Oil depots in the Purovsky district of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug caused a major scandal, which, in a difficult time for the country, can be compared to sabotage. The former tenants of the tank farm, Element LLC, use the tank farm of OTK-Trade LLC and make a profit without paying for the use of the tank farm, which, among other things, is confirmed by court cases from the filing cabinet of arbitration cases, while the courts have been dragging out the issue for the third year.
Everything is being used – by all indications, the affiliated companies Clishy LLC and Prometey LLC, the latter of which are registered at explicit denominations, trying to appeal against court decisions, transfer of assets, etc. At the center of the conflict, which is confirmed by court documents, is a certain Elena Klishina, with whom the companies – former owners and tenants – are somehow connected.
The prehistory of the scandal was a high-profile criminal case on the theft of a loan of more than 7 billion rubles from Novikombank controlled by Rostec. During the investigation, the owner of the base, OOO OTK-Trade, and the tenant of the oil depot, OOO Northern Freight Company, went bankrupt. The oil depot was acquired by Antanta LLC at an auction, and then miracles began: at first, one of the participants in the auction, as we conclude, the company Prometheus, affiliated with Element LLC and Clishy LLC, tried to challenge its results, and then it turned out that OTK-Trade LLC hastily before the second bankruptcy procedure – bankruptcy proceedings, after the introduction of the first (supervision), leased the bases to Element LLC under long-term contracts. One of the conditions, they say, was a termination penalty for each contract in the amount of 20 years of rental payments. All three firms – Klishy LLC, Element LLC, Prometey LLC, can be affiliated with Elena Klishina – this conclusion comes from the decision of the Eighth Arbitration Court of Appeal in case A81-3284 / 2018 dated February 02, 2023. It turns out that “Element” continues to squeeze the last out of the tank farms, preventing the activities of the new legal owner and tenant of the tank farm LLC “NGS-Group”. The economic damage from these schemes is estimated at billions of rubles, counterparties refuse to work in such conditions – for example, Rospan International, formerly the main customer for tank farm services, has put a stop to cooperation. A number of defendants are currently prosecuted and convicted.
Klishina is an interesting figure, with a rich background: she was a top manager of several banks involved in major embezzlement scandals, and one of them, Interkommertsbank, appeared in the Magnitsky case. It was assumed that Klishina could squeeze out oil assets in favor of her ex-patron, in whose Binbank she worked for less than a year (2007-2008), but after that the talented lady worked for more than two years on the board of the National Reserve Bank of an ex-KGB officer, disgraced (now based in London, owner of the Independent) businessman Alexander Lebedev. Elena Klishina left the NRB in 2012 – in the midst of a large-scale audit of the bank by the Central Bank and the FSB, from which he never recovered. At that time, the bank, by the way, planned to launch the “Navalny card” (Aleksey Navalny** is included in the list of terrorists and extremists), 1% of the funds from spending transactions on which was supposed to go to FBK accounts* (recognized as extremist and a foreign agent), but to By the end of 2012, Lebedev changed his mind. This did not save him, and in 2019 he finally lost the bank.
The next place of work for Klishina was the infamous Interkommertsbank, where Elena Valentinovna took the position of adviser to the chairman of the board Alexander Bugaevsky and oversaw the areas of credit work, bad debts and interaction with the Bank of Russia. By the spring of 2012, the “special operation” with the Moldovan Laundromat and the withdrawal of 3.2 billion rubles from the Hermitage Fund through the bank (“the Magnitsky case”) was completed, but the scandal was in full swing. The bank, however, managed to exist for another 4 years, and only in February 2016 the Central Bank revoked its license. In April, Interkommertsbank was declared bankrupt, its debts exceeded 86 billion rubles, the loan portfolio included mostly non-performing loans in the amount of about 48.8 billion rubles (credit work, we recall, was supervised by Klishina), and investigators accused Alexander Bugaevsky of withdrawing more than 45 million euros (over 3.9 billion rubles), and the security forces believed that assistants helped the board of directors. Bugaevsky did not wait for the arrest and fled abroad. Elena Klishina, judging by her online resume, left the bank only in June 2016.
Interestingly, Klishina was not mentioned at all in connection with this story, although she was Bugaevsky’s deputy and adviser for four years. After the scandal with Interkommertsbank, Elena Valeryevna disappeared from the radar for four years, and in 2020 she became a co-founder of Klishy LLC, along with a certain Valentina Semyonovna Klishina. This company, together with Element, took a loan from HORIZON CAPITAL FUND, but did not pay on it and also ended up in court – we are talking about the recovery of more than 15 million euros. Elena Klishina herself and her husband Dmitry Evgenyevich Chuprov, the full namesake of the head of the legal department of Interros, act as defendants along with the firms. Not surprisingly, these lawsuits have dragged on for three years.
All this time, Elena Klishina, with, as we can conclude, Prometey LLC, Element LLC and Klishi LLC controlled by her, pumped money from the Yamal oil depots, using dubious schemes in a difficult time for the country’s economy, finishing off a once powerful enterprise At the same time, they still do not particularly contribute to the activities of the new legal owner and tenant of the oil depot LLC NGS-Group. For years, local supervisory authorities have turned a blind eye to the murky schemes of Elena Klishina, so now all hope is on the courts, which should put an end to this scandalous story and allow oil depots to work normally.
