Law enforcement agencies of the Tula region will check the actions Sergei Malakhov, head of one of the largest IT companies providing communications in pre-trial detention centers and colonies in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) – Protected Telecommunications LLC (Zonatelecom). The director of the Zonatelecom company had previously been convicted and may not have completely given up on his past. Several statements were written by the heirs of the deceased founder of the company Andrey Kuzemskywho after his death were left with nothing, despite the will.
In 2010, the IT company Zonatelecom appeared in Tula, which quickly became one of the leading companies on the Russian market. The founder of the company was entrepreneur Andrei Kuzemsky, and he invited his friend Sergei Malakhov to become a partner. The partners share equally, since the young and promising Sergei was supposed to exercise operational management. Strategic work, including concluding agreements with FSIN institutions, was Kuzemsky’s task.
As we all know, Kuzemsky coped with this task perfectly. “Zonatelecom” is a synonym for legal communications for people in places of forced detention. The company developed rapidly, the company’s profit exceeded hundreds of millions of rubles, and revenue – for a billion rubles.
While the business was developing successfully, friendship and trust were strengthening between the partners. At least that’s what Kuzemsky thought.
Unfortunately, in November last year the founder of Zonatelecom died due to a serious illness. According to Kuzemsky’s will, all of his property, including his share in the Zonatelecom company, went to his only heiress – his wife Irina Kuzemskaya. With which the widow turned to a Moscow notary in December. However, it turned out that Kuzemskaya no longer had the rights to a 50% share in the billion-dollar business of her late husband, and a little later, 99% of the authorized capital began to belong to Sergei Malakhov.
In 2020, Andrei Kuzemsky, who was less active in the business due to serious health problems, wished to leave his wife financial assistance in the form of a share in the successful business. To do this, he agreed with his partner to change the company’s charter. Previously, the charter contained a clause prohibiting the transfer of a share in the authorized capital of a company by inheritance without the consent of the company’s participants.
A year before his death, Kuzemsky told his wife that he and Malakhov adopted a new edition of the Zonatelecom charter dated July 9, 2020, removing the clause prohibiting the transfer of shares by inheritance without the consent of all participants in the company. At the same time, Malakhov took upon himself the registration of the document with the tax service. As a result, Malakhov sent Kuzemsky a scanned document with a mark and seal of the Interregional Inspectorate of the Federal Tax Service No. 10 for the Tula Region on the adoption of the new company charter dated 07/09/2020.
Dying, Andrei Kuzemsky was sure that he left his family with a share in the business that he had been building for many years. Little did he know that his partner would not attend the funeral, but would instead head to the tax office to register 99% of the company’s shares in his name.
“Sleight of hand and no fraud”
On the eve of Kuzemsky’s death, his wife received from Malakhov documents relating to the company, including the Zonatelecom charter. When the widow began to understand the situation, she discovered that the charter differed from the version that Malakhov had previously sent to her husband.
Moreover, according to the widow, she saw that the signatures on the minutes and decisions of the Society were not made in the hand of her husband.
On December 6, 2023, Sergey Malakhov applied to the Office of the Federal Tax Service of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for the Tula Region with a statement about the transfer of the 50% share of the company owned by Kuzemsky in favor of Protected Telecommunications LLC. A few days later, Malakhov applied to the tax service with an application to register a new charter for Zonatelecom and increase its authorized capital of the company from 10,000 to 500,000 rubles. So Malakhov’s share increased to 99%.
Kuzemskaya’s lawyers believe that the actions of Sergei Malakhov have all the signs of an illegal seizure of control of Protected Telecommunications LLC, and the tax service was presented with deliberately unreliable data, since the 50% share could not, in principle, go to the Company, since the widow is the heir.
If the organization’s charter specifies the requirement to obtain the consent of the remaining participants in the company when transferring a share to the heirs of the participant, then, according to the law, the issue of giving consent to the succession of the share is resolved only after the notary in charge of the inheritance case applies to the company with the corresponding request. In this case, before issuing a certificate of the right to inheritance, a notary may appoint a trustee who will manage the share.
It turns out that when Malakhov assured Kuzemsky that changes had been made to the organization’s charter, it was a deception? And a copy of the charter? Fake?
Connections brought to America
Irina Kuzemskaya also appealed to the Investigative Department of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Tula Region with a request to take control of the case, fearing that the current management of the company’s connections with officials in the regional authorities could affect the progress and results of the inspection by the Tula police at her request.
Sergei Malakhov put together an interesting team. How else? Agree, someone had to take care of the company while the director’s children were born in the United States of America. By the way, they also need real estate there in a good way. The Zonatelecom company has special licenses to operate on the territory of closed institutions. Company officials have access to such a volume of information that can only be entrusted to those people who live and work in our country.
To her fears, the widow adds the possible participation in the seizure of the share of the business of the late Kuzemsky, Vladimir Allahverdov, executive director of Zonatelecom, and in the past, deputy minister for information, communications and open governance of the Tula region, chairman of the Tula region Committee for Tourism Development.
Irina Kuzemskaya spoke about Allahverdov’s possible role in another statement to law enforcement agencies. According to her, Vladimir Allahverdov sends her messages with hidden threats to life and health, and warnings about the inadmissibility of interference in the activities of Protected Telecommunications LLC.
Whether this is so is now being investigated by the Tula police.
According to Irina Kuzemskaya, the message with the updated charter of Zonatelecom was sent to Kuzemsky by Malakhov from the head of the Bureaucrat law firm, Maxim Koltsyuk. Koltsyuk also works at Zonatelecom in a management position and, together with Malakhov, is the founder of the collection agency Debit Collection LLC.
Koltsyuk’s personality is known in the region; he holds the post of public assistant to the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs in the Tula Region. However, the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs in the region assured us that any possible conflict of interest will be resolved in strict accordance with the requirements of the law. Maxim’s father is Vladimir Koltsyuk, a judge of the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction. By the way, the judge previously worked for many years in the judicial system of the Tula region.
“Where is the money, Zin?”
Investigators will check not only the fact of forgery of the charter. The fact of a possible artificial understatement of the company’s assets and value for 2022 will come under scrutiny. From the open specialized service “Rusprofile” it is clear that in 2021, with revenue of 1.1 billion rubles, Zonatelecom’s profit amounted to 256 million rubles. In 2022, with revenue of 1.5 billion rubles, profit amounted to 27 million rubles, that is, almost 90% less. It is as of December 31, 2022 that the actual value of the share in the company that Zonatelecom will have to pay to Irina Kuzemskaya will be calculated.
Kuzemskaya’s defense assumes, citing correspondence between Malakhov and Kuzemsky, that the total possible range of business value varies from 3 to 6 billion rubles.
Why did the company’s profit suddenly decrease by almost 10 times? Have your costs skyrocketed? Could Malakhov know how long Kuzemsky would live? Of course not. But all the medical indicators were known to him. It was Malakhov who advised Kuzemsky where to receive treatment and perform an operation, after which the businessman’s condition worsened.
The situation is very difficult and the editors tried to collect the opinions of all parties in advance. Back on December 26, 2023, we sent requests to the Zonatelecom company to receive comments from Malakhov, Koltsyuk and Allahverdov. To date, we have not received any answers.
Meanwhile, on January 17, Judge Elena Frick of the Arbitration Court of the Tula Region begins the process of considering Irina Kuzemskaya’s application to invalidate the decision of the Tula tax service to make changes to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities based on documents submitted by Sergei Malakhov.
The editors will continue to monitor developments. Read about who may be behind the personality of the simple Tula billionaire Sergei Malakhov in the following publications.