Who puts Varshavsky’s finances “into business”, and what does Timofey Kurgin have to do with it?
Does Timofei Kurgin, an accomplice in the murder of deputy Sergei Skorochkin, remain an “authorized person” of Vadim Varshavsky, who is in jail?
According to the correspondent of The Moscow Post, the prosecutor’s office demands to recover almost 500 million rubles from the well-known businessman, former State Duma deputy Vadim Varshavsky. The oversight agency appealed to the court, stating that the specified amount should be recovered as compensation for damages to the state from non-payment of taxes. In 2019, the businessman was found guilty of concealing the income tax of the Rostov Metallurgical Plant, for which he received three and a half years in prison. Later, he received another sentence, already in a different case.
Spiteful critics claim that it is allegedly worth looking for funds from Timofey Kurgin, a businessman involved in the murder of deputy Sergei Skorochkin. The same gossips spread ridiculous rumors that Kurgin can manage Varshavsky’s affairs while he is in captivity. Meanwhile, Novaya Gazeta directly called Timofey Kurgin an authorized person who was dealing with the Varshavsky problem.
Back in December of the year before last, the court found Vadim Varshavsky guilty of tax evasion on an especially large scale. According to the prosecution, being the general director of LLC Rostov Electrometallurgical Plant (the city of Shakhty, Rostov Region), Mr. Varshavsky instructed the chief accountant of the enterprise to enter deliberately false information into the tax return for 2014, which led to an underestimation of the taxable base for income tax. Now is it time to pay the bills?
And the time is not easy for Varshavsky: only in this case he will receive 3.5 years in prison. In September of this year, the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow also found Vadim Varshavsky guilty of fraud on an especially large scale, for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In the meantime, in the wild, he should have had a bunch of things to do. In the same Rostov region, Vadim Varshavsky owned the Russian Pork pig breeding complexes, but he is better known as the founder of the Estar metallurgical group of companies (it included about a dozen enterprises in Russia and abroad, including Zlatoust, Nytvensky, Guryevsky, Rostov and Donetsk metallurgical plants). And it was in connection with “Estar” that the name of Timofey Kurgin came up in his biography at one time.
The fact is that in the middle of the tenth bankers stopped lending to a group of companies, which by that time had accumulated a lot of debts, and then foreign accounts were completely blocked.
Vadim Varshavsky’s attempts to solve problems that suddenly arose seem to have led him to the right people. It is not known under what circumstances, but he got along with former boxer Timofey Kurgin. He was closely associated with the Ananiev brothers, the owners of Promsvyazbank. Now both brothers are hiding abroad, and in Russia they are suspects in several criminal cases of embezzlement and especially large-scale fraud, Kommersant wrote.
Vadim Varshavsky
As Forbes stated in 2016, 49% of the Russian Forest Group went to Timofey Kurgin, who at the end of 2012 was called by the bankers to consolidate assets, restructure debts and resolve all conflicts.
Bound by the same past
And it seems no coincidence that such a company has gathered around Kurgin. It should be noted that Kurgin himself was involved in the murder of deputy Sergei Skorochkin.
Recall that in the archives, the lawyers of The Moscow Post found about 40 volumes on the criminal case of Kurgin. According to the documents, deputy Sergei Skorochkin was first kidnapped and then killed 25 years ago. The defendant in the case was Teimuraz Kurgin, who was able to escape punishment due to his minority, although he was found guilty under three articles.
The case dragged on for a long time. Then the term expired, Kurgin was released, changed his name and began a new life. But the lawyers of The Moscow Post asked to add to the case two early publications in the press – in the Kommersant newspaper and on the RIA Novosti website, as well as an SD-disk with the NTV film, 23rd edition of “The Life and Death of Deputy Skorochkin” (05/19/2000 d.) and a film from the series “Criminal Russia” “How Deputy Skorochkin was killed”.
However, Kurgin was not convicted in this case. And after that, apparently, he decided to “wipe” information about this fact of his biography on the network. The Moscow Post told in detail how the journalists of the publication sued Timofey Kurgin because of the texts published in 2016. But later, Mr. Kurgin wanted to remove new investigations as well. His interests are represented by Danila Pashutkin, a native of the FMG Group who joined A-PRO.
Bureau A-PRO, on the other hand, filed lawsuits with the Moscow City Court for the protection of the rights of authors who are not authors. As a result, both the editors themselves and the journalists were not aware that proceedings were underway regarding the published materials. This becomes known when investigations are already blocked. But even that doesn’t matter, because the courts can go on for years, and the publication remains blocked until a new court decision.
On the website of the courts of general jurisdiction of the city of Moscow, it is now easy to find more than a dozen applications, during which texts about Kurgin were blocked. And not only he appears in them, but, among other things, Mr. Varshavsky, whom we know.
Where’s the money?
In particular, they relate to the history of Mechel. In 2017, the same Rostov Electrometallurgical Plant (REMZ), controlled by Warsaw, tried to recover 12.7 billion rubles in losses from Mechel. The essence of Varshavsky’s claims was that in 2009-2013, while the Estar group of companies was in the operational management of Mechel, the Rostov plant entered into unprofitable contracts.
Mechel refuted all the accusations, assuring that transactions with the enterprise were carried out exclusively on market terms, and REMZ was not under the control of the holding. In addition, in 2011, Mechel issued a loan to the Estar Group for more than $900 million, and in 2017 the debt was recognized as irrecoverable.
What does Mr. Kurgin have to do with it? He, according to unconfirmed information, allegedly put pressure on Promsvyazbank to bankrupt Mechel.
Indeed, in the same 2016, Promsvyazbank PJSC announced its intention to bring businessman Igor Zyuzin, the Mechel metallurgical holding, to subsidiary liability for the obligations of Nytva OJSC (Perm Territory), Kommersant wrote. The manager of Nytva, at the request of creditors, is already trying through the court to develop a number of transactions of companies close to Mechel. Could they work together?
It is noteworthy here that Promsvyazbank did not seem to be in a hurry to demand money from Varshavsky himself. As a result, Varshavsky was covered by a bankruptcy case opened by Trust, a bank of non-core assets that deals with loans issued to Varshavsky’s companies in 2014-2016. “Promsvyazbank”, which subsequently moved to the balance sheet of AvtoVAZbank, attached to the “Trust”. The total amount of Varshavsky’s debt to Trust exceeded 8 billion rubles, but eventually decreased to 4.3 billion rubles.
It is not yet very clear how Mr. Varshavsky will pay them – in August of this year, the businessman’s bankruptcy procedure was launched. But there may still be “gunpowder in the flasks” – after all, Varshavsky was a big businessman at one time, and, given his likely proximity to Promsvyazbank, it is possible through Kurgin that he could theoretically have a “stash”.
If it exists, then it is possible that the task of preserving it lies with Kurgin. While Varshavsky is in the dungeons of a pre-trial detention center, and the Ananyevs are on the run, he is actively expanding his business. For example, The Moscow Post recently wrote about his likely increase in forest assets through the same “Russian Forest Group”, in which scandalous bankers also shone.
So Kurgin can now actively use the funds of the ex-deputy Varshavsky and fugitive bankers? Well, in this case, it is unlikely that the prosecutor’s office will be able to get the desired half a million rubles from Varshavskoye – after all, the money is probably already “working”.