Arkhyz criminal case. What will the personnel shake-up in the "Resorts of the North Caucasus" lead to? The money supply is dry
16:06 - REGNUM New CEO appointed to JSC "Resorts of the North Caucasus" (KSK). They became Hasan Timizhev, who joined the company in 2015 from the government of Kabardino-Balkaria, where he served as Deputy Minister economic development. Yesterday, December 11, his candidacy was approved at a meeting of the board of directors of the KSK, reported IA REGNUM in the press office of the company.
Ivan Shilov © IA REGNUM
The Board of Directors was also formed at yesterday's meeting. joint-stock company. Earlier, on November 22, at an extraordinary general meeting shareholders elected a new Board of Directors of the company. Yesterday they elected its chairman. He was the first deputy minister Russian Federation for the North Caucasus Odes Baisultanov. The Board of Directors, in accordance with the charter, exercises general management of the company's activities.
It is worth noting that Baisultanov is also the chairman of the board of directors of another company - the North Caucasus Development Corporation. The concentration of control functions over two such large companies in the same hands is apparently not accidental. Both were transferred in 2017 to the Ministry of North Caucasus Affairs. The activities of both the one and the other were repeatedly criticized and checked by the Accounts Chamber and law enforcement agencies. The other day, the Prosecutor General's Office sent the Minister for Affairs of the North Caucasus Federal District Lev Kuznetsov and General Director of the CRNC Sergei Kharitonov representation of the identified violations in the activities of the company.
The new Chairman of the Board of Directors expressed confidence that the North Caucasus Tourism Cluster project would be successfully developed thanks to an effective management system with the help of competent federal authorities. Baisultanov also immediately outlined the task for the members of the board - to the maximum high level spend the winter season at the Arkhyz resorts in Karachay-Cherkessia and Elbrus resorts in Kabardino-Balkaria, as well as launch the Veduchi resort in Chechnya.
Recall that the first head of the company was Ahmet Bilyalov who was accused of abuse of power. According to the investigative committee, more than 275 million rubles were stolen from the budget under his rule. In addition, during the Summer Olympic Games, more than 2 million rubles were spent on Bilalov's accommodation in a hotel in London, and more than 800 thousand rubles were spent on transportation costs. At the same time, it followed from the reporting documents that at the same time, during the same period, his accommodation in Krasnodar, St. Petersburg and Essentuki was paid for.
After Bilyalov, who fled from justice abroad, the leaders of the KSK at various times were Alexey Nevsky, Alek-say Sa-di-kov, Sergey Vereshchagin, Andrey Reznikov, Oleg Gorchev.
The last two died suddenly in 2017. On September 1, 40-year-old Gorchev was found dead on the floor in the bathroom in the apartments of the elite residential complex Moscow City. The doctors diagnosed "acute heart failure", and the investigators said that there were no signs of violent death on the body of the deceased. However, various versions of his death were exaggerated in the media, including from a blow with a blunt object, since a hematoma was found on Gorchev’s head, as well as from poisoning, since a few days before his death he complained to his father about abdominal pain and talked about taking medication .
prielbrusie-ski.ru
A month before Gorchev's death, a message appeared about the death of the chairman of the board of directors of the North Caucasus Resorts, Deputy Minister for the North Caucasus Affairs Andrei Reznikov. He died at the age of 48, according to official reports, from oncology.
However, the media saw strange coincidences here too - the death of both top managers of KSK occurred after sharp criticism of the work of the joint-stock company by the speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko. She stated that both the prosecutor's office and the Accounts Chamber revealed significant financial irregularities in the activities of the North Caucasus Resorts. According to Matvienko, exorbitantly high wages company employees do not fit in with poor performance.
"Instead of attracting federal funds additional investment funds, they simply earn by placing "sovereign" money on deposits. 2.5 billion rubles were lost from the placement of funds in a dubious financial structure» , - the speaker of the Federation Council caught KSK, expressing doubt that "such an intermediate lining" is needed for the development of the Caucasus.
In the case of a major fraud with Sberbank loans, the court placed under house arrest the ex-beneficiary of the Visma group Valery Geryugov.
Valery Geryugov, who was the former beneficiary of the Visma group, which produces Arkhyz mineral water, was detained in Moscow on April 7. The detention took place as part of the investigation of a criminal case, initiated in the last days of March by the investigating authorities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for Moscow under Part 4 of Art. 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation at the request of Sberbank, the reason for which was the facts of fraudulent actions with credit resources previously issued by the bank to the Visma group. There are more than seven such episodes in the case.
