Portrait of God Nisanov, the man who knows how to be friendly and how to trade
At the height of the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, Russia did not provide assistance to Armenia, its military ally. The story of billionaire God Nisanov and his ties with the leadership of Russia and Azerbaijan may shed light on the reasons for this decision. These ties are so close that at the height of the conflict, Russian intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin swam in Nisanov's personal pool in the company of a family member of the Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister.
Sergei Naryshkin, a prominent Russian official and Vladimir Putin's colleague from the Leningrad KGB, has long been fond of swimming. Having already become the director of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Naryshkin went to swim almost every day in the same place - the luxurious 50-meter swimming pool of the “Ukraina” Hotel, located in the last Stalinist skyscraper built after the death of the “leader” . The swim took place early in the morning, when hotel guests usually slept, and the pool was not crowded. After several hundred meters on the water, Naryshkin had breakfast at the local restaurant and left on his espionage business. True, with the onset of the coronavirus epidemic, visits to "Ukraine" had to be stopped and a completely secluded pool was to be found. This head of the most secret Russian department was helped by his close friend and owner of "Ukraine" God Nisanov.
The Champion in Friendship
Usually, articles about the business achievements of God Nisanov - and he, according to Forbes, has been the most successful rentier in Russia for many years with a fortune of $ 2.7 billion - contain two statements. At a young age, he moved from the Azerbaijani village of Krasnaya Sloboda, inhabited mainly by Mountain Jews, to Moscow. Here he, together with his permanent partner Zarakh Iliev, started trading in the famous Cherkizovsky market. The second story, wandering through the biographies of a businessman, is that Nisanov speaks six languages. In 2007, however, it became known that the Gorsky businessman had a partner and fellow countryman who, perhaps, helped his business much more than the polyglossia attributed to Nisanov. This is Ilgam Rahimov, a Baku lawyer.
Shopping center "Diaspora"
Mountain Jews have always been strongly integrated into Moscow trade. The owner of the Cherkizovsky market was Telman Ismailov, fellow countryman of Nisanov, also a Mountain Jew, but from Baku. Zarakh Iliev, a long-term partner of God Nisanov, also started on the Cherkizovsky market. The Manashirov brothers, Gennady and Solomon, were the owners of many shopping centers in Moscow - Prazhsky Passage, Armada, Columbus and others. Mountain Jew Tair Gilalov was a co-owner of the Izmailovsky market, and his sons Akif and Zaur owned several shopping complexes in Moscow. The owner of the famous grocery store "Eliseevsky" was another mountain Jew from Azerbaijan, Yakov Yakubov, who received the title of "owner of Tverskaya" in the press - it was believed that he had the largest list of real estate "in the nicest houses'' there. He is also known for having built a personal three-story "palace" right in the middle of VDNKh. Almost everyone’s (except for Nisanov and Iliev) life story ended badly: Ismailov is hiding in Montenegro from charges of murder, Gennady Manashirov is serving a 12-year sentence for giving bribes, his brother Solomon is on the international wanted list. Tahir and Zaur Gilalovs are killed.
Rahimov's childhood was spent in Karabakh. In 1970 he moved to Russia, entered the law faculty of Leningrad University, where he became close friends with future President Putin. They were friends with families: Rahimov went to visit Putin, and he, at his invitation, visited Azerbaijan several times, lived in the house of Rahimov's father. This friendship continues today.
Ilgam Rahimov on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem:
“I communicate with Putin as with my fellow student, and not as with a politician and head of state ... Yes, when we meet with Putin, we talk about this, I bring my personal position to his attention. Naturally, as for an Azerbaijani, the Karabakh problem is also my pain. "
In Azerbaijan, Rahimov is known as a lawyer. It is a completely different matter in Russia - the name of Ragimov with a share of about 15% is on the lists of founders of all important businesses of Nisanov.
Assets of God Nisanov
The businesses of the billionaire from Krasnaya Sloboda are the largest markets, shopping centers and hotels in Moscow
Nisanov knows how to surround himself with "the right people", he is a "champion" in friendship, says a high-ranking official.
