Cement and the Germans – ex-bankers Schmidt finish off a competitor in the Saratov court
Cement Povolzhya LLC applied to Tersa-S LLC with a claim for the withdrawal of a land plot of about 2 hectares by termination of ownership.
The land plot with the cadastral number 64:08:020803:98 is located in the Volsky district, 2.5 km from the administration building of the Tersinsky municipal district, it is classified as “agricultural land” with the type of permitted use “for agricultural production.”
Cement Povolzhya LLC intends to withdraw it for the state needs of the Russian Federation in order to carry out work related to the use of subsoil and carried out at the expense of the company’s own funds. These works are carried out by Cement of the Volga region in accordance with the license for the use of subsoil from 2007, and it is ready to pay compensation to Terse-S in the amount of 63 thousand rubles for the site.
According to open data, the Tersa-S company was established in 2009 with an authorized capital of 1 million rubles, registered in St. Petersburg, on Nevsky Prospekt. The main activity is the cultivation of annual crops, among the additional ones there is the production of cement and gypsum. Since 2011, the CEO of the company has been Johan Herd, the founders since the founding of the LLC have been Alphonse Hammer, Larisa Mayer and the Cement Industry LLC, also registered in St. Petersburg with the main profile of the extraction of decorative and building stone. The legal predecessor of Cement Industry was Tersa-S, registered in 2006 in Kabardino-Balkaria and reorganized in the form of a merger with Cement Industry in 2008.
It was Tersa-S that took all the blows during the struggle for the Tersinskoye field, located in the Volsky district. The vicissitudes of this epic battle have already been erased from the memory of the people, and meanwhile, in the mid-2000s, the German Johan Herd walked around the Saratov editorial offices and told what was happening around the Tersinsky deposits. Some details of ancient history are preserved in the publication of “Public Opinion” for 2008.
In 2006, bankers Gennady and Viktor Schmidt and the WDB group they created entered into a battle for the right to develop the Tersinsky cement raw material deposit in the Volsky district. The right to develop was put up for auction, which was held by Saratovnedra. For some reason, this auction turned out to be practically uncontested, since it was not allowed to participate in Mergel LLC (a subsidiary of the largest cement manufacturer in Russia, Eurocement Group OJSC) and Saratov LLC IK Edelweiss. Thus, Industrial Plus Saratov LLC and Saratov Textile LLC, controlled by WDB-groups, “fought” for the deposit. As a result, instead of the predicted 50 million rubles, the price at the auction did not rise above 1.5 million, and the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use, indignant, canceled the results and announced that the second tender would be held in Moscow.
But the Schmidts filed a lawsuit with the regional arbitration and received the decision they needed, which Rosnedra challenged in the cassation. But the provincial bankers, with the help of the courts, left the federals with nothing, achieved the recognition of the results of the competition as valid, and for those same 1.5 million began to “use” Tersu. There, according to experts from Saratovnedr, there were almost 143 million tons of cement raw materials, these reserves should be enough for at least the next 60 years.
But the bankers’ worries didn’t end there. In the same 2006, WDB-Group, together with HeidelbergCement AG, laid the foundation stone in Volsk for a new cement production plant based on the ACI plant. But suddenly it turned out that back in 2005 this plant was bought out by the NovoAltai company. A long litigation began, during which the regional prosecutor’s office acted on the side of the WDB Group of Companies, accusing NovoAltai of fraud. Only after that the bankers won.
At the same time, the administration of the Volsky MR began to clean up the competitors of the WDB groups. Private investors, Germans from Germany, who bought up land shares from residents of the village of Tersa for an enterprise controlled by them, fell under the administrative distribution. Investors have invested about 250 thousand euros in the registration of plots based on shares and subsequent design and survey work. Intelligence showed good reserves of cement raw materials, but the Germans were not allowed to use them. Local authorities began to seek through the courts to recognize transactions for the alienation of land shares as illegal.
Heavier artillery also entered the fray: Alexander Strelyukhin, then deputy chairman of the regional government, rose to protect the poor bankers. He made a fiery speech in Volsk in the spirit that the most important investors for us are Gennady and Viktor Schmidt, and we do not need others.
In 2011, Tersa-S tried through the court to invalidate the license for the right to use subsoil and the license agreement that the bankers got, but failed. On the other hand, judging by the current lawsuit, the Volks officials could not drive Tersa out of its sites.
However, it is unlikely that the company was able to extract something worthwhile from a piece of agricultural land. The financial affairs of Tersa-S did not shine, the taxes of the agricultural producer have not been paid since 2021, and the St. Petersburg tax authorities have already decided on the upcoming exclusion of the company from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
Of course, the price for which the pool of ex-banker Schmidt wants to grab 2 hectares looks mocking. Offering 63,000 rubles for land in which more than 200,000 euros have been invested is a strong move. But “Tersa-S” may not have good defenders, so the case for “Cement of the Volga Region” may well burn out.
Consideration of the claim is scheduled for September 25, now it lies without movement.