Source Protection of the founder of the company Petropavlovsk intends to appeal the verdict. On December 5, the Basmanny Court of Moscow convicted the founder and former CEO of the Petropavlovsk gold mining company Pavel Maslovsky. The court found him guilty of committing a crime under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on an especially large scale) and sentenced him to 5 years and 6 months in prison to be served in a general regime correctional colony. The court also satisfied the civil claim from the injured party – Pokrovsky Rudnik JSC – and recovered 99.4 million rubles in favor of the company.
The criminal case against the businessman was initiated on December 23, 2020 by the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. A day later, he was detained, and on December 25, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow granted the request of the investigation to elect Maslovsky a measure of restraint in the form of detention. Since February 2022, the case has been considered on the merits in the Basmanny Court by Judge Evgenia Nikolaeva. The businessman maintained his innocence. Maslovsky's defense intends to appeal the verdict.
According to the plot of the criminal case, in 2018 Maslovsky was a member of the board of directors and was the beneficial owner of Pokrovsky Rudnik JSC. According to the investigation, he, being a person who has a significant impact on decision-making in the joint-stock company, and having organizational and administrative functions, together with his son Alexei Maslovsky, stole 99.4 million rubles from Pokrovsky Mine. by purchasing office space in Blagoveshchensk at an inflated cost. Maslovsky's son was put on the wanted list and arrested in absentia.
The businessman’s defense is sure that the court erroneously passed such a sentence, since the only action in which Pavel Maslovsky participated was a meeting of the board of directors of JSC Pokrovsky Mine on March 19, 2018, where four more members of the board took part in the voting, lawyers say .
They also note in their position (available at the disposal of Vedomosti) that Maslovsky did not participate in any events or circumstances in the implementation of the controversial transaction, and the transaction itself, in their opinion, was an ordinary commercial operation, but not a criminal act. In addition, the lawyers point out that two examinations, prepared at the request of the defense, confirmed not an overestimation, but an underestimation of the value of the transaction.
“The prosecution has not proved the qualifying sign of the incriminated act as “fraud,” the defense believes. The interrogated members of the board of directors, including the CEO of Pokrovsky Rudnik JSC in 2018, Biryukov, who signed the sale and purchase agreement, and employees of the joint-stock company testified that no one exerted any pressure on them, did not deceive, lawyers say. “Despite the criminal prosecution of Maslovsky at the time of testifying in court, they all confirmed that they consider the controversial transaction to be legal at the moment,” the defense said in a statement. /strong>
Registered in the UK, Petropavlovsk is one of the largest gold mining companies in Russia. The main enterprises of the company (“Pioneer”, “Malomyr”, “Albyn”) and the Pokrovsky Autoclave Hydrometallurgical Plant are located in the Amur Region. Petropavlovsk's revenue in the first half of 2021 under IFRS amounted to $351.9 million, net profit – $48.9 million (data for the full year were not published).
In 2020, between the management of Petropavlovsk and the largest shareholder the gold miner “Yuzhuralzoloto Group of Companies” (SGC) had a conflict. At the annual meeting in June 2020, shareholders, including YuGK, did not re-elect Petropavlovsk CEO Maslovsky to the board of directors. As a result, he left the company.
In November of the same year, Denis Aleksandrov, who had previously headed the gold mining company Highland Gold, was appointed CEO of Petropavlovsk. Around the same time, Petropavlovsk announced that it had selected KPMG to conduct an independent investigation into the transactions of the gold miner and its subsidiaries.
At the end of December 2020, Maslovsky was arrested and charged with embezzlement of 100 million rubles. “daughters” Petropavlovsk “Pokrovsky mine”. In January 2022, KPMG released its final investigation report, which identified a number of “problematic” transactions entered into by Petropavlovsk and its entities, primarily in the three-year period through August 2020, totaling $302.4 million.
In March 2022, Petropavlovsk faced an inability to sell gold and pay its loans due to Western sanctions against Gazprombank, the company's main creditor and buyer of gold. In April, the bank demanded early repayment of the obligations from Petropavlovsk, and soon transferred the rights of claim on them to the new creditors UMMC and Nordic. In July, external managers were appointed to Petropavlovsk, i.e., insolvency proceedings were launched, and trading in the company's securities on the London and Moscow stock exchanges was also stopped.
As a result, UMMC bought the assets of Petropavlovsk, the deal was closed September. The company received approximately £166m in cash, including £6m in external management funding and £3m in contingencies, as well as funds to settle with the company's Eurobond holders (including accrued interest) of approximately $201m.
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