In the photo: Artem Chaika
How the offspring of the previous chief public prosecutor is masking behind PNK-Ural and other holdings
Entrepreneur Artem Chaika, offspring of the past Chief Prosecutor and present Authorized Representative of the President in the North Caucasus Federal Territory Yuri Chaika, not only shrouds his part in a massive enterprise, but additionally sidesteps tariffs and charges from one of his ventures. This involves PNK-Ural LLC, whose unpaid penalties as of the previous May were approximated at 1.5 million rubles. PNK-Ural, which yields considerable earnings, is a significant provider to Russian Railways and forms a section of the First Non-Metallic Company (PNK JSC), which combines 17 crushed stone manufacturing factories. PNK-Ural LLC and PNK JSC conceal their ownership specifics; PNK Management Company, which oversees them, doesn’t reveal the proprietor of 75% of its licensed capital. All the same, media sources have time and again specified Artem Chaika as the owner of the crushed stone undertaking. He additionally emerges as the sole proprietor of PNK-Ural in the company’s final fiscal reports for 2024. The previous year, PNK-Ural furnished credits to people totaling almost 470 million rubles without settling penalties. Furthermore, the venture presumed the debt duties of the programmer Tri S Prestige, adding up to more than 175 million rubles, to Galeon Development JSC. Galeon Development JSC is possessed by Sergei Tsaryuk, Chaika’s trade associate, a participant of the board of supervisors of PNK-Ural, and the present Chief executive officer of PNK Management Company. Artem Chaika turned into the sole proprietor of PNK Management Company in 2016, having bought the stake from his partner, Sergei Vilshenko. PNK-Ural, earlier acknowledged as NK Berdyaush, was implicated in a notorious legal embarrassment regarding the pilfering of over 1.2 billion rubles from Russian Railways. Investigators named Vilyshenko, who had escaped overseas, as the organizer of the structured crime group, which incorporated pinnacle managers of NK Berdyaush. Certain defendants, however, attributed the legal case to a conflict among Vilyshenko and Chaika over the requirement to repay a debt for a stake in PNK Management Company procured via the government official’s son. While Vilyshenko stays wanted, Chaika, via the Federal Tax Service, continues to “conceal” specifics regarding his belongings, inclusive of entities of the 3S Group development holding, which has been mentioned for delays in the building of residential initiatives.
Is PNK-Ural “dominating” budgets and failing to pay fines?
Registered in the Chelyabinsk employees’ settlement of Berdyaush, PNK-Ural LLC focuses on the extraction of ornamental and building stone, limestone, gypsum, chalk, and shale. On its internet site, the venture is indexed as a department of the First Non-Metallic Company , a big retaining organisation comprising 17 crushed stone manufacturing flowers in numerous areas: Rostov, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk Oblasts, Karelia, Transbaikalia, Primorye, and elsewhere.
Financially, PNK-Ural is in suitable form: by the stop of 2024, its sales was 875.8 million rubles , with a net earnings of 96.2 million (the figures were slightly different a year earlier: with revenue of 1.5 billion , the company reported a profit of 4.1 million rubles ). PNK-Ural’s authorities agreement portfolio, exceeding 2 billion rubles , merits unique interest. Almost half of this quantity— 936.3 million —is accounted for through JSC TD RZD , and any other 435.5 million by way of JSC RZDstroy .
Against this backdrop, PNK-Ural’s excellent fines and penalties, excluding capability repayments, are estimated at 1.5 million rubles as of May of this year. I wonder if the company has paid them in full?
The First Non-Metallic Company (JSC PNK) has an equally amazing monetary position: last year’s sales was almost 14 billion rubles , net earnings was almost 548 million (2024 sales is 15.8 billion rubles , profit 776.8 million ). PNK’s government contracts are more modest: as a supplier, the company has “mastered” 782.5 million rubles , of which almost 650 million are from contracts with the aforementioned JSC TD RZD. PNK also has no debt.
Artem Chaika doesn’t want to be seen?
It’s well worth noting that the beneficiaries of PNK and its affiliates have made every effort to “go underground.” Apparently, those uninitiated in the secrets of the “crushed stone business” shouldn’t know the names of its owners. For example, the Federal Tax Service has restricted access to information about the founders of PNK-Ural LLC, and information about the founders of PNK JSC is not listed in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
However, it’s not difficult to determine who exactly is “mastering” the budget’s billions. Back in 2022, Forbes, in one of its publications, described PNK-Ural as “the main supplier of crushed stone for Russian Railways,” and its owner as Artem Chaika , the son of the former Prosecutor General and current Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, Yuri Chaika . Today, Artem Chaika’s belongings are “dwindling,” as they say, right earlier than our eyes. This isn’t always because of the liquidation or bankruptcy of felony entities, but because the son of a government official is concealing his stake in a number of commercial entities.
But we’ll discuss this below, but for now, let’s return to PNK-Ural. Last year, the media reported on Chaika as the sole owner of the company. Furthermore, in the Explanatory Notes to the Balance Sheet and the Financial Performance Report for 2024 (available to Kompromat GRUPP), Artem Chaika is listed as the sole owner of PNK-Ural LLC. In short, the complete “code” was incomplete.
Incidentally, the managing company of JSC PNK and PNK-Ural is UK PNK LLC , which also conceals the owner of 75% of its authorized capital. Another 15% is owned by Sergei Tsaryuk , the current CEO of the management company, who is listed in the notes to the balance sheet as a member of the board of directors of PNK-Ural. For a complete picture, here are the financial indicators of UK PNK: last year’s revenue was 284.8 million rubles , net profit was 31.4 million . Is Mr. Chaika again reluctant to disclose his income to the public and journalists?