According to media reports, Valery Geryugov took up business in the late 1980s, and, by his own admission, traded "everything that was traded." According to Kommersant, at first the scope of his interests was extremely wide - from pasta to polyethylene, but later the businessman focused on the production of lemonade and mineral water and founded the firm "Visma". He started with the brand Fructis, later switched to the production of mineral water "Narzan" and "Essentuki". “However, then it had to be stopped under the threat of legal prosecution from brand owners. Then I had to look for a new brand, which Arkhyz became, ”the publication notes. In 2015, Visma, which turned into a group of companies, began to experience financial difficulties. However, as it turns out from the materials of the investigation, the company's leaders chose an unexpected and illegal way to solve them.
According to the investigation, persons from among the owners and leaders of the Visma group organized the receipt of loans from Sberbank on the basis of false financial statements of entities controlled by them. legal entities. According to the investigators, when receiving several loans from the bank, they knowingly provided false information about the purpose of the loans and their subsequent return, after which they stole the borrowed funds, disposing of them at their discretion.
So, for example, using these funds, the Geryugov group organized the construction of another workshop for the production of water - on the basis of Sofia Glacier LLC in the city of Cherkessk, which is located outside the perimeter of the Visma group. In addition, this group of persons organized the theft finished products the Visma group, which was pledged - it was taken to the warehouses of Arkhyz LLC, as well as plant equipment for the production of water (production lines) - in total in the amount of 1.5 billion rubles.
In order to deliberately destroy the business of the Visma group for the period 2015-2016. The “Geryugov group” organized the renewal of licenses for the production of water, which was, among other things, ensuring the repayment of loans received that were issued to enterprises controlled personally by Geryugov - SBI, Sofia Glacier, MasterPlus.
The amount of Visma's debt to Sberbank is 1.8 billion rubles. Meanwhile, as the investigation suggests, loan payments were deliberately stopped in the winter of 2014-2015.
It is noteworthy that PJSC Sberbank tried to resolve the issue of returning loan funds peacefully - for example, Geryugov was repeatedly offered options for restructuring loans. However, instead of solving the problem in a civilized manner, in relation to the companies of the Visma group - on the basis of fictitious debts - Mr. Geryugov organized fictitious bankruptcy procedures. In 2015, all enterprises of the Visma group with fictitious debts (an average of 200-300 thousand rubles) were artificially transferred to monitoring procedures. The initiators were companies controlled by Geryugov, for example, AlTrans. In addition, from the trading houses of the Visma group, which were guarantors for loans, all contracts for the supply of water were transferred to legal entities controlled by Geryugov.
At the moment, part of the debt of the Visma group to Sberbank PJSC was sold under an assignment agreement to a strategic investor, Delta LLC, which plans to keep the enterprise and develop production.
Sberbank confirmed that they contacted law enforcement agencies on the facts of fraudulent activities with credit resources provided to the Visma group, refusing to comment in more detail until the end of the investigation. The bank also noted that in order to preserve the water production business, the Bank, together with a strategic investor and local authorities, is taking measures aimed at maintaining the plant's performance and protecting jobs.
It is noteworthy that in the media publications Valery Geryugov is called "a businessman with an ambiguous reputation." And this seems to be connected not only with a series of past investigations into the illegal release of Narzan. Internet resources believe that the merchant uses one-day firms in his activities, his income is clearly higher than declared, and among his assets are a number of foreign companies (in particular, offshore companies in Cyprus and the Virgin Islands), elite mansions and apartments in Russia and abroad - Rome, Paris, Thailand, as well as a park of expensive foreign cars.
According to the authors of the publications, Geryugov manages to avoid persecution by law enforcement officers thanks to the help of high-ranking patrons. Among them, Internet sources include, in particular, the ex-general of the FSB, and now the chief federal inspector in Tyumen, Andrey Rutsinsky, whose relatives, according to some information, may have business ties with the Visma Group of Companies.
The squad of personal bankrupts in Russia has replenished with another well-known business person. She became Valery Geryugov, the beneficiary of the Visma group, which bottles water under the Arkhyz and Essentuki brands. Sberbank, to which the merchant owes 1.8 billion rubles, demands to let the state of the mineral magnate down the wind. However, in the ranking largest manufacturers mineral water "Visma" occupies the fourth place with a market share of about 3.5%. Experts say they led the business to collapse fatal errors management.
