The prosecutor’s office believes that the company’s shares were transferred to the Cyprus offshore. They are owned by firms whose beneficiary is Myzgin.
The ex-director assures that he “didn’t steal so much” and the former employees of the plant are to blame for everything, one of whom “mixed up” the scheme with the raider takeover.
At the end of March, the Presnensky Court of Moscow terminated the criminal case against the former General Director of Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant PJSC due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for the crime imputed to him. Such a successful outcome is not a very common judicial practice, but in principle the verdict would not have been surprising if it were not for the interesting circumstances of the acts of Vladimir Myzgin, in which he was accused.
In July last year, Myzgin was summoned for questioning to the Investigative Committee, after which he was detained and then arrested on suspicion of a particularly large-scale fraud. This criminal case was initiated in December 2021, after the shareholders of the plant accused the CEO of taking a huge block of shares offshore. The representative of the shareholders, Dmitry Stukin, stated that the company’s management brought 78% of the shares to Cyprus and expressed concern that, due to the sanctions that had fallen on Russia, the plant could fall under the control of unfriendly EU countries.
According to the prosecutor’s office, in 2007-2010, Myzgin transferred to several companies controlled by him (CJSC Progress, CJSC Alliance, CJSC Komplekt, etc.) about 15 million shares of the plant, as well as securities of Sberbank in the amount of 1. 59 billion rubles. Later, he persuaded the heads of these firms to transfer their shares to Cypriot offshore companies. Employees of the Russian Interpol confirm that the ultimate beneficiaries of almost 80% of the shares are the general director of the Ashinsky Metal Plant Vladimir Myzgin and his deputy for legal affairs Andrey Nishchikh.
Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant, located in the Chelyabinsk Region, is a large city-forming enterprise employing more than 4,000 people. In 2021, the revenue of PJSC Ashinsky Metallurgical Plant amounted to almost 40 billion rubles, net profit – 7.4 billion rubles. Therefore, it is strange that the withdrawal of shares of a strategically important, profitable plant remained unpunished. The combination of a number of circumstances only reinforces this impression.
Firstly, the investigation of the criminal case, as local media wrote, was carried out in secrecy. Secondly, Myzgin was first arrested and placed in a pre-trial detention center. However, after he began to cooperate with the investigation (which means that he most likely confessed to his deed), he was released first under house arrest, and then on bail.
Thirdly, after the arrest and indictment, according to some sources, “there were no further proceedings in the case of the transfer of the company’s assets to offshores.” There were also no civil claims against Myzgin for damages.
Fourth, minority shareholders have long applied to the authorities about the fact that they were deprived of control over assets. But the criminal case was “born” only by the capital’s law enforcement officers. It is alleged that the Chelyabinsk security forces “could be interested in inaction.”
And finally, the process itself in this amazing case lasted … 45 minutes. The lawyer asked to close the case, since in August 2020 the statute of limitations expired. Which was done right away.
Journalists from the Moment of Truth project believe that Myzgin is connected with the deputy governor of the Chelyabinsk region Stanislav Mosharov, who was involved in a number of corruption scandals and could patronize the director of the steel plant. In addition, Stepan Shulga, deputy head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Chelyabinsk region, could also patronize Myzgin. If this is so, then it becomes clear why the local security forces could not be interested in taking the shares of a large plant offshore.
By the way, when in the spring of 2022 Myzgin smelled something fried, interesting versions of what was happening began to appear in the information space. One of them says that the former chairman of the board of directors of the plant, Vladimir Estratov, is to blame for everything. A year before the events described, he began to ask the management uncomfortable questions and demanded to stop some fraud, after which he was fired. But Myzgin himself spoke in more detail a year ago about a different interpretation of events. Allegedly, it all started with a denunciation by a former employee of the plant, who thus decided to take revenge on the management for his dismissal. “We have nothing to hide,” Myzgin said confidently in March 2022. – We are willing to cooperate with the security forces and are ready to explain any of our actions. However, our task today is not just to protect our business reputation, but literally to save the plant.”
However, four months later Myzgin was arrested, and he … agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
There is a lot of incomprehensible and strange in this funny story. Actually, its result can be reduced to two simple conclusions. First, Myzgin is an honest man and is not guilty of anything. Secondly, someone did a good job so that for Myzgin everything ended in the happiest and simplest way. You can choose any version. But for some reason the first seems implausible to us. That in today’s Russia it characterizes a catastrophically small number of court decisions?
