The fishing empire of Dmitry Dremlyuga, who escaped from Russia, can be reduced to “no”

The redistribution in the country’s fishing industry began to mature even before 2020, when the Government began to prepare a bill that threatened a large-scale redistribution of production quotas. The fishing sector was in a fever, up to lawsuits and bankruptcies of major market players.

Not so long ago it became known that the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia intends to confiscate property from the Primorye oligarch Dmitry Dremlyuga. The supervisory authority filed a lawsuit against the actual owner of Dalmoreprodukt, Khasanryba and other fishing companies in Primorye, demanding to recover more than 4 billion rubles and turn 198 real estate objects in Vladivostok and the Khasansky district into state revenue.

The lawsuit was filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office with the Frunzensky District Court of Vladivostok. In addition to Dremlyuga, the defendants in the lawsuit are his daughter Alena Dremlyuga, Tatyana Zhukova, the current founder of Zarubinskaya Fleet Base LLC, and Konstantin Zemlyanov, owner of Typhoon LLC. According to the supervisory authority, the defendants in the lawsuit were harvesting fish and crab illegally. As a result, the state suffered damage in the amount of 4.3 billion rubles.

In total, we are talking about the seizure in favor of the state of 229 objects of the Dremlyuga fish empire, 198 of which are various land plots, buildings and non-residential premises. This also includes the offices of Dalmoreprodukt in Vladivostok and the Zarubinsky base of the fleet in the Khasansky district. In addition, the defendants may lose all small and fishing vessels.

About the fate of the once large fishing companies a little later. Let’s see how it all started.

Dmitry Dremlyuga started his fishing business in 1997 not alone, but together with the son of not just anyone, but a high-ranking leader of one of the country’s strongest law enforcement agencies. Moreover, the future oligarch was married to the daughter of a patron. It is possible that such a relationship served as an impetus, and literally from the very first steps, the business went up steeply, turning into a fishing empire.

If we believe the messages from the forum of the official website of the Rosselkhoznadzor, the “moving up” was often carried out by not entirely legal methods, and the acquisition of companies was carried out at prices far from market prices. But one way or another, soon Dmitry Dremlyuga becomes the owner of Dalzavod. But not for long. The Accounts Chamber of Russia discovered the facts of “misuse of funds” by OJSC “Dalzavod”, and the businessman had to part with the enterprise. Mr. Dremlyuga was not very upset, since he had already managed to earn his millions.

Moreover, a plan was already prepared for the purchase of the Dalmoreprodukt fishing company, which had gone bankrupt by that time. We will not go into specifics unconfirmed by official sources. But in fact, before his disappearance from the country, Dmitry Dremlyuga owned the following companies: JSC Dalmoreprodukt, LLC Atlantica, LLC Zarubinskaya Fleet Base, LLC Insight, LLC Khasanryba, LLC Crab DV, LLC Typhoon, Aquaresurs-DV LLC.

At the same time, the promotion of the business was accompanied by numerous lawsuits, but, apparently, the patronage of the father-in-law allowed Dremlyuga to get away with it. But after the death of the patron in 2010, everything changed, and the fish oligarch hurried to leave Russia the same year, running away from several criminal cases initiated against him at once. Some time after fleeing abroad, Mr. Dremlyuga decided to transfer his assets to the control of Russian structures, anticipating further lawsuits. And so it happened. Since 2016, on the initiative of the allegedly Russian management companies of Dremlyuga, arbitrations have begun.

Passions boiled and boil not only around the fishing companies of Dmitry Dremlyuga.

Since 2018, former partners of the Norebo group Vitaly Orlov and Alexander Tugushev have been suing. The latter filed a lawsuit in the High Court of England and Wales, accusing the former partner of fraudulently taking over his stake in the business, which is now worth $1.5 billion.

Vitaly Orlov owns a fishing business: the key company of Norebo Holding, Karat, at that time produced 11% of all fish products in our country, 60% of the catch was exported to other countries. It is interesting that a graduate of the Murmansk sailor in a fairly short time became in fact the “king of the sea”. More about this was previously written by “Version”.

