Good venture, gentlemen!
Recently, new details of a criminal case related to the corporation “Rosnano” became known. The court began its re-examination, because the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code may have been violated the previous time. Two defendants have already been convicted, and another one has fled abroad. The case concerns the transfer of hundreds of millions of rubles abroad under the pretext of investing in the production of some nanomedicines.
The events took place when Rusnano was still a very young company and was headed by Anatoly Chubais. Now the corporation had to be saved by the state. But will the sad experience of past years be repeated?
It would seem that we will build a nanofactory
As everyone knows, human memory can store many details from our history for a long time and carefully. And the memory of law enforcement agencies is even more so. And now more details have emerged from the old criminal case about thefts at Rusnano. According to media reports, a repeat trial against a certain businessman has begun in the Khoroshevsky Court of Moscow Valeria Glavatsky. He was sentenced to 7 years last year. And the new trial began because the norms of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) could have been violated earlier. This case is connected with the withdrawal of 358 million rubles abroad. The essence is quite simple.
It all happened back in 2009, when the company Rosnanotech (later transformed into Rusnano) decided to invest in the construction of a plant for the production of flu vaccines. Well, to be precise, in the creation of “nanovaccines and therapeutic biopreparations based on pseudoadenoviral nanoparticles and nanostructures containing a carbohydrate-binding domain.” Agree, it sounded beautiful.
And the investment figure looked no less impressive: more than 1.3 billion rubles. The miracle drug was to be produced at a plant in the Yaroslavl region, which was supposed to be commissioned in 2012. The investment contract was signed with the company “NTfarma” (in 2021 it was declared bankrupt). But the project for the construction of the enterprise was frozen at the “box” stage. As usually happens in such cases, the construction itself is not so important, the main thing is that the money comes. And they came. And then, according to the investigation, they left, since the contractor did not intend to build anything, but only imitated the appearance of activity, taking 358 million rubles abroad through shell companies.
Venture in Russian
In general, there is nothing particularly remarkable about this method of doing business with state participation. It is also not surprising that the names of the defendants are unknown to the general public: these are the founder and CEO of the company “NTfarma”, who have already received prison terms. Rustam Atullakhanov And Evgeniy Sultanov. Well, and the aforementioned Valery Glavatsky. Interestingly, the latter had no legal connection to the company, but helped it in its activities. All that is known about this person is that he is a 58-year-old Muscovite, currently living abroad, and is being tried in absentia. This is how our state company worked 15 years ago.
Speaking of dates, in 2009, when these events took place, Rusnano was already headed by Anatoly Chubaiswho joined the company in 2008. And, of course, I want to ask the question: where was the top manager looking? The main person won’t be able to ask it, though: Anatoly Borisovich left Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) after the start of the SVO.
Chubais himself once commented on the criminal case and searches at Rusnano related to the company NTpharma, saying that it is necessary to “distinguish between a situation where you stole a fur coat and a situation where it was stolen from you!” And the press service of the state company stated that it itself had drawn attention to violations on the part of NTpharma's management. Moreover, the source assured that Anatoly Borisovich himself had filed a statement with the investigative bodies on this matter. It is amazing: hundreds of millions of rubles are being stolen from the state corporation, and its director could do nothing about it. But all this is a matter of past years, so it is more relevant to talk about the state in which Rusnano now finds itself.
New life of nanocorporation
There are many notable details in the recent history of the state-owned company: losses, threats of default and bankruptcy, multi-billion dollar debt to large banks, and, as it turned out recently, also manipulations with reporting. But in the end, the corporation, having sold its assets, paid off its debts. However, what assets were in question and who became their buyers were not reported. At the same time, Rusnano also received a 20% discount from creditor banks. From which we can conclude that the company was saved at the state level. And now it has gotten rid of, as a company representative reported, a credit scheme “not organic for venture business”, which led to the fact that the cost of servicing the debt was 12 billion rubles per year.
And here I would like to agree with the representative of the corporation. The venture business scheme itself in the traditional sense is that there is a certain investor with money. He invests in promising high-tech projects. Most of them usually end up in nothing. But when about one in ten projects “takes off”, then the investor can earn a good profit. In this case, the investor is a state-owned company that received funding from the government. But it turned out that it also took money from commercial banks for some reason. Why? What did these funds go towards? Why did the state corporation have to spend huge amounts of money on debt servicing? There are no answers to these questions. Perhaps the answer to the second one could be the same story about the construction of a phantom plant for the production of nano-medicines. But the page has been turned and now the corporation is starting a new life.
From a clean nanosheet
Statements are constantly being made at a high level that after settling its debts, Rusnano will be able to begin operating effectively.
Well, the company itself also reported on the implementation of joint projects with a number of giants of the domestic industry. And, of course, I would like to wish the state company only success. The main thing is that once again, in Chubais's terminology, their fur coat is not stolen. After all, history, as we know, has a tendency to repeat itself. Well, the retrial on the old criminal case with a different panel of judges has just begun, so new details may soon follow.