"I'm great. This is business, it is striped: there is a white stripe, there is a dark one. I don't see the point in getting upset about it." Valery Geryugov talks philosophically about the collapse of his mineral empire. The only beneficiary of the Visma group of companies does not seem to be on the verge of bankruptcy and is not listed as a malicious non-payer from Sberbank, to which he owes 1.8 billion rubles. By the way, Geryugov personally is the guarantor for this debt, i.e. in the event of the collapse of the empire, he himself will be robbed to the skin.
In general, they say about Valery Geryugov that he is a “quirky” person. The 53-year-old billionaire business owner, who once flooded all of Russia with his mountain mineral water, lives not in some fashionable district of Moscow, but in his hometown of Cherkessk, occupies a spacious, but by no means luxurious house and every day goes to work.
In total, the company of the "modest" North Caucasian tycoon owes 2 billion rubles. The Arkhyz brand, as well as the production assets of the Visma group, are pledged to Sberbank, enterprises are recording a massive decline in sales of mineral water, Kommersant reports.
“We had a reduction in sales because so many people went abroad for permanent residence. These were just our clients.” - explains Geryugov in his ironic manner. This is hard to believe. Experts note: the group was brought to bankruptcy by personnel leapfrog and several important managerial miscalculations, and not by a group of Arkhyz fans, who suddenly changed tastes and now quench their thirst with water from another manufacturer.
From pasta to mineral water
In business Geryugov, in his own words, came in the early 90s. The initial capital "took in his pocket": having retired from the army in the late 1980s, the former tanker first traded "everything that was traded", and then decided to go into manufacturers. Together with his brother in his native Cherkessk, he opened the Visma company, produced pasta, polyethylene ... Soon the idea arose to pour Fructi's lemonade. mineral water "Essentuki" and "Narzan" appeared on the market for soda. Geryugov made the main bet on them. Only the brands were unsuccessfully chosen: "Essentuki" was then bottled by dozens of other companies. The name was devoid of originality. "Narzan" and completely brought the businessman to court "This brand belonged to another entrepreneur Vladimir Borodavkin, who did not want to share the glory of the Karachay-Circassian source with anyone. Geryugov had to start looking for a new brand. The source was found in the village of Arkhyz, which means "beautiful girl" in Russian. However, to win love buyers of the new mineral water did not succeed immediately.
At first, Visma supplied water to the southern regions of Russia, but there it had to compete with a strong local producer - the Pilgrim, Birba brands, and the Mercury manufacturers. Things began to go smoothly when Arkhyz entered the Moscow market: despite the fact that there were no less competitors, consumer demand was also extremely high. Armen Dzhigarkhanyan helped to teach the population to drink "life-giving and amazingly tasty" mineral water, or rather a commercial with him in the title role, for which Geryugov laid out 300 thousand dollars. In it, the eminent actor brewed Arkhyz tea and told how useful the iodine contained in the water is. The advertising worked: the company's sales more than doubled: in 2003, Visma's turnover amounted to almost 300 million rubles against 124 million a year earlier.
On this topic
By 2006, Geryugov's small company had grown to the size of an empire. Visma entered the top ten largest manufacturers in Russian market water, controlling a share of 3.7%. Three plants in Arkhyz, Cherkessk and Pyatigorsk produced 1.35 million liters of water per day. Two years later, the company almost doubled its capacity.
At that time, Arkhyz, although it was considered a sales locomotive, providing 90% of the turnover, was no longer the only promoted brand of Visma. The shelves also featured Arkhyzik and Slavyanovskaya water bottles, Vitalina berry and fruit flavored drinks, Mega Vita energy drinks, and more.
The money supply is dry
Visma's problems are the consequences of the crisis, Dmitry Petrov, president of the Union of Producers of Non-Alcoholic Drinks and Mineral Waters, believes. The volume of drinking and mineral water in 2015 amounted to 5.6 billion liters - a decrease of 5.8%.
“The Russian consumer, for the most part, has previously bottled drinking water did not particularly complain, and in a crisis he began to complain even less, ” - says Petrov. According to him, the entire market of drinking and mineral water, if not at a loss, is on the verge of profitability.
