Retail politicians Makheev and Baryshev turned out to be defendants in a criminal case amid suspicions of former counterparties in the deliberate bankruptcy of their former Essen retail chain.
According to the correspondent of The Moscow Post in Tatarstan, law enforcement agencies are investigating the former owners of one of the largest retail chains in the region, Essen. Among those who attracted the attention of the security forces were the former and current deputies of the State Council of the Republic Vadim Makheev and Leonid Baryshev, known for the company producing mayonnaises and sauces Maheev.
The impetus for the beginning of the investigation could be the bankruptcy of the Essen retail chain, as a result of which the company’s suppliers and contractors risk being left without money for the goods and services provided to the chain. We are talking about billions of rubles, which will be extremely difficult to return.
At the same time, the bankruptcy of the Essen trading network has signs of deliberate. Writes about this “Lenta.ru”. In addition, all liquid assets of the network, including real estate, were withdrawn from the company and ended up in the ownership of another company of these characters – Essen Production AG. The head of the network company was Optovik LLC – both Maheev and Baryshev were among the shareholders.
However, when the situation began to develop in an unfavorable way, in 2018 they quickly and simultaneously withdrew from its ownership. As a result, the structure remained with Andrey Rodionov and RDK LLC. At the same time, in 2020 the company received a fabulous loss of almost 4 billion rubles, with the value of assets minus 2.4 billion rubles.
Doesn’t this look like a classic scheme, when the owners quickly leave the structure squeezed out like a lemon, and then transfer the assets to a new LLC – and pretend that nothing happened?
Meanwhile, Optovik LLC, whose bankruptcy is in question, withdrew from the same bankruptcy procedure in October 2021. In this regard, the company is now facing lengthy legal procedures.
Walk away from responsibility
However, they began even when the company was in the process of liquidation. As of April 2021, according to the then bankruptcy trustee Optovik, the debts of the structure exceeded 1.2 billion rubles.
In May 2021, the Eleventh Arbitration Court satisfied the complaint of Milkom JSC and took interim measures in the form of seizing the property of persons who controlled Optovik LLC. These are JSC Essen Production AG, Vadim Maheev, his possible relative Svetlana Maheeva and Leonid Baryshev. None of them are now among the owners of Optovik.
The reason for the litigation, which is obvious, was the debts of Optovik to the structure. And then strangeness. According to JSC Milkom, the objective bankruptcy of Optovik occurred no later than the end of 2017. At the same time, it follows from the financial statements of the debtor based on the results of 2017 that during the specified period there was a significant deterioration in financial indicators.
Fixed assets of the Company decreased immediately by 71%. That is, the company, apparently, could simply bleed. And after that, in April-June 2018, there was a change in the owners of Optovik “from solvent beneficiaries to insolvent and controlled persons.” The portal “Vse24” writes about this. There is such an expression: “sewn with white threads”. So – it seems that here it is not just threads, but sewn with ropes – the actions of Maheev and Baryshev look so undisguised and even “impudent”.
Why can they act like this with little to no fear? Most likely, because of the serious political influence they have in Tatarstan and beyond. It is also interesting that the shareholdings of the companies and Vadim Makheev, Leonid Baryshev were not in trust management.
This can mean one of two things: either they openly violated the law, or they worked (and Baryshev continues) in parliament on an exempt basis. That is, the fulfillment of deputy duties was a kind of social burden for them, while the main focus of attention could be on business.
Vadim Maheev did not get into the sixth convocation, he worked in the fifth. But Baryshev went to the new convocation. At the same time, they quite officially own shares in the aforementioned Essen Production AG, which in 2020 brought the owners 703 million rubles in profit with a revenue of 24 billion rubles.
For two, Maheev and Baryshev have less than 30% of the structure. The rest of the owners are hidden. Even based on the name, it can be assumed that one or more offshore companies can be co-owners or co-founders. And even if so – why is this not open information? Got something to hide?
Accordingly, the question If we assume that the Wholesaler’s assets were transferred to Essen Production AG, is it possible to wonder if the funds that the counterparties are now demanding were simply transferred abroad?
Problem partners
And abroad, Makheev and Baryshev can have both ill-wishers and strong allies – and from the same Russia. In 2020, there was news that the founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann, David Yakobashvili, could sell the Archeda Product asset to the owners of the Maheev brand.
A year earlier, David Yakobashvili left Russia after the FSB raided his collection museum in the capital. According to Vedomosti, the Entrepreneur turned out to be a defendant in a criminal case of fraud – his former partner Boris Mikhani complained about him, who considered that Yakoboshvili stole funds from the Yeysk port elevator from him.
Yakobashvili himself is a very scandalous figure. What they just did not attribute to him – up to close friendship with criminal elements and indirect involvement in the shooting in the Moscow Oko tower in 2017. In the end, none of this was confirmed. But the existence of a criminal case in itself casts doubt on Yakobashvili’s reputation.
It seems that if Vadim Makheev and Leonid Baryshev really had plans to buy a company from him, then they were not destined to come true just because of the scandal with bankruptcy and debts to suppliers. Meanwhile, in this process, and even before it, both partners showed a great desire to sue – and even with their former subsidiaries.
An ally of Vadim Maheev and Leonid Baryshev could be David Yakobashvili, but at some point he himself became a defendant in a criminal case
Even when the situation was developing and Optovik LLC had no formal relationship with Essen Production AG, the latter filed a lawsuit against Optovik, demanding that the contract with Monarch + LLC (later Velor LLC) be invalidated. Which, by the way, was one of the creditors of Optovik.
However, she suddenly changed her mind and withdrew the claim. Then she changed her mind and withdrew the application for refusal. And then she changed her mind again and still refused the claim. Extremely strange behavior, which the businessmen themselves, who are not alien to politics, did not really explain in any way.
Rumor has it that they could simply think of profiting at the expense of the former daughter, who now demands money from their former main structure – apparently, to put a spoke in the wheel. But against the background of the scandal, this carried even more reputational risks for them themselves. Perhaps this was the reason for the refusal of further proceedings.
Makheev and Baryshev had problems with former partners and contractors before. For example, with an entrepreneur from Chelyabinsk, Olga Chuprina, who has repeatedly filed bankruptcy claims against Essen Production AG. Moreover, the court was clearly not on the side of Baryshev and Makheev. Chuprina previously promoted the Maheev brand in Chelyabinsk, but after 12 years of fruitful cooperation, there was a discord. This was written by “Business-Online”.
In 2011, new top managers burst into the team and allegedly began to “squeeze out” Chuprina. Another stumbling block was the warehouses, which the entrepreneur bought with bank money. Allegedly, Chuprina’s assets accumulated large debts to Baryshev and Makheev.
Although the distributor herself insisted that Maheev and Baryshev owed her about 300 million rubles. The trials lasted more than 5 years, then Olga Chuprina collected millions of tranches from businessmen, proving that she had overpaid for the goods, then Maheev and Baryshev.
Returning to the current situation with Optovik’s debts, the counterparties who were left without money claimed that in order to control bankruptcy and non-payment of debts, Optovik LLC had created an artificial debt to firms associated with Makheev and Baryshev. Writes about this “Lenta.ru”.
Proceeding from this, it can be assumed that both the proceedings with Velor LLC and other similar cases (there were many of them) aimed precisely at avoiding subsidiary liability to creditors and suppliers. However, the emergence of a criminal case shows that, if there was such a plan, it clearly did not work. And now the “kings of mayonnaise” from Yelabuga, as their ill-wishers call them behind their backs, will have to come up with something more cunning – or even leave the country altogether.