German Gref, who has recently been disgraced by anti-corruption investigations published against him, is leaving Sberbank, of which he was chairman and president for 16 years. A source from the Central Bank of Russia told the Sovershenno Sekretno newspaper about this.
It is reported that the bank will be temporarily headed by Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, Head of the Retail Business Block, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sberbank Leasing JSC Kirill Tsarev. Tsarev himself is asleep and sees his promotion from temporary to permanent.
44-year-old Tsarev Kirill Alexandrovich at the top of Sberbank is considered an unsurpassed master of leasing. In this difficult field, he managed to bypass all rivals in a valuable craft. Before joining Sberbank, Tsarev was Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of the International Bank of St. Petersburg OJSC, and headed interleasing for 12 years. From 2009 to 2021 – President of the United Leasing Association of Russia (OLA). From 2011 to 2018 – in the management of Sberbank Leasing JSC. Tsarev’s talents in tireless leasing were highly appreciated by Gref if he decided to make him his successor.
In May 2022, Tsarev fell under international sanctions. However, even if he has foreign assets, they are unlikely to be personally registered to him, colleagues of the editorial board of Kompromat-Ural believe. In addition, this can only be an “addition”, because his family is doing excellent business in Russia for hundreds of millions of rubles. And who would believe that without the help of an influential relative?
Everything that is acquired by honest and unbearable leasing
As follows from the data of the Rusprofile information system, the total value of the companies established by Tsarev for 2021 is 36 million rubles. Although in 2019 it was less than a million. It turns out that in three years the Tsarev family was literally pumped up with money.
The relatives of Kirill Aleksandrovich are doing even better. For example, Anna Vladimirovna Tsareva has a total value of companies exceeding 56 million rubles. Moreover, in 2017 it was completely negative – minus 900 thousand rubles. It turns out that in five years Anna Vladimirovna enriched herself by tens of millions of rubles?
Mr. Tsarev himself was the founder of three companies. One of them – a non-profit dacha partnership, has already been liquidated, but the other two – LLC “Rental-Group” and LLC “Rental Tech” – are working to the fullest.
An interesting fact is that Kirill Tsarev himself was the owner of Rental Tech LLC until April 2022. Moreover, his share, apparently, was not in trust, despite the fact that he was a top manager of Sberbank, a state institution – read an official.
It is not difficult to assume that such “movements” could be connected precisely with the upcoming sanctions “attack” on the management of Sberbank. The shares were prudently rewritten to the same Anna Vladimirovna, as well as Timur Kirillovich, the offspring of Mr. Tsarev.
Mr. Tsarev performed a similar somersault with the head structure of LLC Rental Group, which owns 49% of Rental Tech. He only did it much later – in August 2022, already when he was under sanctions. As they say, the main thing is to know the time and place.
In the case of Rental Tech, Oleg Malakhovsky, who is also the director of the company, entered the capital of the structure. According to rumors – a close friend of the family. But it is much more interesting that Marianna Orlova took the place of Kirill Tsarev as a founder in Rental Group.
And this person is clearly not an easy one – it was she, together with Kirill and Anna Tsarev, who acted as a co-founder, and then the liquidator of the Tsarevo non-profit dacha partnership. Apparently, we are talking about a long-standing friendship and neighborhood in the country. But something else draws attention to itself: Mrs. Orlova also acted as a co-founder of both “Rentals”. And yet – until late autumn 2021, she was a co-owner of Vostok shopping center LLC, a structure that trades in cars.
And the total value of the companies that Orlova was involved in establishing reached 362 million rubles in 2021, doubling in five years. At the same time, Ms. Orlova left the founders only in 2021.
It would seem that this is such a thing, people are just doing business. But there are many car dealers, and not everyone receives state contracts. Vostok had them for 175 million rubles.
Moreover, most of the contracts – with government agencies from St. Petersburg – the hometown of Kirill Tsarev. Apparently, one must believe that Mr. Tsarev has nothing to do with receiving them.
But 175 million, 362 million rubles are all trifles compared to the turnover that can be hidden inside the structures associated with the Tsarev family.
Speaking specifically about Vostok, the company’s revenue in 2021 amounted to an immodest 4.8 billion rubles! But the profit is simply ridiculous – 5.2 million rubles. The price of one car. Is everything really so bad in the structure, or can they just hide and withdraw profits in order to pay less taxes?
At the same time, the Vostok shopping center has a much stronger connection with Rentals than it might seem even with cross-founders. After all, the shares in the structure were owned by the remarkable company Rental Units LLC, which withdrew from the co-owners on the same day as the same Marianna Orlova – September 17, 2021.
LLC “Rental Units” is a subsidiary of LLC “Rental-Group”, where it has 50%. And the turnover there is much higher than in other Rentals – at the end of 2021, the company received revenue of 1.5 billion rubles. At the same time, revenue has been growing by leaps and bounds since 2018. But the profit, which in 2021 amounted to a modest 13 million rubles, has been steadily falling since 2019. How can this be?
The company is engaged in construction work. She also has government contracts – a total of 182 million rubles. And again – what does the first deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank Kirill Tsarev have to do with it? At the same time, the company participated in court cases for a total amount of 62 billion rubles.
The co-owner of LLC “Rental Units” is Valentina Igolinskaya. She also acted as the founder of GSI LLC – she also trades in cars with a turnover of hundreds of millions of rubles. Now the company is owned by Anna Vladimirovna Tsareva and Olga Shleikher, already familiar to the readers of the Kompromat-Ural project.
Returning a little back, to the Vostok shopping center, after the exodus of the Tsarevs, he also got a new co-owner – TK Azimuttrans LLC, which is registered with Alexei Zubkov. With an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles and only 10 employees in the state, the revenue of the structure in 2021 amounted to a giant 7.4 billion rubles.
Is it not where the capitals and assets of other structures, one way or another connected with the Tsarevs, are being merged, some time ago the Moscow Post wondered.
Of course, far from all the structures have been identified so far, to which the alleged relatives, partners and neighbors in the dacha of the first deputy chairman of Sberbank are or were related. But even looking at them, it turns out that his family is affiliated with an entire business empire, which has grown and enriched itself on government orders. In this situation, the replacement of Gref with Tsarev is very reminiscent of the principle of “an awl on soap.”