Following the move of the Fuel For Growth fund to the UAE, Valery Kustov, the founder of the EFKO group, may also leave Russia.
As the correspondent of The Moscow Post reports, the EFKO Group of Companies has disseminated information in the media about the transfer of the headquarters of its venture capital fund Fuel For Growth to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Fuel For Growth venture capital fund of EFKO shareholders is known for investing in projects in the production of unmanned aerial vehicles, fuel cells and alternative products, including vegetable analogues of meat and milk. Apparently, EFKO is dreaming of organizing the production of alternative food products in the Emirates.
But, as it turned out, not everything is so simple. The experience of the EFKO Group in Russia has led to very mixed results. By the way, our publication has previously talked about this more than once.
Manipulation Above All
On February 14, Kommersant, citing representatives of the EFKO Group of Companies, announced the upcoming relocation of the headquarters of the Fuel For Growth venture fund to the UAE. The founder and head of the EFKO Group of Companies is Valery Kustov. Obviously, moving the headquarters of the Fuel For Growth fund is Kustov’s personal decision. Such an assumption suggests itself, based on the principles on which the EFKO group was built. Back in 2006, these principles were described in detail in Forbes.
As the publication informed, back in the early 2000s, Valery Kustov faced certain difficulties in organizing production in his native city of Alekseevka, Belgorod Region. Allegedly, the villagers did not want to listen to the boss’s suggestion and worked as they were used to. And then Valery Kustov, in order to establish team management, became interested in psychology, philosophy and sociology.
Valery Kustov
According to Forbes, on the instructions of Kustov, a group of Moscow specialists headed by Doctor of Psychology, Professor Nikolai Konyukhov went to the villagers. The group worked “in the field” for several months. To put it simply: the experts found out what weaknesses of people can be played on, so that the workers give all their best in working for the owner. Well, and thus brought maximum benefit to Valery Kustov.
However, studies have shown that material wealth and personal enrichment do not care much for the “contingent”. Kustov clearly did not expect such a development of events. But the respondents made it clear that they are strongly guided by the opinion of the society in which they lived. Many of them stubbornly did not want to “work for their uncle”, because they did not want to stand out from the crowd, which preferred not to bother themselves with anything special.
Kustov decided to play on this characteristic feature of the mentality of the villagers. He gave them the right to distribute the land rent fund. So that, they say, he did not fine or encourage, but people did it within their community. This did not help much, production figures increased slightly. But following the results of the experiment, Kustov decided to apply his experience in stimulating workers and manipulating their consciousness within the EFKO group.
Army of “biorobots”
In the EFKO Group of Companies, Valery Kustov decided to introduce new management principles. From now on, the most important thing for employees should not be “grandmothers”, but “the fate of the company”, which, translated into an understandable language, obviously means one thing – increasing the personal well-being of Valery Kustov.
Professor Konyukhov, who previously studied the manners of the villagers, became the deputy general director of the EFKO company and Kustov’s right hand. At the suggestion of Kustov and Konyukhov, specialists in psychocorrection and psychophysiology, graduates of specialized universities, filled up the EFKO personnel service. It seems that from that moment on, the manipulation of public opinion within the staff of the EFKO group was put on stream. Considering that the group employs about 7,500 people, it turns out that Valery Kustov has created a whole army of perfectly controlled fighters.
The comparison with the army in this case is not at all accidental. Forbes notes that a candidate for a particular position underwent psychodiagnostics, after which he went for training at the Liman training center, 10 km from Alekseyevka. There, for a month, the “young fighter” got up at 6 am and went to bed at 10 pm. In the meantime, he did not sleep, the “fighter” attended a course of lectures on psychology and other subjects, studied corporate culture.
It would seem that it’s okay, it resembles ordinary military training. However, the personal impressions of those who experienced this drill in their own skin provide more food for thought.
“In EFKO, management methods are sometimes unnecessarily cruel. The company is dominated by a “cult of personalities” and an instinctive fear of superiors. On the one hand, severe pressure, everything is always under the hood – total surveillance, denunciations. On the other hand, you always know that and why are you doing it,” a former employee of the company told Forbes on condition of anonymity. If you try to describe what is happening in the EFKO group with a simple word or expression, then you can, without fear of making a big mistake, use such a word as “sect” or a more precise definition – “totalitarian sect”.
With such an assessment, according to Life. They cite the words of Valery Kustov himself, who claims that he chooses people with a depressive reaction as managers. It turns out that people who have not found themselves in life, broken, with inner pain, more easily accept the specific corporate culture of the EFKO group and quickly “reflash”.
Dangerous palm tree
The founder of the EFKO Group, Valeriy Kustov, is also notable for being one of the main fans of imported palm oil in Russia. Life writes that the EFKO group may also be a leader in palm oil processing. In addition, the EFKO group owns a sea terminal on Taman (Krasnodar Territory), through which palm oil is imported to Russia. In the same place on Taman there is a plant of the EFKO group for the processing of this product.
Terminal of the EFKO Group for transshipment of palm oil (Taman, Krasnodar Territory).
According to the authors of the Versiya publication, in 2017 the Krasnodar Regional Court suspended the activities of Food Ingredients LLC (one of the structures of the EFKO group) transshipping palm oil through the port of Taman due to violation of environmental legislation. At the same time, up to 60% of the total volume of palm oil imported to Russia can pass through this terminal on Taman. An on-site inspection by the Department of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources in the Southern Federal District revealed numerous violations in the work of an enterprise of the EFKO group. Allegedly, the revealed violations cost the positions held by a number of officials of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and a number of other structures.
Meanwhile, it’s no secret that the consequences of constantly eating palm oil can be the most unpredictable. So, Life believes that the growth in consumption of palm oil in Russia and the growth in the number of oncological diseases are interconnected. For example, to remove the red color and neutralize the specific smell of palm oil, it is heated to 200 degrees, which allegedly leads to the formation of toxic glycidyl ethers – GE, which, according to a report by the European Food Safety Authority, can provoke the development of oncology.
Thus, the emergence of the EFKO Group in the UAE is a rather controversial event. There are even suggestions that, perhaps, after the opening of the headquarters of his foundation for permanent residence, Valery Kustov himself will move to this country.
It is also worth remembering that the UAE authorities have created various systems to protect the health of the population in the country. The standard of living in the Emirates (for example, in the emirate of Dubai) attracts many foreign citizens, including wealthy Russians. In this regard, the activities in the territory of this state of an organization associated with the processing of such a dubious product as palm oil, as well as practicing rather ambiguous forms of personnel management, can damage the reputation of the UAE leadership.