The Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk Region accepted for consideration the bankruptcy case of URA.RU LLC, one of the legal entities associated with the Ural news agency URA.RU.
The company’s debts exceed 255 million rubles, according to the case file. Back in 2016, the founder of the agency, Aksana Panova, tried through the court to oblige URA.RU to provide her with financial documents of the LLC due to multimillion-dollar debts. Now the legal entity is threatened not only with bankruptcy, but also with a possible trial with the Federal Tax Service.
LLC “URA.RU” filed for bankruptcy with arbitration at the end of last year. The debt indicated in the documents exceeds 255.5 million rubles. Among the creditors are Energoginn Energy Supply Company LLC (100 percent owned by SUENKO JSC, controlled by STS Corporation LLC Artyom Bikov and Alexei Bobrov), Business House on Archiereiskaya (controlled by Alexei Bobrov’s structures) and Valery Korolev .
Aksana Panova was surprised at the news of the bankruptcy of the legal entity and told Oktagon.Ural that she could not say anything about this. The general director of the company, Elena Kuimova, also declined to comment.
Aksana Panova founded the news agency URA.RU in 2006. In December 2011, 51 percent of the shares of URA.RU LLC were bought from her by the Austrian BF TEN Holding GmbH, affiliated with Bikov and Bobrov.
In 2012, against the background of a conflict with the co-founders, Panova created the online newspaper Znak.com.
In the summer of 2013, the conflict continued: Panova sent an offer to BF TEN Holding GmbH to buy out her share. She was ready to sell it to a third party for 60 million rubles, but the buyout advantage was offered to the co-owner of the agency. The authorized capital of the company was 10 thousand rubles, according to the charter of the company, the co-owner could buy out a share at face value – for 4.9 thousand rubles. BF TEN Holding GmbH in arbitration demanded that the contract of sale at this price be recognized as concluded, but not a single instance supported the claim. In 2014, the Supreme Court finally dismissed the Austrian company’s claim, Panova retained her share.
In 2015, the news agency demanded to recover from Aksana Panova 27.6 million rubles of damage that she caused during her work as chief editor.
According to the plaintiff, the media manager withdrew funds from the accounts of the media and evaded taxes. In 2016, it became known that she paid off the debt.
In June 2016, in connection with the liquidation of BF TEN Holding GmbH, 51 percent of the shares were transferred to the company’s successor, ESE Group of Companies LLC, the rest of the shares remained with Panova.
historical debts
Against the backdrop of fears of losing control over the business, the structures of Bikov and Bobrov began to transfer the activities of the news agency under their control. In 2014, the Siberian-Ural Media Company LLC (SUMK) appeared, the founders of which were the head of URA.RU Mikhail Vyugin and Elena Kuimova. The firm became the accumulator of the news agency’s finances. The company’s net profit for 2015 amounted to 53.3 million rubles.
At the end of 2016 Panova interested financial activities of URA.RU LLC due to losses of 206 million rubles.
According to the file of arbitration cases, in the same year, the court recovered about 220 million rubles from the company on the claims of creditors, including Energoginn Energy Retail Company LLC. It had to be dealt with again in court. Panova demanded to provide her with written materials on the financial activities of the company for 2016: documents on the loans attracted by URA.RU and their spending, as well as agreements on the rights to the Ura.ru domain name.
The claim was partially satisfied: only two of the 15 requirements. The court ordered the defendant to provide information about one of the loans and the reasons for changing the administrator of the Ura.ru domain in 2016. It turned out that the domain name was transferred to the temporary use of SUMK.
Now the media uses the Ura.news domain, registered in March 2016. Information about its owner is hidden, but in a 2018 lawsuit for the protection of business reputation demanding the removal of material from the Ura.news website, the Siberian-Ural Media Company was recognized as the proper defendant. Now she is listed as the founder of the information and analytical agency URA.RU.
It is clear from the 2021 court documents on another lawsuit that URA.RU LLC does not own the domain and is not a media outlet or a founder of a media outlet. According to the Kartoteka.ru service, since 2017 there is no information about the company’s revenue. In other income from 2017 to 2020, the amounts of 8.5 million, 8.6 million, 8.4 million and 13.8 million rubles are indicated.
New owners
Later, another structure appeared in URA.RU: in September 2019, Moscow Media Company LLC was registered in Moscow. Nikolai Amelkov is listed as its director and sole beneficiary. No other companies are registered to it.
According to Oktagon.Ural, with the advent of the Moscow structure, commercial contracts previously concluded with SUMK were reissued for it. New contracts were also drawn up for the Moscow Media Company, and materials were prepared and posted on the Ura.news website.
Thus, the Moscow structure was earning while the Ural one was generating losses.
According to Kartoteka.ru, in 2019, the net loss of SUMK amounted to 59.3 million rubles with a revenue of 109.6 million. Data on the finances of the Moscow media company could not be found in the public domain.
Now Ekaterina Kotkina has left the post of SUMK CEO, who, according to Oktagon.Ural, was the main link in this scheme and a confidant of Bikov and Bobrov. The Moscow media company is in the process of liquidation: the decision was made at the end of 2021. The news agency itself is undergoing tax audits; for several months of last year, current and former employees of the editorial office were invited to a conversation at the Federal Tax Service.
