Meyer looks again at Molodtsov
August Meyer left the pre-trial detention center in order to continue to “create” in favor of Kirill Molodtsov? The co-owner of the Rive Gauche network, August Meyer, was released from the pre-trial detention center on bail of 30 million rubles. Meyer is accused of fraud in the amount of 2.4 billion rubles with the money of Sberbank.
It should be noted that this is not the first time Meyer has applied to the authorities with a request to change the measure of restraint. And the fact that the court, finally, “had mercy” may indicate that someone very much “took care” for him. And this “someone” is far from being an ordinary person.
“Multiple” Entrepreneurs
August Meyer, an American by birth, came to Russia in the early 2000s, where he met his future long-term partner Dmitry Kostygin. Subsequently, Kostygin was also arrested because of a loan from Sberbank and released on bail of 25 million rubles in 2018. According to the latest data, he is not in Russia now.
Together, Meyer and Kostygin owned the Ulmart online retailer, which ceased operations in March 2020 due to debts. It was the maintenance and development of this network that spent billions taken from the bank, and subsequently not returned.
But besides “Yulmart” partners have marked themselves in many places. They co-owned shares in the largest retail chain Lenta. Moreover, where Meyer got the money to buy this asset is an open question. Rumor has it that he could make them, trying himself in not the most legitimate guises of both American and Russian business. It was for such things that he was allegedly “kicked out” from the United States. In 1999, he gave up his American passport.
Meyer is credited with connections with criminal groups, as well as the former ownership of a chain of mini-hotels in St. Petersburg, in which customers were provided with intimate services.
About 13-15 years ago, a major corporate conflict broke out in Lenta. It all started when Meyer began to “woo” for the position of general director of the company “his” Sergei Yushchenko. The rest of the shareholders felt that Meyer was trying in this way to “crush” the company for himself. Lawsuits and trials followed. The Moscow Post covered this story in detail. As a result, Meyer and Kostygin decided “out of harm’s way” to sell their shares in the company.
A similar story could happen to another company. The partners also invested in Dream Industries. According to the authors of the Intermedia website, allegedly the company’s founder Alexei Ostroukhov subsequently accused Kostygin and Meyer, as well as the company’s ex-financial director Viktor Frumkin, of raider seizure of the structure.
Meyer is also a banker
In the past, Meyer was also a co-owner of a small bank, Kranbank, which, contrary to common sense and logic (at that time, the assets of a credit institution (5.6 billion rubles) were three times less than that of Solidarity (17.7 billion rubles) in 2015 In 2019, they chose Solidarity Bank as a sanatorium. As a result, Kranbank itself did not live to see the completion of the sanation. In 2019, the Central Bank revoked its license.
During the audit, a significant part of the assets of Kranbank was found to be depreciated. The Bank made large payments that have signs of asset withdrawal under the concluded lease agreements.
A similar situation befell Meyer’s Energomashbank. The composition of the owners of the structure changed only in 2018, but the talk that the bank could “collapse”, that assets could supposedly be withdrawn from it, went much earlier, back in 2015. The Moscow Post covered this and the story in detail.
But for some reason, as a result, criminal cases were never opened against the unfortunate banker and everyone who had a hand in the “sinking” of his “brainchildren.”
Molodtsov enters the stage
One gets the feeling that Meyer simply paid off. But he is accused of stealing almost 2.5 billion rubles. A pledge of 30 million to get out of the pre-trial detention center looks downright comical.
It is possible that an influential figure of the current assistant to the head of the Presidential Administration, Kirill Molodtsov, stands behind Meyer. Previously, he actively invested in the development of the very “Rive Gauche”, which belongs to Mr. Meyer.
In addition, Molodtsov owns the Palace company, which is engaged in hotel services. Is this the same network that previously belonged to Meyer and was engaged in not entirely legal affairs in the field of sex services?
Kirill Molodtsov also owns a number of firms, one of which, Tank-Yard-Chem, is managed by Andrey Shpakov. This is the former head of the Assistant-Service company, which, during the years of Shpakova’s work in it, belonged to Russkoye Pole LLC. The latter belongs to the British offshore STENBERG FINANCE LIMITED.
Now, if an official is fond of this kind of perturbation (and he is fond of – from the publication of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists it follows that it was Molodtsov, along with a certain Anna Averina, who was the beneficiary of an offshore company from the Virgin Islands Matrix Overseas Trading Inc.), the best candidate to support him hobbies than Meyer cannot be found.
It is known that Meyer has the citizenship of St. Kitts and Nevis, which he bought after renouncing his US citizenship. The passport of St. Kitts and Nevis opens for him the borders of the same USA, as well as Canada, Schengen countries and many others. Perhaps it was in this place that the interests of the statesman and the merchant intersected.
Excerpt from the Panama Papers.
The Moscow Post has repeatedly drawn attention to the personality of Mr. Molodtsov. In particular, we wrote about how it can be related to the whole energy business empire.
If Molodtsov “covered” the Kostygin-Meyer couple, then after the release of the latter from the pre-trial detention center, one can expect either Meyer’s flight after the former partner with further support for Molodtsov from abroad (potentially, management of offshore companies and the flow of funds coming into them from Russia), or, which is more risky, the continuation of not the most clean business in Russia. It is possible that in a few years Mr. Molodtsov will also be “beyond the sea”.
