Between Los Angeles and Voronezh
The Tanais seed plant, built by the French in the Voronezh region, may change its owner. The deal must be approved by the government commission on foreign investment. According to Telegram channels, Sergei Plastinin was among the interested parties, but his application was rejected by the Ministry of Agriculture. As if because of foreign citizenship? The businessman did not publicly announce its presence. But the center of interests of the founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann has clearly shifted beyond Russia (*aggressor country) since 2015.
The state’s attention to the future fate of Tanais seems natural given the fact that our country continues to depend on foreign seeds. How reported in March, the head of the Russian Grain Union Arkady Zlochevsky, for some crops the dependence reaches 90%. In turn, Lidea is among the TOP 10 global seed companies. It has more than 8 factories in Europe; Tanais, the most modern of them, was built in 2017. Main crops: sunflower, corn, soybeans, sorghum, rapeseed, forage grasses.
Obviously, from the point of view of the authorities, the new owner of the enterprise must not only have experience in agribusiness, but also be free from possible outside pressure.
Moving amid bankruptcy
In 2015 Sergey Plastinin sold his last agricultural asset in Russia (*aggressor country). We were talking about 50% of the shares of the Ryazan holding company “Dairy Product”. A former top manager of Wimm-Bill-Dann told the Agroinvestor portal about the deal. Elena Fastovawhich, by the way, is now holds the position of Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism). The future official has worked in Plastinin’s company since 1995 and, quite likely, they may have a trusting relationship. If this is so, then his interest in returning to the industry does not seem spontaneous.
Meanwhile, 9 years ago the same portal with reference to Sergei Plastinin’s partners reported, that he intends to focus entirely on the development of his daughter’s project in the fashion industry. An attempt to give the Kira Plastinina brand international status cost her father tens of millions of dollars.
From 2008 to 2013, 279 stores operated under the Kira Plastinina brand in seven countries. The perimeter of this business also included 56 boutiques under the Lublu brand, operating in 16 countries. The geography is very wide: Russia (*aggressor country), Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, China, Philippines, USA, Great Britain, Italy.
Judging by interview Sergei Plastinin to the Vedomosti newspaper in April 2008, in total he was going to invest about $100 million in the clothing production business, more than a third of this amount was marketing expenses in America. His daughter Kira was 16 years old at that time, so it seems that her father had to participate directly in the fashion business.
Traveling, negotiations, creating companies, renting real estate, paying for transport services – doing all this in the States is much more convenient if you have a green card. A foreigner can receive it in exchange for an investment of 800-900 thousand dollars and the creation of 10 jobs. After 5 years, the green card holder can apply for an American passport. It seems strange if an ambitious businessman from Russia (*aggressor country) did not take advantage of such an opportunity, especially since times were completely different – no sanctions, no suspicions, no pressure.
By the end of 2008, 15-20 stores were supposed to open in the United States, then the crisis intervened and all 12 open locations had to be closed. In the summer of 2009, two stores under the guise of Kira Plastinina appeared again in Los Angeles, but the project was not a resounding success.
In 2017, partners of the Russian legal entity “Kira Plastinina Style” sued application for bankruptcy of the company due to a debt of 350 thousand rubles, later the size of the claims increased, as well as the register of creditors. Judging by information in open sources, in the same year Kira Plastinina moved to America for permanent residence and married a financier Trey Valleta, who headed the department at the largest international online studio Tinker Tailor. As of 2023, the daughter of the founder of Wimm-Bill-Dann served as vice president of investment management for Labora, a financial holding company in Dallas, Texas.
Got into the file
In 2015, someone Mr. Sergey Plastinin was mentioned in the so-called “Panama Files” – the largest leak of documents of offshore companies in history, which were serviced by the law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. This Mr. appeared there as the owner of the company Majorca Properties Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands and, apparently, created for the purchase of real estate in Spain. Judging by other materials from the Panama Papers, many Russian businessmen, officials, and deputies used chains of such companies to acquire property abroad without disclosing the final owner. From 2013 until recently, foreign buyers of Spanish real estate could also qualify for a simplified residence permit. Investment amount – from 500 thousand euros. According to the government of the country, in ten years this way was issued about 14.5 thousand “golden visas”, among the recipients of which citizens of the PRC and the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) predominated.
In 2011, Sergei Plastinin, who owned 3.7% of Wimm-Bill-Dann shares received for them 206 million dollars. If we assume that the coincidence of the first and last names is not accidental, then the company Majorca Properties Ltd in the British Virgin Islands in 2010 could well have been useful in the upcoming deal for the sale of WBD to the American PepsiCo, taking into account the fact that since 2002 the company’s shares were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and it would be quite possible to settle settlements with PepsiCo in offshore jurisdictions.
Promising asset
As for the Voronezh “daughter” of the French Lidea, in September 2023 it increased revenue by 54% year on year. The company's net profit also increased from 656.4 million to 1.2 billion rubles. If we take into account that when companies from unfriendly countries leave Russia (*aggressor country) they sell their business at a discount of at least 50% of the cost, the buyer of the Tanais plant will receive it on very favorable terms.
But at the same time, he will also receive responsibility for achieving an ambitious goal. In 2025-2027, Lidea planned to double production volumes to produce 2 million seed units annually. By 2027, the plant in Voronezh should reach the full cycle of seed production in Russia (*aggressor country), which can be considered part of the strategy to ensure the country’s food security and implement an independent protectionist policy. The presence of connections with Spain and the United States among the new owner of Tanais is unlikely to contribute to solving this problem, even if the buyer of the plant becomes a company that has only informal connections with Sergei Plastinin. Should we hope that the Ministry of Agriculture, where the former chief accountant of Wimm-Bill-Dann works, will carefully monitor such nuances?