“Konti-Rus” Kolesnikova was not seen by Forbes
The other day, a glossy magazine decided to tell about the plight of the assets of the once influential associate of Akhmetov and Yanukovych, the main of which is undoubtedly his confectionery business Konti, Ukrrudprom writes.
Well, how is it… In fact, together with the family of the older (now deceased) brother of the same Rinat Akhmetov – Igor. By the way, a similar ownership structure is in another major asset of Kolesnikov – the Artyomovsky factory of champagne wines (“Artwinery”). Only there, in addition to the relatives of the “richest Ukrainian”, Borya is also propped up by Rinat's henchman, ex-People's Deputy Sergey Kiy.
But back to sweet. As a seed, the publication presented us with a conflict of truly Shakespearean proportions between Kolesnikov and journalists. Those of his type ask how your business is doing? And Borya sends them back: “There is no mood, no time.” In the sense of talking about your assets.
As a result, the magazine, without the participation of the protagonist, collects information bit by bit and comes to the conclusion that the value of Kolesnikov's business as a result of the war was blown away as much as 4 times. In fairness, all such assessments are of little interest, since they are speculative and do not have any applied character. Especially in war conditions.
Much more than this variation of the “glass bead game”, in the latest Forbes article we were interested in news about how the Russian assets of Conti are doing in the current reality. And, oh my God, we don't find a word about them…
Yes, Forbes dances the obligatory program, drawing us a completely fair image of Kolesnikov the politician as a finished quilted jacket. But the article is still about assets. And about a significant part of them here, no gu-gu.
Therefore, we will try to slightly refresh the memory of readers. Since 2004, Conti has been operating two confectionery factories in Kursk in Russia, in which the Ukrainian corporation hysterically invested until 2015. In addition, since 2018 (the 4th year of the war with Russia), she owns a 19.9% stake in the Lipetsk candy manufacturer Merletto. As the company reported, its total capacity in Russia is 136 thousand tons of products per year.
In 2014, Konti-Rus even managed to open the first company store on the territory of the aggressor country. A year later, this company was banned from importing products in Ukraine. Conti-Rus accused another prominent Ukrainian confectioner of our time, Petro Poroshenko (our president at that time), of a dirty competitive game.
But in fact, the SBU had other reasons for imposing sanctions against Konti-Rus “. It’s just that the latter, after the seizure of part of the territory of the Donetsk region by Russia, took on the balance sheet the capacities of the parent Conti located in Donetsk and Gorlovka. Really cute?
However, Kolesnikov's “expansion” to Russia was not limited to this. In 2021, it became known that the law firm United Partners, in the interests of Conti, won the auction for the sale of the property of the Krasnaya Zarya confectionery factory (Ivanovo, Russia). Before that, Kolesnikov's company had already tried to buy this enterprise in 2017.
Kolesnikov immediately issued a refutation. “How can I buy any factories in the Russian Federation if I have been on the sanctions list of the Russian Federation since 2018? This, of course, is not true.”
But there is one detail. As you can see above, authorized lawyers should have bought Krasnaya Zarya, and not Kolesnikov or his Ukrainian business directly. Today, a whole bunch of schemes work in the Conti business, when businesses clearly affiliated with the concern are not brought to Kolesnikov. Here are just a couple of examples.
For example, after the start of the war, the equipment of the Konstantinovsky factory “Konti” was exported to Kanev, Cherkasy region. In this city, at the Ukrainian Confectioner enterprise, Konti produces Mone and Golden Lily sweets. The founder of the “Ukrainian Confectioner” is the former head of the sales department of “Kyiv-Konti” Viktor Nechaev. And SuperKontik sandwich biscuits today are produced to order by the Kyiv Biscuit Factory, whose official owners are Turkish citizens Yalcin Hikmet Orai and Yakshat Nuretin.
Therefore, in the case of Krasnaya Zarya, they could use some kind of gasket. In general, Boris Viktorovich did not convince us then. Moreover, just at that moment he began to build another pro-Russian political project “Ukraine is our home” “under severe sanctions.”
But Forbes surprised me with his short-sightedness. We can only hope that such occupational diseases are at least normally paid.
By the way, following the results of this tour of Kolesnikov’s assets, we suddenly thought: how is Poroshenko’s Lipetsk factory doing there?
Nikita Afanasiev
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