However, it would be a mistake to write off all the troubles of "Visma" only on the turbulence of the Russian economy, says the same Dmitry Petrov. Arkhyz's money began to evaporate somewhat earlier. First, the KvasCo Bottlers company, which bottles Pershin kvass, tried to bankrupt Geryugov, and sued him for 54.2 million rubles. After the population "Sberbank". The management of the credit institution demands that Valery Geryugov be declared bankrupt, because he acted as a guarantor for loans issued to group companies in 2012. Sberbank sent a corresponding application at the end of May to the Arbitration Court of Karachay-Cherkessia,
According to the words of the bankers, Visma was mired in loans, which issued for the technical re-equipment of factories and replenishment of working capital. The company was in no hurry to pay off its debts. Payments stopped in 2014.
Geryugov explains all the troubles of his group simply - the consumer cheated on him. So, in 2014, sales of Arkhyz fell by as much as 40%.
However, according to Money, the reason lies elsewhere. When the crisis struck, Visma, operating in the upper mid-price segment, decided to take a risky step: reposition its products and make them much more expensive. The logic was as follows: to set the price that imported water had before the crisis, for example, 60-70 rubles. instead of the previous 33-37 rubles. for a half liter bottle. The calculation would be that the consumer will refuse imported mineral water, which has significantly jumped in price, and will pay more attention to Arkhyz, even if it has also risen in price. This, according to "Money", was a fatal mistake - some retailers simply refused " beautiful girl". No one wanted to pay for water, even if with "natural natural force" such money. In 2015, Visma chose to turn it back and returned the previous price. It did not help to revive the business. Market share was irretrievably lost: Nielsen estimates that its sales fell by 40% in two years.
Many experts also see Geryugov's miscalculation in indistinct advertising support. Water, sold at a premium price, did not seem to consumers as an “elite” drink at all. The publicists weren't convinced.
Illiterate management is another of the aspects that pushed to collapse. According to Kommersant, Valery Geryugov changed managers like gloves - he demanded quick results from managers, and when this did not work, he parted with people.
The geographic factor also had a negative impact on business: Visma is quite far from Moscow and the Central Federal District, so its logistics costs reach up to 30% of the cost of production. All this together has led to the fact that Arkhyz is gradually disappearing from store shelves.
Last Saturday, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow placed 54-year-old Valery Geryugov, a former beneficiary of the Visma group of companies, whose structures produce the popular Arkhyz mineral water, under house arrest. The businessman is suspected of stealing loans from Sberbank for 1.8 billion rubles. Mr. Geryugov himself insisted in court that he was ready to agree to any conditions for debt restructuring and even signed the corresponding memorandum developed by Sberbank, but the credit institution did not approve it in the end.
The investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, which is in charge of a criminal case on fraud in the field of lending on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159.1), petitioned for the conclusion of Valery Geryugov under house arrest. As the police believe, remaining at large, the suspect can interfere with the course of the investigation, put pressure on witnesses or hide. In turn, Mr. Geryugov and his defense insisted that none of the arguments listed by the investigator had any basis. As lawyer Mikhail Osherov told Kommersant, his client tried to convince the court that this criminal case was initiated solely in order to seize his business. However, Judge Aleksey Krivoruchko, who considered the petition of the investigative department, stopped the suspect, saying that the meeting only decided on the measure of restraint, and the circumstances of the criminal case were not considered. As a result, the request of the defense of Valery Geryugov to impose a preventive measure in the form of a written undertaking not to leave or a bail in the amount of 2 million rubles. The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow rejected it, sending the suspect under house arrest for two months.
As already told by Kommersant, the businessman was detained last Friday by employees of the GUEBiPK Ministry of Internal Affairs as part of a case initiated by representatives of Sberbank to law enforcement agencies. It spoke about the fraudulent theft of loans worth 1.8 billion rubles allocated back in 2012 to the Visma group of companies, the beneficiary of which was Mr. Geryugov. One of the most famous products that its structures produce is Arkhyz mineral water.
According to the investigation, having faced financial difficulties in 2015, Visma stopped servicing loans received from Sberbank, and shortly after that, the bankruptcy proceedings of the enterprises belonging to the group of companies were initiated. At the same time, law enforcement agencies do not exclude that it could have been initiated by firms controlled by the same Mr. Geryugov.
