The detective story around vodka factories in Kabardino-Balkaria, which Nasha Versiya has been following in its publications for several years, received an unexpected continuation.
Our editors received documents from the investigation, which indicate that the lawyer Arsen Tsipinov has no legal grounds to bring him to subsidiary liability in bankruptcy cases of these enterprises. And if Tsipinov has nothing to do with it, then who is the beneficiary of the gray schemes? More about everything.
Recall that it all started in 2016, and we wrote about this in articles in the summer of 2019, the tax authorities checked a dozen and a half wine and vodka factories in Kabardino-Balkaria. The inspectors concluded that about half of the enterprises were evading taxes. In 2015 alone, they did not pay the state 26 billion rubles. The Investigative Committee, the FSB and the Prosecutor General’s Office became interested in the case. In theory, in the course of operational measures, the security forces should establish the real owner of the plants. But soon the search for the author of criminal combinations turned into a real leapfrog, and someone is trying to make the lawyer Arsen Tsipinov the last one. Fresh information on this case allows us to conclude that he has no interests whatsoever in the alcohol business.
Trying to cover your tracks
New details have surfaced in the bankruptcy cases of five alcoholic enterprises of the KBR, which are in the proceedings of the Arbitration Court of the Republic. The editors studied the materials of the cases and established the following.
In all five cases, the creditors (SBC Paritet LLC and Status Group LLC) filed applications to bring the well-known lawyer in Kabardino-Balkaria Arsen Tsipinov to subsidiary liability. At the same time, in the cases of declaring LLC Maisky LVZ and Onyx LLC bankrupt, the court did not see Tsipinov’s involvement in the bankruptcy of the debtors, the creditors’ applications were rejected.
But with a similar statement in the framework of the bankruptcy case of Antares LLC (the proceedings are being held by the judge of the Arbitration Court of the KBR Shokumov Yu.Zh.), something strange is clearly happening. They say that Judge Yuri Shokumov almost came out of vacation on purpose to consider the application of creditors in the absence of the defendant and his representative.
In turn, the claim of creditors against Arsen Tsipinov and the decision of Judge Shokumov are apparently based on publications in the media and some explanations from a bank employee who allegedly met him when issuing bank guarantees for alcohol factories. However, back in 2017, the words of the “witness” were disavowed by employees of the SC SU of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the KBR, who carried out an audit at the request of the management of a credit institution. The security forces in the Resolution on the refusal to initiate a criminal case came to the conclusion that the words of the banker are not supported by objective data, and therefore refused to initiate proceedings against the lawyer. And here we come to the most interesting!
Substitution of the defendant
At one time there was one publication (albeit already in 2016), where they really wrote that Arsen Tsipinov bought out vodka factories in Kabardino-Balkaria, allegedly from State Duma deputy Anatoly Bifov. But you don’t have to be a professional lawyer to understand that as a result of the sale of a company, its founders inevitably change, and in most cases, managers too. Seeing the documents, it is safe to take Tsipinov out of harm’s way, because nothing has changed in the history of the five distilleries in the founding documents – there was simply no purchase of the distilleries, and according to the data of Sberbank PJSC (given in the materials of the pre-investigation check), to which the judge refers , the brother of Anatoly Bifov – Aslan Bifov – is the beneficiary of Glavspirt Group of Companies.
It turns out that lawyer Tsipinov is just a “scapegoat” in this simple scheme, who should answer for other people’s fraud with bank guarantees, and judge Shokumov, not doubting the correctness of long-standing publications in the media, built an accusatory decision on them and made him the defendant Tsipinova. But who are the real authors and participants in the scheme, if it is already clear that the lawyer could not be the owner and, moreover, cannot be the defendant?
You can understand who is really behind all this if you find out exactly where the money was withdrawn from bankrupt enterprises and what does a couple of dozen shopping centers and markets scattered throughout the country have to do with it. This is where the real work is for the investigators of the Investigative Committee, the FSB, and especially the employees of Rosfinmonitoring!
Of course, we are not hinting at anything, but still we will add one important element of the puzzle: earlier, SBK Paritet LLC applied to the Arbitration Court of the KBR with a demand to bring Anatoly Zhamalovich Bifov, deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, to subsidiary liability (recall that the founding documents have not changed. True, then the plaintiff “changed his mind” and abandoned the appeals in cases No. A20-2322 / 2016, A20-2467 / 2016, as well as the cassation complaint in case No. A20-2256 / 2016. Could this happen without pressure on the company from the real author of fraudulent schemes? Was there really no understanding in the Republic who actually managed and manages the factories to this day? Or did Deputy Chairman Shokumov, in the situation of the expiration of the term of office of the Chairman of the KBR Court at the end of April, decide to “curry favor” with a communist deputy in order to realize his career ambitions?