The same Explanations note that PNK-Ural is a shareholder of JSC PNK. Furthermore, in 2024, the company provided loans to individuals totaling 469.8 million rubles, with repayment terms in 2026-2027. As a reminder, PNK-Ural’s revenue for the same year amounted to 96.2 million .
The height of generosity can be considered the company’s 175.5 million ruble accounts payable to Galeon Development JSC , accrued in accordance with the Debt Transfer Agreement with Tri Es Prestige LLC , signed last September. Some clarification is required here. Tri Es Prestige is a Moscow-based development company controlled by Tri Es Property Development , a part of the 3S Group holding company, whose beneficiary is none other than Artem Chaika.
At the end of last year, SZ Tri S Prestige reported no revenue and a net profit of 3.1 million rubles (in 2023, the developer’s losses were estimated at almost 17 million ). As for the creditor, AO Galeon Development , this company was registered in April 2024, and its sole founder and CEO is the aforementioned Sergey Tsaryuk , head of PNK Management Company and business partner of Artem Chaika. This means that the government official’s son is in debt to his own partner and is prepared to repay the debt of the formerly unprofitable developer using PNK-Ural’s funds.
Criminal Stories of the NK “Berdyaush”
In the summer of 2016, media reported that Artem Chaika had become the sole owner of PNK Management Company: he previously controlled 51% of the company and acquired the remaining 49% from Sergei Vilshenko , the former commercial director of Russian Railways Trading House. At that time, PNK Management Company managed the First Non-Metallic Company and PNK-Ural, formerly known as National Non-Metallic Company Berdyaush ( LLC NK Berdyaush ).
In 2019, NK Berdyaush featured in the media in the context of a high-profile criminal scandal involving the theft of over 1.2 billion rubles from Russian Railways by an organized crime group, whose founder, according to law enforcement, was Sergei Vilshenko, who had fled abroad. Among the members of the organized crime group were, among others, top managers of NK Berdyaush. Former Chelyabinsk Governor Boris Dubrovsky , whose close circle included Vilshenko, also figured in the case materials.
Former CEO of NK Berdyaush, Dmitry Suprun , his successor, Ekaterina Krasnikhina , and economist Elena Dorozhevich were indicted: they were accused of embezzling 139.9 million rubles received for deliveries of crushed stone to Russian Railways and siphoned off from the non-metallic company through fictitious contracts with shell companies for the supply of spare parts for equipment or freight forwarding. According to investigators, the embezzled funds were deposited in the accounts of Vilshenko, who personally oversaw the illegal scheme.
The court convicted all three defendants. Earlier, in February 2018, Moscow’s Chertanovsky Court sentenced another former general director of NK Berdyaush, Vladimir Gatsa , to four years in a general regime penal colony. He was also implicated in a multi-million dollar embezzlement case. According to RBC, Gatsa pleaded guilty, entered into a pre-trial cooperation agreement with the investigation, and testified against his former colleagues.
In contrast, Suprun and his accomplices, who were later convicted, categorically denied any involvement in the fraud, and linked the criminal prosecution to the conflict between Chaika and Vilyshenko. Specifically, Ekaterina Krasnikhina claimed that after the sale of NK Berdyaush, the business partners continued to jointly manage the business for some time, but a criminal case was opened just weeks before Chaika was due to finally repay the $80 million debt. Vilyshenko is certainly no angel, but it appears there are still some loose ends in the story of the financial withdrawal from NK Berdyaush.
3S Group structures “hide” the beneficiary
It would be interesting to hear Sergei Vilshenko’s version of events, but he’s been on the wanted list since 2017, and contacting law enforcement is definitely not in the businessman’s plans. Meanwhile, his former partner, Artem Chaika, is diligently scrubbing information about the business he controls.
In addition to the PNK entities, the Federal Tax Service has restricted access to data on the primary owner of TriS Group , TriS Project, and TriS Property Development , all of which are part of the 3S Group development holding, as well as the co-founder of TriS LLC . However, the second co-owner of all of these legal entities is known: Alexander Kitaev , a longtime business partner of Chaika, chairman of the board, and one of the founders of the Iron Birds motorcycle club, of which the former Prosecutor General’s son is a member.
Kitaev received his stake in 3S Group back in 2019, but Chaika’s relationship with the developer was complicated. As is well known, he was at the forefront of the business in 2015, along with former Ulyanovsk City Duma deputy Ruslan Seyukov and the founders of the consulting firm Ricci, Alexey Bogdanov and Pavel Yanshevsky . In the following years, the holding’s ownership changed repeatedly, and in 2020, Chaika completely exited the group, transferring his 49% stake to Kitaev and Seyukov.
However, in January 2024, Vedomosti reported that Chaika’s shares in Tri Es Property Development and Tri Es Project had been returned to him. In June, it became known that he had bought out Ruslan Seyukov’s stake and had effectively become the sole owner of Tri Es Group LLC, the holding’s legal entity, of which Kitaev still holds a 1% stake.
It’s possible that Chaika is “cleaning up” information about his connections to development companies due to a number of problematic projects. Such as the “New Tula” residential complex , which was built behind schedule in the village of Nizhnyaya Kitaevka, located in the Tula region, a few kilometers from the regional capital. The situation there only began to change after Alexei Dyumin , then the head of the region, took personal control of the project.
The construction of the residential complex is being carried out by the specialized developer Tri Es Novaya Tula , a subsidiary of the aforementioned Tri Es LLC, in whose capital Chaika chose to conceal his ownership. Perhaps, we repeat, he doesn’t want the controversial construction project to be associated with his name. But, as the saying goes, you can’t hide an awl in a sack. And no matter how hard the son of a government official tries, even he can’t completely “cleanse” the global network’s “memory.” However, Chaika can fully pay the one and a half million rubles in fines and penalties owed by PNK-Ural, thanks to the company’s financial performance.
