On the eve of the elections, the governor of Kuzbass continues the redistribution of coal assets
The Alexievskaya mine, which went bankrupt back in 2017, continues to be in the focus of attention of the Kemerovo tax authorities: the Federal Tax Service is trying in court to prevent the purchase of its assets by the Kuzbassrazrezugol company bypassing the bidding procedure. Earlier, the tax authorities filed a lawsuit to recover 1.7 billion rubles in losses from the mine’s creditors, including Ugletrans LLC and one of its top managers, Yuri Sazonov, who is considered the author of the scheme to withdraw the company’s finances. As it turned out, offshore structures controlled by him bought up more than 90% of the coal produced and then resold it at a mark-up that reached 100%. Sazonov was considered a person close to the head of Kuzbass, Sergei Tsivilev, with whose support a fraudulent scenario could be implemented. However, Moscow confused all the cards for creditors and their patrons: Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, who arrived in Kemerovo, was forced to deal with wage arrears to the miners of Aleksievskaya. Then Tsivilev promised to intensify the process of selling the mine, eventually involving his longtime business partners, the Ural oligarchs Iskander Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev, in it.
The Federal Tax Service does not give Aleksievskaya to Makhmudov?
The Federal Tax Service challenged the decision of the meeting of creditors in court JSC Aleksievskaya Mine on the direct sale of his property complex for 35 million rubles enterprise “Kuzbassrazrezugol” (included in the structure Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company) Iskandar Mahmudov and Andrey Bokarev. Earlier, Kommersant reported that the tax authorities did not agree with the cancellation of the bidding procedure that had taken place. Meanwhile, the assets of the mine have already been put up for auction as a single complex at least six times, but no one was willing to buy it.
For some time now, Aleksievskaya has become a real headache for the leadership of Kuzbass and the governor personally. Sergei Tsivilev. The mine suffered losses for several years and went bankrupt in November 2017. Claims for 29.2 billion rubles. Also declared bankrupt UK “Zarechnaya”the structure of which included “Aleksievskaya”.
To date, the mine is controlled by five legal and 14 individual creditors. The main one is OOO“Ugletrans” (at one time redeeming debt obligations from Gazprombank and “Rostec”), with which all others are affiliated, including companies Tekhshakhtoprom, Trade House “Avangard” and “Sibshakhtmontazh”. According to the Rusprofile portal, Ugletrans has been in a state of bankruptcy since July 18, and a monitoring procedure has been introduced at the enterprise. Bankruptcy proceedings have been introduced in Sibshakhtmontazh LLC.
Businessmen are the official owners of Ugletrans Andrey Filippov and Ilya Gavrilov. However, from publications in the media it follows that the Aleksievskaya and Zarechnaya mines are actually under control Yuri Sazonov – a person allegedly close to the head of the region, Tsivilev, who officially holds the position of deputy general director of the main creditor enterprise.
Unrecorded billions of Yuri Sazonov
Sazonov’s name appears in the statement of claim of the Federal Tax Service, sent to arbitration last March in order to recover 1.7 billion rubles losses from Aleksievskaya’s creditors. His young daughter is also among the defendants in the lawsuit. Elizabethin favor of which ten properties were alienated in 2018, previously owned by her father, including several apartments and land plots.
As established by the tax authorities, in the process of bankruptcy proceedings, creditors applied a new business model, which consisted in separating the processes of coal mining, its enrichment and subsequent sale to “risky” and “risk-free” parts. Some types of production activities turned out to be brought into affiliated structures. The role of the mines themselves was reduced solely to the extraction of coal, and the volume of production went out of control of their management through the conclusion of unprofitable deals with Ugletrans, Trading House Avangard and Sibshakhtmontazh.
As a result of the use of such schemes, Aleksievskaya and Zarechnaya continued to be unprofitable, despite the official increase in coal production. Thus, according to Kommersant, in 2018, production at Aleksievskaya increased by more than 18 times compared to 2017. At the same time, its losses amounted to 225.3 million rubles.
As for sales, in 2018 and three quarters of 2019, 5.23 million tons of coal were exported, the cost of which was estimated at 20.5 billion rubles. The buyer of 92.6% of the total exported volume was a company registered in Cyprus “Energy System EQ”one of the co-owners of which, as established by the Federal Tax Service and Rosfinmonitoring, is Yury Sazonov, who is close to the governor.
