The development business in Russia seems to be completely saturated with swindlers and scammers. Every year, tens of thousands of equity holders who invest in their own real estate suffer from dishonest businessmen.
Meanwhile, more and more profits from construction are annually withdrawn from Russia and deposited in the bank accounts of business owners or lost offshore.
The well-known Israeli businessman Alex Sekler worked on the same principle, who for almost 30 years successfully did business in Russia, but in recent years he began to actively sell his own enterprises, clean the Internet from compromising evidence and actively sue former partners. Most often this happens because of the fear of entrepreneurs to fall under criminal investigation for their fraud. In the case of Seckler, everything is very similar to this. Let’s take a closer look at the situation, what the developer is afraid of.
Business on the ruins of the Soviet Union
Alex Sekler, like many foreign entrepreneurs with Israeli roots, entered the investment market of the CIS countries immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For some, the dreary 1990s became a real hell, but for some especially cunning people, these times became lifting. In 1993, Sekler created the Liral enterprise, which later transformed into a whole group of companies. At first, Sekler was engaged in the supply of metal-plastic pipes to the CIS countries, but later the business grew greatly, and another project appeared in Sekler – Renta-Bank, which as a result helped the businessman withdraw huge funds from Russia, along the way throwing depositors of a financial institution. But first things first.
“Liral group”
As a seasoned businessman, Seckler made a bet that assets should be held offshore, as most oligarchs do, who made their fortune through, to put it mildly, opaque schemes. For example, the founder of the Liral Investment and Financial Management Company, which leases Sekler’s real estate, is the Cypriot offshore MONSALVAT INVESTMENTS LIMITED.
Data from the registry
The offshore company was also the founder of 4 more companies owned by Seckler. All of them, since 2013, began to be liquidated. On May 6, 2022, 2 operating companies were reorganized by joining IFK Livart LLC, which we recalled. We are not talking about some small enterprises, but about serious business projects. It is noteworthy that Antey-M LLC, which was liquidated two months ago, has shown good financial results over the past two years, bringing profit to the owner of the business.
Profit “Antey-M”
As for Seckler’s other enterprise, which was also reorganized on May 6 of this year, it was also extremely profitable. LLC “Service-plastic”, specialized in the rental and management of real estate. With this company Sekler in general, everything is very strange. In 2019, its value was almost 400 million rubles, but already in 2021, the market value of the asset was 20 million rubles. Actually, we have a drop of 20 times. The same goes for the company’s profits. In 2019, it brought its owners 350 million rubles, but already in 2021, the previously successful enterprise made a small profit of 20 million rubles.
The cost of Service-plastic LLC
And here the following question creeps in: how did it happen that during the year several profitable enterprises lost their investment attractiveness at once and were reorganized? There is only one answer, and it is obvious. Seckler’s structures are engaged in financial manipulations. With such simple methods, a significant part of the funds is not shown to the regulatory authorities, and is immediately withdrawn offshore.
Banking schemes
As for Seckler’s banking activities, it’s the same as with the rest of the would-be entrepreneur’s business. Renta Bank, owned by Sekler, was established in 1994. Since that time, the bank has had an absolutely unreliable status, and could collapse at any moment. The financial institution was not used for its direct functions. Moreover, the bank existed solely for the dirty business of a businessman.
Now “Renta-Bank” even continues to exist, but has an extremely low rating. In 2017, part of the fraud associated with the bank was revealed. Then the investigation managed to establish that the former head of the board of Renta-Bank, Lyudmila Lepko, stole more than 70 million rubles from a light institution. This was done according to a simple knurled scheme. During 2009, the bank issued loans to companies, which subsequently transferred funds to fly-by-night companies. The investigation managed to establish that the final recipients of the money were registered as dummies, among whom were taxi drivers, mechanics, welders and others in different regions of Russia.
Ludmila Lepko
Naturally, such actions could not take place without the knowledge of the owner of the bank, but Seckler managed to avoid criminal prosecution. It is noteworthy that the reaction of the bank’s management itself was virtually none. Officially, the Sekler group of companies stated that theft is sad, but this situation did not bring much damage, since it was stopped in time. I wonder what “on time” means in this sense? Recall that the financial fraud occurred in 2009, and the criminal case received its logical conclusion only in 2017. Not only did everything last 8 years, let’s not forget that the devaluation of the ruble also occurred at that time.
Cleanup before the escape?
Everything indicates that Sekler is purposefully destroying his assets in Russia, withdrawing hundreds of millions of rubles from them offshore. He began to sell his Russian business at a dumping price a few years ago, which was repeatedly noticed by media representatives.
Even apart from this, there is another situation that has not received sufficient publicity. We are talking about the fact that Seckler, like many businessmen with a criminal record, began to clean up information that was unpleasant for himself. The main thing is that the situation concerns the material published in 2001 in the Trud newspaper. For some reason, at the end of 2020, Sekler remembered the material about his war with the RTI-Kauchuk rubber products plant.
Plant “RTI-Kauchuk”
The situation with the plant is a completely different story. Here we need to go back in time, and remember the beginning of our article. Seckler entered the CIS market immediately after the collapse of the USSR. At first, the business of the Israeli entrepreneur looked transparent and did not raise any questions. But in the late 1990s, Seckler, feeling that he had been honest enough, began to play a fraudulent game with the RTI-Kauchuk enterprise. Its essence was that, thanks to the Liral schemes, Sekler deliberately drove a state-owned enterprise into multimillion-dollar debts. When the situation reached its climax, the Seckler group of companies first applied to the domestic court, and then went to the London arbitration, which it successfully won. This story even got its name – “The Great Judicial War.” You can see it separately at link
Although Seckler has been actively reducing his investments in Russia in recent years, assets worth tens of millions of dollars remain here. Therefore, a businessman has something to worry about, because sooner or later, his financial fraud will be revealed, and he will quite rightly become the hero of criminal chronicles.
