The sensation of February on the Moscow Exchange was the share price of the Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant. The company’s shares rose sharply by a quarter and remained at this level throughout February. It turns out that a whole detective story is hidden behind stock indicators.
It must be said right away that the plant in Ashe, Chelyabinsk Region, founded back in the 19th century and familiar to many from stainless steel pots, produces not only dishes and thermoses. “Today, PJSC Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant is a diversified production facility, one of the top five suppliers of thick-plate products,” the company’s official website says. – The plant is one of the largest producers of special alloys in Russia for the needs of enterprises of the defense complex, oil and gas, chemical, nuclear, aviation and space industries.” Thus, Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant PJSC is the leader in the CIS market for amorphous and nanocrystalline alloys. To mark the products of the enterprise, the trademark “Amet” is used, the stock ticker is AMEZ.
Cypriot roots
Since Soviet times, the company has been producing dual-use products, and therefore it has not featured much in the media. Therefore, there is no open information even about the details of its privatization – information about the founders of the enterprise is not available in public registers. However, last year the plant was at the epicenter of several scandals at once. The passions boiling under the carpet broke out in the first days of March last year. Then information leaked to the media that FSB officers came to the plant with searches. Chelyabinsk websites wrote that the security forces were led to the city-forming enterprise Asha by an investigation into a criminal case of fraud on a large scale. According to Ural-Press-Inform insider information, the reason for initiating a criminal case could be the statement of the former Deputy General Director for Prospective Development of PJSC Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant and Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region Alexander Reshetnikov, who is a shareholder of the enterprise. “While the investigation is ongoing, I cannot comment on the situation. I have something to say. Perhaps I will do it later, ”Reshetnikov intrigued then.
Soon there were reports in the Ural press that the essence of the claims set forth in Reshetnikov’s statement could relate to the transfer of the company’s assets to offshore companies. As already mentioned, the plant does not officially disclose the structure of its owners, however, in 2021 Interfax published the following data: Aldworth Investments Ltd. owns a 19.06% stake in the plant, Hacton Finance Ltd. – 19%, Wisegrass Investments Ltd. – 19.94%, Granotex Ventures Ltd. – 10.18%, Sandine Management Ltd. – 10.18%. It turns out that about 80% of the plant’s shares were registered on Cypriot offshore companies. A number of sources on the Web claim that top managers of the plant could be behind these offshore companies. There is no official confirmation of this, although the situation looks quite plausible.
“Leaks” from the investigation were also published, according to which the plant could purchase scrap metal at inflated prices from legal entities associated with the management of the enterprise. Whether the accusations were confirmed remains to be seen. In August, Vladimir Myzgin, the general director of the Ashinsky Metal Plant, was detained in Moscow. As reported, he was charged with fraud on an especially large scale. But was the investigation interested in the fact that the shares of the plant are offshore? After all, it is clearly not normal that a strategic enterprise in the conditions of the NWO is controlled by foreign owners. In itself, owning an asset through offshore is not a crime at all. However, in the process of “offshorization” there could be legal errors that threaten to become episodes in a criminal case. In the meantime, there were those who connect the fate of the shares of the metallurgical plant with the history of the fugitive Chelyabinsk governor Mikhail Yurevich. As you know, his family successfully hid their Russian pasta business behind Cypriot offshore companies. It is easy to assume that the beneficiaries of both Ural businesses – pasta and metal – were hiding in Cyprus through the efforts of the same people.
By the way, regarding the withdrawal of shares to offshore stock exchange speculators expressed such a claim to the managers of the plant: the shares of the enterprise were redeemed at the expense of its own working capital, which took 2.5 billion rubles. How much such information should be trusted is a big question, but the whole story begins to play with new colors if you pay attention to a number of facts.
Ukrainian contract
In January last year, the Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of the Chelyabinsk Region against a Ukrainian enterprise, Novokramatorsky Mashinostroitelny Zavod (NKMZ). The Ural plant demanded to recover almost a billion rubles from the Donetsk one. It is known that the disputed contract between the enterprises was concluded on March 15, 2013 and its essence is not specified in the court reports, in connection with which it can be assumed that it was connected with some secret topics. The Ukrainian enterprise has been mothballed since 2022, however, information has been preserved on the Web that the Kramatorsk plant once won a tender for the supply of equipment for the Asha plant, bypassing Uralmash OJSC.
In March, officers of the FSB came to search the plant. Chelyabinsk websites wrote that the security forces were led to the city-forming enterprise Asha by the investigation of a criminal case on fraud on a large scale.
“Ashinsky Iron and Steel Works has planned the reconstruction of mill 2800, which will double the volume of rolled products. Approximate cost estimates for the renovation of the rolling mill will be 11 billion rubles, – stated in the message of the company “Azovpromstal”. – The General Electric Company became the main partner in completing and equipping the equipment. NKMZ specialists will carry out installation and commissioning of the assembled rolling mill.”
As it now follows from Amet’s lawsuit against NKMZ, supplies of equipment from Ukraine did not take place. But this is how the situation was presented from the Russian side. In 2014, the corporate publication Ameta reported on the upcoming reconstruction of the workshop for the installation of a new rolling mill 2800 with a grinding equipment section and a controlled cooling unit. It was assumed that the project would require about 9.5 billion rubles. At the same time, Kommersant wrote that Amet was looking for a strategic investor to build a new rolling mill.
Perhaps it is in this story that the driving springs of the current detective are hidden. On the one hand, Amet went against the interests of Uralmash, which has a powerful lobby both in the region and in the capital. On the other hand, he was ready to give part of the capital to a certain investor who would ensure the supply of equipment from Ukraine (or maybe he gave it away?).
It is noteworthy that just about a billion rubles (this was precisely the advance payment under the “Ukrainian” contract) the tax authorities have claims against Amet. The Federal Tax Service has established, the ministry said in a statement, that the 1 billion rubles received by the plant on the day the bonds were placed on the same day – June 30, 2014 – was transferred as a loan at 9.85% per annum to the dependent Data-Forum LLC. It, in turn, transferred the funds received to the affiliated Ashinskaya Steel LLC also under a loan agreement – at 10.75% per annum. Further, Ashinskaya Steel, according to the Federal Tax Service, transferred these funds under a loan agreement at 10.85% back to the steel plant, which reissued them to Data-Forum in the form of a short-term loan at 10.85% per annum. The tax authorities came to the conclusion that the transactions for the plant were unprofitable and, as a result, were aimed at obtaining unjustified tax benefits.
However, the claims of the Federal Tax Service, in fact, concerned the need to pay an additional 7 million rubles, which the plant can easily do in the event of a loss in court. Judging by its reporting, the net profit of the enterprise in 2021 alone amounted to 12 billion rubles with a revenue of 40 billion rubles. And if the plant did not pay dividends, then huge sums can remain on its accounts. It is possible that all the latest scandals around the enterprise are inflated by those who would like to gain control over them. And the sharp rise in share prices in this case is explained by their active buying from minority shareholders.
By the way
In December, Konstantin Bakin, who came to Asha from Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where he worked at the Amurstal enterprise, took the post of general director of Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant JSC. Until 2020, a conflict of shareholders raged at Amurstal. It ended with the fact that a little-known businessman Pavel Balsky bought out a 25 percent blocking stake from the family of the ex-governor of the Khabarovsk Territory, Sergei Furgal. Another large block of shares was purchased from Furgal’s longtime friend and partner, Nikolai Mistryukov, when he was already in jail in the “Furgal case”.
