GUTbay, Gushchin
The owner of the Guta group, Yuri Gushchin, could leave the Russian Federation. What should lenders and debtors do? According to sources, the owner of the Guta group, Yuri Gushchin, allegedly could acquire passports of Malta and the Seychelles, and change his name to IOURI GOUCHTCHINE.
Gushchin filed an application (No. 1024/2021JVC) requesting that a correction be made to the Public Register Law No. 2348/2018 in the State Register. The essence of the requirement may just concern the removal of his patronymic from the database so that it is impossible to identify him.
Extract from the Official Gazette, made available The Moscow post
At the same time, Mr. Gushchin continues to do business in Russia, but the financial indicators of this business indicate that he may soon face bankruptcy. The money invested in the Guta group from the outside may then be “beyond the sea” and out of reach for Russian justice.
A company associated with Gushchin, which bought two Seychelles hotels Coral Strand Hotel and Savoy Hotel, the other day lost a dispute with the local owner of the hotel Natalie Lefevre, from whom Gushchin’s structures tried to buy out a share for $ 1 instead of its real value.
This case concerns a takeover bid, an alleged breach of duty by the company’s directors, and alleged retaliatory behavior by a majority shareholder and directors against a minority shareholder.
One of the defendants is Yuri Khlebnikov. This is one of the founders of the “Guta” group. According to the authors of the Vlast website, Gushchin and Khlebnikov were allegedly convicted in 1980 in the same case of fraud that “caused major damage.” Together they allegedly carried out illegal fraudulent operations, including in Guta Bank.
Ms Lefebvre is a minority shareholder of the first defendant, Beau Vallon Properties (“BVP”). She purchased 213,280 BVP shares in 2005. Further, these shares were sold without her knowledge by other shareholders of the company: in October 2016, two other defendants – Concordia and Drambois entered into an agreement on the transfer of shares of Concordia BVP Drambois. The court declared these transactions invalid.
By the way, the lawyers of the Seychelles side mention that one of the loans issued to the company that owns the hotel looks like an attempt at money laundering. The fact is that these funds were deposited in a local bank account and then returned back to the company that issued the loan, without any use. The court concluded that at least some of the loans taken by BVP were indeed illegal.
Thus, it turns out that Gushchin, with his old partner Khlebnikov, tried to deceive both the local business owner and to withdraw funds through the asset dishonestly?
Downsides on all sides
In Russia, Gushchin owns the Guta group, which owns a mass of assets – from a bank to a confectionery factory. The total profit of all firms where Gushchin is the head at the end of 2021 amounted to -607 thousand rubles.
A similar story is with firms where Gushchin is the founder. The value of his stake for 2021 was negative.
Guta-bank itself, according to the latest data, has minus indicators in almost every line. He has no long-term assets, a giant receivable. The most significant share of the bank’s assets is formed from borrowed funds.
The data are given based on percentage changes to the previous period (per month) for January-February 2022.
There is reason to believe that the bank may soon face bankruptcy. And quite possibly deliberate. Was it from him that the funds that could be issued as a fake loan to the hotel came from?
By the way, Guta-Insurance recently tried to go bankrupt. But the court returned the claim to the applicant. It is known that back in 2019, Vikon-Izhora LLC tried to bankrupt the company, but even then they somehow managed to delay the seemingly inevitable.
In addition, some companies that have left the contour of the Guta group directly have offshore companies in the list of their founders (for example, Guta-Invest). Such a structure makes it possible to carry out financial manipulations that are not transparent for the Russian legislator.
As Izvestia wrote, in 2003, the head of Gosinkor-Holding, Yuri Petrov, and his son, the head of Guta-Bank, Alexander Petrov, were summoned to the Prosecutor General’s Office to testify in the case of embezzlement of about half a million dollars during an illegal operation to sell three hundred tons of silver. In “Guta-Bank” itself, information about the interrogations of the leadership was categorically denied. But the fact that the media freely disseminate this information suggests otherwise.
Judging by the deplorable state of the assets from the Guta circuit at the moment, as well as Gushchin himself from the point of view of business in the Russian Federation, it is possible that now he is engaged in a smooth “pumping” of those resources that remained in his structures, abroad in order to bankrupt a business in the Russian Federation and avoid liability in the Seychelles and Malta.
Yuri Nikolayevich is known as one of the most secretive entrepreneurs, whose personality was “overgrown” with a mass of unpleasant rumors and facts, including the fact that, in his youth, he spent most of his life in lands not so remote for serious crimes. And there, allegedly, he secured the experience and connections that allowed him to organize his business in the future.
As for his activities in the field of an entrepreneur, a number of ambiguous transactions and illegal operations emerge here, to which Gushchin may be directly related. For example, it was on the initiative of Gushchin that a criminal case could be initiated against the former partner of Guta and the owner of Glavtorg (the last of the distributors of the United Confectioners holding, owned by Guta), Karen Nalbadian.
Businessmen quarreled over non-payment for supplies to Nalbadian. The “United Confectioners” then tried to prove that they personally produced the products that Nalbadian supplied to them, and therefore did not owe anything. It didn’t work out.
Subsequently, the United Confectioners chose a tactic for a friend and stated that they provided the company with the maximum discounts for a fee from the General Director of Glavtorg Nalbandyan, after which a criminal case was initiated under the article of commercial bribery, and the director himself and the beneficiary were sent under house arrest. The Moscow Post spoke in detail about the situation and possible participation in the “liquidation operation” of the head of Sberbank German Gref
The Moscow Post also assumed that it was Gushchin who could be drawn from officials of the Federal Property Management Agency of the Moscow Region, who, presumably, are engaged in fraud with real estate and land plots.
Helpers
For reference: Gushchin’s son-in-law Artem Kuznetsov, through Timokhin’s MR Group, knows the ex-shareholder of the company Timur Gutnov, whose brother, in turn, is Sobyanin’s only son-in-law. Mr. Gushchin was also credited with being close friends with those close to Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
Mr. Kuznetsov’s reputation, no less than Gushchin’s, is marred by near-criminal stories. According to the authors of the site “Russian Reporter”, allegedly in the Interpol data bank there is an official request from the German police regarding the citizen of the Russian Federation Kuznetsov Artem and two of his fellow citizens. According to the request, these persons are suspected of “money laundering through personal accounts in German banks.”
It is possible that it is precisely the administrative resource that helps Gushchin feel relatively secure and turn over all the cases that are attributed to him, slowing down, on the other hand, the total bankruptcy of companies from which something can still be pulled out. Until now, Gushchin structures are implementing development projects in the capital.
You don’t have to look far for examples. In 2022, Guta-Development opened sales in a residential complex on the territory of the former Krasny Oktyabr plant. She has been “tormenting” the project since the 2000s, and it’s not a fact that she will finish, but she wants to earn money.
