In Moscow, the court recovered 10.9 billion rubles. from the former deputy chairman of the board of VEB, Anatoly Ballo, having fully satisfied the claim of the state corporation against its former top manager. The company sought compensation for damages caused by a crime in which Mr. Ballo was a participant. The corresponding claim was satisfied a year after the criminal prosecution for embezzlement of VEB’s money was terminated against the financier due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
The Khoroshevsky District Court of Moscow fully satisfied the claims of the state corporation VEB, recovering 10.9 billion rubles from the former deputy chairman of the organization Anatoly Ballo. The amount recovered from the former top manager is equal to the damage in the criminal case of embezzlement (part 4 of article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), in which Anatoly Ballo was a defendant.
Recall that in February 2022, the Meshchansky District Court terminated the proceedings in this case due to the expiration of a ten-year statute of limitations.
As previously reported by Kommersant, Anatoly Ballo and Alexander Lepikhov, the founder of the timber processing enterprise JV Arkaim, were accused of embezzling 10.9 billion rubles. using official position. This money was allocated by VEB in the form of a credit line, first for the launch and development of Arkaim, and then for its rescue from bankruptcy. At the time of the start of financing, the enterprise was one of the largest woodworking factories in the Khabarovsk Territory and in 2008 received the status of an innovative project at the federal level. Four years later, in the Khabarovsk settlement of Oktyabrsky, a complex of four timber processing plants with a capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters was launched. m round log per year.
In total, it was planned to build six such plants, and the total cost of the ambitious project amounted to 14.3 billion rubles, in which the lion’s share – 11.5 billion rubles – fell on the credit line of VEB.
However, the idea turned out to be a failure: soon the debts of Arkaim were measured in hundreds of millions of rubles, and the procedure for monitoring was introduced at the enterprise, and then external management. Attempts to revive the project by attracting investors or creating a timber processing holding, which was supported by the then Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal, did not bring results.
Moreover, as follows from the materials of the criminal case, Anatoly Ballo and Alexander Lepikhov stole almost all the credit funds allocated by the state corporation.
After representatives of VEB filed a complaint with law enforcement agencies, Anatoly Ballo, who had already moved to work at Promsvyazbank, and his accomplice were detained. On June 3, 2021, they were charged with embezzlement. Moreover, for the financier Ballo, this was already the second criminal case. In 2011, he was accused of abuse in issuing a loan in the amount of $14 million to VEB’s subsidiary, Eurasian OJSC. However, the involvement of the banker in the scam as a result was not established by the investigation – in July 2015, his criminal prosecution was stopped.