The profitability of the fishing business attracts even ex-officials. Recently, Versiya told how a company close to the family of ex-Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev bought the Kamchatka fishing company Vityaz-Avto from the former owner. This is one of the largest fishing enterprises in the Kamchatka Territory. The company is mainly engaged in catching sockeye salmon. Along the way, from the “red” produces pink salmon, from other types of fish – pollock, navaga, flounder, herring. In 2018, Vityaz-Auto built a pollock fillet and minced meat production plant as part of the investment quota program.

The other day, our pages also published material on how Sberbank is trying to bankrupt one of the main fishing and fish processing companies in Kamchatka – the Sokra plant. The purpose of bankruptcy may be to gain control over the Far East enterprise.

This is only a small part of what is happening in the country’s fishing industry.

But back to Dmitry Dremlyuga. At the beginning of 2016, Dalmoreprodukt (DMP) was not immediately allowed to fish for pollock in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The reason was the suspicion of the Federal Agency for Fishery that the company is owned and operated by a foreign owner. So it was originally. DMP was owned by the Singapore company DVS-R Pte. Ltd, 59.68% of which were in the hands of Dmitry Dremlyuga. In the summer of 2016, Mr. Dremlyuga brought Dalmoreprodukt out of control of the offshore company DVS-R Pte. Ltd, transferring 72.67% of shares to LLC Vladkonek registered in Vladivostok. The sole founder of Vladconek LLC was the director of Askania LLC, the daughter of businessman Alyona Dremlyuga, but in the latest quarterly report of the Holding Company, a certain Irina Zhukova is already listed as the owner of the LLC.

In June 2017, DMP filed a similar claim with the Moscow Arbitration Court against the FAS. Anti-monopoly officials also said that the DMP is still under the control of a foreign investor.

A little earlier, Dalmoreprodukt filed another lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court. It concerned the cancellation of the auction for lot No. 1 for the sale of the right to share the catch of king crab in the Primorye subzone, where the winner was Dremlyuga’s close Crab Marine LLC, because it is controlled by Alena Dremlyuga.

Dremlyuga & Co lost the arbitration battle, despite the fact that business assets had already been transferred under the control of Russian structures and individuals. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office proved that the defendants made formal changes in the authorized capital and changed the directors to create a false appearance of eliminating signs of control over them by a group of persons with the participation of Dremlyuga.

In May 2019, employees of the Federal Security Service of Russia in the Primorsky Territory conducted searches of companies controlled by Dmitry Dremlyuga. According to media reports, the searches were carried out as part of the case of smuggling of aquatic biological resources. The operatives found out that since 2013, Mr. Dremlyuga led a group of people who sold crab to the Asia-Pacific countries at low prices. The businessman then hid the money obtained by criminal means in his offshore companies in Panama.

At the same time, the businessman began trying to get out of the crab business, relying on other types of aquatic biological resources. To do this, he even purchased the world’s largest mother ship Damanzaihao from Pacific Andes. Dmitry Dremlyuga converted the former tanker for fish processing. But first, the businessman snatched the mother ship from the arrest of the Peruvian authorities, where she was placed “in connection with the alleged illegal fishing of aquatic biological resources.” Rumor has it that not without the help of the former governor of Primorye, Sergei Darkin, now the owner of PJSC “TIGR Fund” (“Pacific Investment Group”).

Then, in order to save Dalmoreprodukt, Mr. Dremlyuga leased all his ships, and also entered into contracts for the processing of raw materials. The scheme has been known for a long time. According to it, the fleet is not really transferred to the tenant, the tenant is needed only to provide the right to catch. The same team of the lessor works on the ship, which takes out all hzikhidtidekrt catch.

But no measures, as we see, saved either the businessman or his companies. The assets of Dmitry Dremlyuga began to actively buy up the ex-governor of Primorye Sergei Darkin. Mr. Dremlyuga’s share of control in the region’s fishing industry has shrunk to almost invisible proportions, and the main assets are steadily sinking: Dalmoreprodukt, Typhoon, and Zarubinskaya Fleet Base have already been declared bankrupt. And Khasanryba LLC will be completely liquidated.