According to publications in the press, the unprofitability of mines is explained simply: a top manager buys up products for next to nothing, then resells them at a 50 or even 100 percent mark-up through affiliated structures (of which, as we could see, there are plenty registered). The resulting profit is deposited in foreign accounts. It can be at least 5.5 billion unaccounted for rublestaxes from which, of course, the Russian budget did not receive.
And let Moscow pay its debts!
Thus, the activity of the tax authorities becomes understandable. As for Sazonov, in one of his interviews he stated literally the following:
It is significant that this was said last March, when the crisis at the same “Aleksievskaya” entered a new acute phase, and the degree of social tension began to reach its maximum. Recall that in early March, during a visit to Kemerovo, the focus Mikhail Mishustin turned out to be the issue of repayment of 196 employees of the mine wage arrears that exceeded 200 million rubles.
Shortly before this, the desperate miners sent appeals to the president, the State Duma and the Federation Council with a call to intervene in the situation. Bankruptcy manager became a defendant in a criminal case on non-payment of wages Vladimir Maksimov: as follows from the report of the regional Investigative Committee, he preferred to spend the funds intended for the payment of salaries “to other areas of the enterprise”.
Where did Yury Sazonov and other “benevolent creditors” look when they worked tirelessly to restore the full-fledged work of the coal mining enterprise? The answer suggests itself: with the tacit support of Tsivilev, they continued to implement the “new business model”, earning billions on the “left” sale of coal through offshore structures.
The Prime Minister discussed the problem of wage arrears with Governor Tsivilev. He complained to the Moscow guest for a long time that the unprofitable mine was not for sale and promised “talk to the miners”, “that they actively participate in its acquisition”. It is a pity, but at the same time the head of the region did not remember his own family. After all, as you know, the property of his wife Anna Tsivileva there is a 70% stake in a large coal mining holding “Colmar”which is led by the official’s brother Valery Tsivilev.
In turn, the head of the Cabinet stressed that the government will send to the region the finances necessary to pay the miners’ wage arrears.
Tsivilev “activates” the oligarchs
The fact that the federal center kept its promise and transferred the promised money was told by Sergei Tsivilev himself in early April. A week later, a message appeared on the website of the regional government: 88% of the former and current employees of the bankrupt mine – everyone who applied with a corresponding application – received their due payments.
In a word, thanks to the state! It is clearly not convenient for the Kremlin to heat up the situation on the eve of the elections. But the most interesting thing is that while Moscow was making every effort to solve the Kemerovo problem, a number of media outlets continued to publish materials in which Yuri Sazonov appeared to readers only as an “investor and creditor” who was “nightmare” by the tax authorities.
There were plenty of explanations why the issues of Aleksiyevskaya were forced to be resolved in the Kremlin: here are the debts left behind by the previous owner, and the ineffectiveness of the auction for the sale of the mine, and most importantly, the sharp collapse in coal prices in the western direction in the spring of 2019 and the increase in cost its transportation up to 91%. As a result, Ugletrans itself turned out to be bankrupt.
It is not clear just what is Sazonov’s genius? Is it in the ability to turn billions of frauds?
However, Sazonov has already played the role assigned to him, giving way to the real “sharks” of the coal mining business – Iskandar Mahmudov and Andrey Bokarev, whose Kuzbassrazrezugol, as mentioned above, intends to buy out the property of the mine without bidding. Apparently, the governor still kept his word given to the prime minister and activated the coal miners. The appearance of the Ural oligarchs in this story is clearly not accidental, and it would hardly have taken place without the “blessing” of Tsivilev.
The fact is that the family of the Kemerovo governor maintains long-standing commercial contacts with the owners UMMC: they owned 30% of the Kolmar company, bought out by Tsivilev in January 2018, thanks to which he became the controlling shareholder of the enterprise, after leaving for the civil service transferred to the property of his wife.
Shortly after the appointment of acting. Governor, Tsivilev signed a cooperation agreement with the General Director of UMMC Andrey Kozitsyn. And already in June 2019, he transferred 21 agricultural land plots with a total area of 467 hectares to coal companies. Most of them – 12 plots – went to Kuzbasrazrezuglu. Apparently, they decided to continue promising cooperation at the Aleksievskaya base, but then the tax authorities intervened in the process.
As for Sazonov, he can continue to complain about the failure of regional officials to comply with their obligations: the Moor, as they say, did his job. And on the eve of the autumn referendum, the head of the region definitely does not need new “miner’s” scandals.