In turn, the businessman's lawyer Mikhail Osherov told Kommersant that his client had been lending at Sberbank since 2002. “Debts were constantly restructured. My client was ready for this even at the end of 2014, when he signed the corresponding memorandum developed by Sberbank, - lawyer Osherov told Kommersant. - But in the end, the credit institution itself did not approve it for some reason. Instead, in October 2016, Sberbank sold half of Visma's debt to LLC Delta under an assignment agreement. In his testimony to the investigator, Valery Geryugov says that his criminal case was initiated for the sole purpose of seizing his business.”
Valery Geryugov, whose structures produced the well-known Arkhyz mineral water, was charged in a criminal case of fraud in the total amount of about 2 billion rubles.
As it became known to Kommersant, the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia completed the investigation and charged in the final version the former beneficiary of the Visma group of companies Valery Geryugov, whose structures produced Arkhyz mineral water. Together with him in a criminal case of fraudulent embezzlement of Sberbank funds received in the form of loans totaling about 2 billion rubles, two former top managers of Visma are being held, one of whom is wanted.
According to Kommersant's information, on Tuesday evening, in the premises of the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Gazetny Lane, investigators charged Valery Geryugov in the final version with fraud in the field of lending on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), for which up to ten years of imprisonment. In addition to him, the investigators also brought a similar charge against two former executive directors of the enterprise, Luaz Doroshenko and Ulan Borlakov. It should be noted that the businesswoman is under house arrest. Meanwhile, Mr. Borlakov managed to escape from the investigation, was put on the federal wanted list, and therefore he was charged in absentia.
According to investigators, in 2012-2014, with the help of his top managers and some "persons unidentified by the investigation," Valery Geryugov received loans from Sberbank totaling 1.8 billion rubles. to replenish working capital and purchase new equipment. Initially, loan payments were made, but at the end of 2014, borrowers stopped servicing their debt. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, soon after that, the borrowers, as well as their guarantors, who were part of the structure of the Visma group, began the bankruptcy procedure of enterprises. Since the initiators of the bankruptcy were firms allegedly controlled by Valery Geryugov, this made it possible to appoint “friendly” temporary managers, take advantage of the situation by delaying the monitoring procedure for more than a year and a half, and during this time to withdraw the main production facilities and assets of Visma. In particular, during searches on the territory of the Sofia Glacier company allegedly affiliated with Valery Geryugov, the main production equipment of Visma, which was pledged to Sberbank PJSC, was found, which was taken out of the enterprise. At the same time, according to the investigators, the loans themselves from Sberbank were obtained through the “use of distorted financial statements”, and then huge amounts were simply stolen through fictitious transactions and one-day firms. It should be noted that Valery Geryugov is well known as a big businessman who started trading in the 1980s after his dismissal from the Soviet army. He tried different branches of production, but mineral water became his main and favorite brainchild - at first it was Essentuki and Narzan, but then Arkhyz became the main brand, named after the place of the alpine spring and quickly gained popularity among buyers.
Some time ago, the leaders of Sberbank wrote to law enforcement agencies a statement about the fraudulent theft of their credit funds - about 1.8 billion rubles. In April last year, Valery Geryugov was detained in Moscow by operatives of the GUEBiPK Ministry of Internal Affairs, a case was opened against him, and, with the permission of the court, he was placed under house arrest.
Valery Geryugov's lawyer, Mikhail Osherov, confirmed to Kommersant that the charges were brought in the final version. He specifically noted that his client still does not admit his guilt. “It is not very clear to us how the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could bring charges when the financial and analytical examination appointed by the investigator himself has not yet been completed,” Mr. Osherov said. He also noted that in the final version, the number of criminal episodes charged against his client was reduced from seven to three, although the amount of damage itself remained the same. “Valery Aslanbekovich (Geryugov. - “Kommersant”) is confident in his innocence, he himself several times wrote statements about the commission of crimes against him - both to investigators and business ombudsman Boris Titov, but have not yet received answers from anywhere, ”- explained Mikhail Osherov. Referring to his client, he told his version of what happened: a criminal case was artificially opened against the businessman, which was only necessary to take away his main assets - Visma CJSC, where he was listed as both a co-owner and general director. In any case, after his dismissal and arrest, the production of Arkhyz was resumed, but by other entrepreneurs who bought the debts of Visma from Sberbank. The bank, which was recognized as a victim in a criminal case, could not promptly provide comments.