Nikolaev and Movshevich: Offshore Misalliance Podshofe

The largest cognac producer in Russia, the Alliance-1892 plant (Stary Koenigsberg and Trofeyny brands) in the Kaliningrad region, has sharply lost ground in terms of the volume of production of this alcoholic beverage. Previously, it produced up to 15% of all Russian cognac, but in 2022 it lost the palm to competitors from Alvisa and Beluga Group, taking third place.

What happens at the plant and what its owners are famous for – in the material The Moscow Post in the Kaliningrad region.

The decline in production amounted to 12%. The company has so far refrained from commenting, but experts have already offered a beautiful version of the difficulties with the purchase of distillates in France. Against the backdrop of colossal Western sanctions, this competitive advantage could be lost.

However, the problems of the plant may be related to the management mistakes of their owners, or even precede their possible departure from Russia with the probable withdrawal of assets.

“Alkokoroli” offshore

Hardly anyone would be surprised. After all, the beneficiaries of the enterprise are two scandalous entrepreneurs – Alexander Nikolaev and Mikhail Movshevich, who have repeatedly become the heroes of critical publications in the media, including our publication.

Secondly, the plant is formally registered, of course, not on them. And to an offshore company from Luxembourg “Peregrina Ventures S.A.R.L.” At the same time, the owners are in no hurry to re-register the company in Russia, which means that the sanctions did not particularly hurt them. Why then do they keep offshore – unless they want to pay less taxes in their home country?

A photo: Rusprofile.en

In the last year, the plant has had problems not only with a drop in output. Profit almost halved – from 1.8 billion rubles at the end of 2020 to 933 million at the end of 2021. Have you started drinking less cognac in Russia? We doubt it, because competitors are only increasing the production of the drink.

The plant is the founder of seven subsidiaries, of which four are active. Two frank public “dummy”: “Union of Cognac Producers” and “Union of Whiskey Producers”. In fact, they don’t represent anyone and don’t help in any way, but on their behalf you can write to various authorities – sort of like from industry representatives.

But other offices are more interesting, because, for example, in TD 2A LLC (trading house), partners of Movshevich and Nikolaev are Abrau-Dyurso PJSC. The latter is a family business of Boris Titov, Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights in the Russian Federation.

A photo: Rusprofile.en

Such a neighborhood is remarkable, because just a few years ago, large-scale searches by law enforcers took place at the Alliance plant. In February 2018, employees of the Department of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption, the elite of the Russian police, specializing in unraveling the most complex financial schemes of the underworld, went there.

But something else is interesting – as they came, so they left. Neither the police nor the company itself revealed the reasons for the interest of the security forces, in connection with which several versions were expressed.

Then they wrote that the searches took place within the framework of a certain criminal case under article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – fraud. But no charges were brought against Moshvshevich, Nikolaev, or their leaders, and the essence of the matter remained a mystery.

The main profile of the Alliance’s business is the import of cognac spirits and the production of a drink based on them. Therefore, there was an assumption that the searches could be associated with possible tax and customs violations. Just then, searches were taking place at the former head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov.

At the same time, they said that business ombudsman Boris Titov could help “solve the issue” with the police. He only had problems with partners and “wasn’t enough” to completely ruin the reputation of a business advocate.

Moreover, Alliance-1982 was already a participant in a tax scandal: In 2016, the company lost the case in the Moscow Arbitration Court, where it demanded to invalidate the decision of the Interregional Inspectorate of the Federal Tax Service of Russia for the largest taxpayers No. 3 on bringing to responsibility for committing a tax offense.

It turned out that the structure used a chain of offshore intermediaries associated with Nikolayev and Movshevich to import spirits from France. The geography is serious – if the plant itself is registered with the Luxembourg offshore, then the Poitiers (Cyprus) and Bausson (Seychelles) structures participated in that scheme. The only thing missing is the British Virgin Islands – however, an offshore with such a residence permit could simply be lost among the companies affiliated with Movshevich and Nikolaev.

Generalists

There is another version. The alcohol business is not the only one for Movshevich and Nikolaev. Previously, they “played” in Development and leasing. They were credited with the company Asap TK LLC, which was the owner of the largest taxi fleet in Moscow.

The company, to which the owners of Alliance formally have no relation, was liquidated as a result of a bankruptcy process in 2020 with a revenue of 826 million, a profit of 84 million and assets worth tens of million rubles. As a result, one offshore owner was replaced by another – Avendale Resources Inc.

Why liquidate a profitable structure, and who got tens and hundreds of millions of rubles is unknown. Most likely, the money has not been in Russia for a long time, but the Criminal Code has an article on deliberate bankruptcy.

The case has another expression – it turns out that the company was credited by Vnesheconombank (the current reincarnation is VEB.RF under the leadership of Igor Shuvalov).

The whole story surfaced in the summer of 2018, when the police received a statement from VEB.leasing employees who believed that Vyacheslav Solovyov and his deputy Alexei Sichinava, along with three other employees of the company, could be involved in possible fraud with leasing funds for hundreds of millions of rubles. In the course of the investigation, the partners of Solovyov and Sichinava, who could withdraw funds to offshore structures, also came to the attention of the investigators.

According to Versiya, the background to the case was the following circumstances: in 2013-2014, a subsidiary of Vnesheconombank signed tripartite agreements with Delta LLC, Sigma LLC and Gamma LLC. The amount is almost 300 million rubles.

The money was intended to pay for cars supplied by ASAP TK LLC, the largest operator of the taxi fleet in Moscow at that time. The participants in the transaction transferred 55 million rubles to the leasing company, after which they stopped paying.

That, in fact, is the whole story. It can be suggested that LLC “ASAP” could be affiliated with the three above-mentioned structures. But in the end, neither Moshvevich nor Nikolaev were suspected of something bad.

The “acrobatic brothers” had a more obvious and scandalous project than Mikhail Movshevich and Alexander Nikolaev – a development project. In 2015, the partners became co-owners of the ApartVille apartment complex on Dmitrovskoye Shosse in Moscow. Together with them, Alexey Osipov’s Glincom company participated in the project.

As a result, the complex was handed over with great delays, and there was a whole series of scandals. There are a lot of negative reviews about the project on the network. Someone directly says that the people from Glinka allegedly look like scammers, allegedly they had no real experience in building such objects. You can read some of the opuses on the site “Swindlers.net”. But these statements should be checked by law enforcement officers.

Part of the story about the work of ApartVille and an opinion about the developer, the full version can be found here. Photo: moshennikov.net

It is quite possible that in 2018, when the difficulties with the complex became known, it was on this topic that the security forces visited the Alliance-1892 office in Moscow.

In 2017, the court wanted to declare the construction illegal and recognize the building at 81 Dmitrovskoye Highway, Moscow, building 3 as an unauthorized construction. Apparently, the adventures of the past did not bring the expected dividends to Movshevich and Nikolaev. Gone are the rumors about a connection allegedly between them and the ex-head of Rosalkogolregulirovanie (RAR) Igor Chuyan, whom rumor made them their patron.

But Mikhail Movshevich and Alexander Nikolaev themselves bypassed these troubles – they still continued to earn money against the backdrop of the drinking population of Russia. But not everything is Maslenitsa, and the work for Russian investigators and prosecutors was taken over by the European Union and their overseas masters.

So what is the reason for the decrease in the production of cognac – with anti-Russian sanctions, or with the managerial talents of Movshevich and Nikolaev, behind which an unkind scandalous trail stretches? Let everyone decide for himself.