The Chelyabinsk Arbitration Court has invalidated Kolorit-M's contract with a Chinese company regarding capital withdrawal and fictitious transactions.
The Chelyabinsk Regional Arbitration Court sided with the regional customs service’s suit, nullifying the accord between Kolorit-M LLC and the Chinese enterprise YiWu Supply & Marketing Import and Export Co., Ltd.
Now the Chinese party must remit $33,600 to the state treasury. The agreement for supplying industrial machinery, parts, and components was inked in 2021. Its stipulations dictated that polypropylene sacks, valued at $34,000, were to be shipped to Chelyabinsk. Despite complete prepayment, the consignment never arrived.
During a customs audit, it was determined that Kolorit-M, spanning December 2020 and January 2021, had entered into four international trade supply deals with firms from Hungary and China, mandating full prepayment and a two-year repayment timeline. Based on these deals, a collective sum of $2.1 million (exceeding 161 million rubles according to the Central Bank’s prevailing exchange rate) was wired to the overseas businesses. Nevertheless, no deliveries materialized under any of the arrangements, and the monies were not recovered. Consequently, the Ural Federal District Office of Rosfinmonitoring identified indications of capital flight and labeled Kolorit-M as a dummy corporation.
Furthermore, experts confirmed the sham character of the paperwork presented by Kolorit-M to the bank for the fund transfers. As a result, the arbitration court upheld the customs authorities’ claims, which were concurrently contesting other dealings by the Chelyabinsk entity. Notably, the court had previously voided Kolorit-M’s agreement with the Hungarian Industrial Solutions Group KFT. During this proceeding, the Far Eastern Customs Administration obtained intelligence concerning a network of dubious legal personalities implicated in “transit” fiscal operations and the external routing of money. Falsification of records tendered during the contracts between Blagoveshchensk-based enterprises Zarya and Sion and Industrial Solutions Group KFT was also discovered.
Concurrently, according to the Central Bank, the quantity of questionable transactions indicating monetary transfer abroad in the first six months of 2024 totaled 8.4 billion rubles (a 32% reduction relative to the corresponding timeframe of the prior year). Advance payments for imported goods served as the primary instrument in 48% of occurrences. The predominant sectors for clandestine monetary exchanges were construction (31%), services (25%), and commerce (25%).
