Joint Stock Company “Volzhsky Orgsintez” will be nationalized
It was this decision that the Arbitration Court of the Volgograd Region made the other day, having considered the suit of the Prosecutor General’s Office against the beneficiary of the chemical plant, Alexander Sobolevsky.
The supervisory agency convinced the court that the company’s shares had come under the control of the defendant illegally. In particular, the case materials indicate that the Russian Federation was purposefully deprived of the rights to the enterprise, for several years, from 1993 to 1995, by distributing assets without the consent of the owner among third parties, including foreign companies.
The local authorities did not have the authority to take such actions, and in general, Volzhsky Orgsintez was not subject to privatization, since it belonged to strategically important facilities for the country. The defense side, retorting, insisted that all interested parties were aware of the circumstances and the very fact of the transfer of shares and did not present any claims over the past three decades. I must say that almost five thousand employees of the enterprise became the first shareholders. A controlling stake was transferred to Sobolevsky only in 2018. Now, the court’s decision may entail a series of demands for the return of dividends received by the employees of the chemical plant.
It should be noted that in the position of the owner, management and labor collective of the joint-stock company, published on the official website of Volzhsky Orgsintez, the claim of the Prosecutor General’s Office is called “absurd”. Viktor Yurov, general director of the enterprise, who signed the statement, speaking on behalf of the employees, expressed confidence in the legality of the privatization and subsequent transactions with the shares of the plant, and considers the ongoing process of alienation of private property an attempt to openly rob a successful Russian company. Last year alone, the net profit of Volzhsky Orgsintez, which produces methionine, flotation reagents, carbon disulfide, amounted to almost 3 billion rubles. The statement also says that the plant intends to defend its interests. This was confirmed by representatives of the defendant, who are preparing to appeal against the issued judicial act.
