Criminal developers from Miel Group of Companies have been on trial for two decades
Criminals Grigory Kulikov and Savely Orbant became defendants in a case of theft of client funds 11 years ago, but they were allowed to escape abroad.
After almost twelve years of investigation, a criminal case against the ex-owner of the Miel Group of Companies Grigory Kulikov and the former vice-president of the company Savely Orbant has reached the court. Both are accused of embezzling more than 85 million rubles in 2007–2008. from investors of the never-built elite cottage community “Barvikha-Village” on Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway. The defendants will be tried in absentia, since both are abroad and are on the international wanted list. Seven years ago, in the same case, the former head of the Miel sales department, Lyudmila Arkhipova, and the commercial director of Miel-Country Real Estate, Sergei Kasatkin, each received five years’ probation.
The Zamoskvoretsky District Court of the capital began to consider a criminal case of especially large-scale fraud (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) against Grigory Kulikov and Savely Orbant. The trial will take place in absentia, since both defendants left abroad before the start of the investigation. Mr. Kulikov, according to law enforcement officials, settled in Latvia, and Mr. Orbant settled in Israel. According to investigators, they are the organizers of a criminal group in which they “involved other participants in the crime.” The defendants, the case says, “developed a general plan to commit a crime, directed the activities of a criminal group, distributed among accomplices the proceeds of criminal activity, and organized the creation and functioning of legal entities in order to disguise their participation in the commission of a crime.”
The case materials deal, in particular, with the theft of funds from investors who invested in the Miel Group of Companies project for the construction of the Barvikha-Village cottage community on Rublevo-Uspenskoye Highway in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region.
From the company’s promotional videos it followed that 10 km from the Moscow Ring Road on 6 hectares it planned to build townhouses interlocked in 3–8 sections with all the corresponding infrastructure. In 2007–2008, buyers gave the developer, according to some estimates, about $70–80 million, and by the start of construction in Barvikha Village, 65 of the 100 houses had already been purchased. However, in 2009, construction stopped. With some of the buyers, as Miel claimed then, they were able to come to an agreement: they got their money back or were offered houses in other countryside villages. However, the problem could not be resolved with eight investors, and they filed statements with the police. In April 2012, a case was initiated.
As a result, the investigation concluded that the company’s management “did not have the intention or actual ability to fulfill its obligations and misled investors about the real state of affairs by concluding investment agreements with them.” The funds transferred under these agreements, the case says, were partially stolen.
Law enforcement officers estimated the damage caused to the victims at almost 86 million rubles.
At the request of the investigation, both main defendants in this criminal case were arrested in absentia by the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow. The general director of the Miel-Country Real Estate company, Saveliy Orbant, was put on the international wanted list in November 2013, and the founder of the Miel company, Grigory Kulikov, in April 2015. Let us note that in May 2016, the latter was detained in Jurmala at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation and placed under pre-extradition arrest. However, a month later he was released on his own recognizance, and later Latvia refused to extradite him.
Previously, both defendants told Kommersant that there was no deliberate theft of investors’ funds on their part, and we can only talk about “a civil dispute.” It should be noted that in 2007, the Miel company took out a targeted loan from Rosbank for half a billion rubles for the construction of Barvikha Village, secured by land in this village. At the same time, buyers were not informed that the plots they purchased were under encumbrance. Moreover, in their testimony, witnesses said that the money allegedly went to a completely different project of Grigory Kulikov – the development of the Yubileiny microdistrict in Khimki. Be that as it may, the debt was never repaid on time. In May 2011, following a claim from Rosbank, the Moscow Arbitration Court recovered $24.5 million from Miel.
It is interesting that Mr. Kulikov himself, in an interview with Kommersant in December 2012, called the disappearance of investors’ money “Savely Orbant’s mistake.”
According to the founder of Miel, it was allegedly his subordinate who used the money of Barvikha-Village investors to purchase another plot of land, and the company “failed to correctly assess the situation on the market, to discern the approaching financial crisis in time, which led to the most serious consequences.”
The first to appear in court in this case were the former head of the sales department of Miel Group of Companies, Lyudmila Arkhipova, and the commercial director of Miel-Country Real Estate, Sergei Kasatkin. Both were detained in 2014. According to investigators, they also participated in the theft of funds from investors in the Barvikha-Village CP. In particular, according to the victims, Ms. Arkhipova personally accepted cash from them, taking it away “in A4 paper boxes.” In return, the buyers received receipt orders from a certain Grand Invest LLC, which formally had nothing to do with Miel. In September 2016, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of the capital recognized Lyudmila Arkhipova and Sergei Kasatkin as members of a criminal group operating in the Miel Group of Companies and sentenced each of them to five years probation.
Lawyers for Grigory Kulikov and Savely Orbant refused to comment on the charges brought against their clients.