. After all, apparently, it is there that a significant part of the finances and assets of the relatives of the odious commissioner can be concentrated.