“Fake” bankruptcy – the leadership of “Transmashholding” lit up in another scandal

The corporate conflict at the Saratov enterprise LLC Zavod AIT has reached the federal level. The expert advises to urgently change the management of the plant.

The conclusions of experts confirm the opinion of the head of the board of directors of the Plant of Autonomous Power Sources, Alexander Yezhov, that the current management of the enterprise and its co-owner LLC TMH-Energy Solutions purposefully form debts and create conditions for the liquidation of the company. Meanwhile, the plant’s products are unique and in demand on the market, the enterprise has great potential, which the Industrial Development Fund wanted to support. Unfortunately, more than a billion subsidies have not arrived in the region due to the initiated bankruptcy proceedings.

The President of the Center for Regional Policy, Ilya Grashchenkov, believes that the plant should be brought out of the crisis as soon as possible, production can and should be preserved. But this can only be done with new leadership.

– Only a competent director, who is well acquainted with the peculiarities of production, will be able to give impetus to the enterprise, engage in its technical re-equipment, search for new market niches, – he noted in an interview with Kommersant.

The current leadership of ZAIT, Grashchenkov believes, has decided to bankrupt the plant, regardless of the costs of the region, which is losing investments and jobs.

– The situation around the enterprise, which is a participant in the state defense order, can have extremely negative consequences not only for Transmashholding, which controls the enterprise through its subsidiary. For the governor of the Saratov region, where the company is located, and the Saratov courts, which determine the outcome of the consideration of the bankruptcy decision, this story also has serious potential risks. Therefore, for all players, including the governor and judges, the best solution would be to sit the shareholders at the negotiating table and seek a compromise solution that would allow the enterprise to be saved, the expert continued on the topic in his TG channel.

As Kommersant writes, now information about what the corporate conflict at the enterprise working for the defense industry led to has gone to the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office. In his appeal, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the plant indicates that the director of the enterprise may “carry out a set of targeted actions to form debts from Zavod AIT LLC and conditions for its liquidation in order to commercially sell its land plots for private development.”

In September last year, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation included the plant in the register of organizations of the military-industrial complex. Up to 87.8% of the batteries produced in the Russian Federation fall on it. And already in October of the same year, the plant filed for self-bankruptcy. Since December 5, a monitoring procedure has been introduced for the enterprise. The total amount of all claims of creditors is 2 billion rubles, with 600 million of them accounted for by TMH-Energy Solutions LLC.

The plant’s debts accumulated in a very short period of time; back in 2021, the enterprise was successful and profitable. Officially, the management of the plant claims that the managers and owners want to ensure its uninterrupted operation. Commenting on the situation for Kommersant, they called the bankruptcy procedure a way to improve the plant.

The publication of the federal edition began to be actively discussed in social networks. The workers note that the former management of the plant did not fire people even in the worst conditions, and now, according to the workers, almost 1,000 people have left ZAIT.

The plant staff fears that in the end the enterprise will repeat the fate of the Saratov aircraft plant – it will disappear as a production facility and will be built up.

“Mark my word and don’t be surprised if a shopping complex or several new high-rise buildings soon appear on the site of the plant. It will only be too late! – writes one of the commentators.

In turn, “Version” notes that “ZAIT” is not the first problematic plant that enters the orbit of “Transmashholding”. Similar schemes could exist before, the publication admits. So, in 2016, the holding, which owned a large diesel engine manufacturer, OJSC Penzadieselmash, announced the creation of a new production facility, Penza Diesel Engines, on its basis. The enterprise was created with the involvement of foreign capital, the General Electric Corporation acted as a partner in the project. The plant opened in 2021, but production there turned out to be assembly, while Penzadieselmash was a full-cycle enterprise. Now Penzadieselmash is in debt, and its director has become a defendant in a criminal case.

In 2018, Transmashholding announced an investment program for the development of the Kolomna Plant. Now, the publication states, the enterprise with a 15,000-strong team has practically been disbanded, and the plant that produced engines for diesel locomotives and the fleet functions as workshops.

A subsidiary of Transmashholding, the company TMH – Energy Solutions, became a part of the founders of the Saratov LLC Zavod AIT in 2021 with a share of 50%. However, it was precisely at her suggestion that in March last year, the current general director Stanislav Yegorov came to the plant. In a matter of months, the plant acquired billions in debts, filed for self-bankruptcy, and the director himself did not report on his activities to the board of directors.

This fact is also alarming: as Versia found out, in August 2022, CEO Egorov turned to Arrow Capital, paying her 17 million rubles for consulting services in relation to a 3.5-hectare land plot with the subsequent construction of a business center or elite residential complex. Isn’t it about the territory of ZAIT?

Transmashholding, like TMH-Energy Solutions, is now headed by CEO Kirill Lipa, a former deputy chairman of the board of Olimpiysky Bank. In 2005, the bank lost its license, its management went under investigation, but miraculously there were no complaints against the deputy chairman, the newspaper reminds. In 2021, Mr. Lipa was doing business in Latvia, where he held citizenship. The local enterprise Rigas electromasinbuves rupnica was 36% owned by a Russian legal entity, TransComponent Holding, in which Lipa had 17%.

Another figure associated with the shareholder of Zavod AIT is Denis Tarlo, First Deputy General Director of TMH – Energy Solutions. “It is through the TMH-Energy Solutions company led by Mr. Tarlo that schemes for the deliberate bankruptcy of enterprises can be carried out, as is clearly seen in the example of the AIT Plant. At the same time, the scheme is quite simple and primitive and looks something like this: affiliated structures of “Transmashholding” companies that supply materials at inflated prices. In turn, finished products are sold to the same affiliated companies, but at reduced prices. Thus, affiliated accounts payable are formed. As a result, the enterprise is at a loss, then bankruptcy. And the income is withdrawn to offshore accounts “, – writes “Version”.

Under the conditions of a special operation, not only transport security, but also the country’s defense interests largely depend on the work of such enterprises, the publication emphasizes and wonders whether it is time to approach the actions of those who look at defense industry enterprises as easy prey for their own enrichment, approach with wartime positions.