One of the first in Nisanov's entourage appeared the head of the Moscow GUVD Vladimir Pronin. His son Alexander was hired by the Imperial-2000 company, which is part of Kievskaya Square . In 2009, Pronin Sr. was fired from the authorities, and over time, a more serious figure appeared in Nisanov's entourage. The fact that Nisanov is friends with Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, two interlocutors of the "Project" know. Moreover, Kolokoltsev's son Alexander was a partner of Oleg Yusupov, a close relative of Nisanov, in Il Forno restaurants. And recently, Nikolai Golovkin, a former assistant to Kolokoltsev, has also been working in the security service of Nisanov .
Artyom Nisanov made the brother of Putin's former security guard Alexei Dyumin a partner in a company that is building a hotel on Varvarka, near Zaryadye Park. Artem Dyumin is also a member of the board of directors of the Olimpiyskiy sports complex, which is reconstructing Kievskaya Square.
In 2016, Teimur Bul-Bul Polad oglu became the director of "Evropeyskiy": a musician and the son of Nisanov's friend, the Azerbaijani ambassador to Russia, famous singer Polad Bul-Bul oglu. Nisanov also hired the son of the head of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin - he headed the construction of the Nagatinskaya transport interchange hub, which is also being conducted by Kievskaya Ploschad. Among those close to Nisanov and convicted of harassment, State Duma deputy Leonid Slutsky .
“Your entire future government works for Nisanov,” ironically Ilgar Hajiyev, a major Azerbaijani and Russian developer and former business partner of Nisanov . Now he lives in London, since a criminal case of fraud has been opened against him in Russia, and the business, as Hajiyev says, went to the Nisanov family. Hajiyev is the first person from Nisanov's entourage who decided to tell the press about the business of the most successful Russian rentier.
President's main spy
Evropeyskiy looks no different from other Moscow shopping centers. Its construction at one time was not without a scandal - the deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor Oleg Mitvol and State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein argued that the metro would collapse because of the construction. Once they even tried to break through to the construction site with an inspection - it ended with the guards pinching Khinstein's fingers. In other respects, the construction proceeded quickly - in addition to Ragimov, one of the co-owners of "Evropeyskiy" was a friend of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Zurab Tsereteli. In 2013, Kievskaya Ploshchad announced that the famous sculptor no longer had a share, but, as it turned out, Manana Popova, an academician of the Russian Academy of Arts (RAA), headed by Tsereteli, owns a 15 percent share in the mall .
“Nisanov has an uncontrollable passion for shopping centers,” a former government member familiar with the developer smiles in a conversation with the Project. Even Nisanov's personal office is located in Evropeyskiy , and not in one of his business centers, historical mansions in the center, or at least in “Ukraina” - his partner Iliev has an office there .
The entrance to Nisanov's office is invisible - it is an iron door without a sign in the parking lot of the fifth floor of the shopping center. “The office is luxurious, and you can't say that it is in a shopping center,” describes a former employee of Nisanov. Inside there is even a bathhouse and a swimming pool, massage and manicure rooms - all this is available not only for Nisanov, but also for those with whom he is friends.
It was there, in the private pool of Nisanov, that the head of the SVR Naryshkin moved with his need for daily swims. Correspondents "Project" several times met Naryshkin visiting Nisanov's office at the same time. The head of the SVR usually spends a little over an hour inside. Having parked, his driver removes the flashing light so as not to attract attention, and when Naryshkin returns, puts it in its place. In all cases that the Proekt correspondents observed Naryshkin in the Evropeyskiy parking lot, he was accompanied by another man who arrived in a BMW with diplomatic numbers of the Azerbaijani embassy. It happened at the height of the border war between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but the reason for such closeness of the chief intelligence officer with influential Azerbaijanis is hardly only in politics. It's also about profitable friendship.
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1/2 The head of the Foreign Intelligence Service visits the God Nisanov office in the Evropeisky shopping center every day -
2/2 Глава Службы внешней разведки ежедневно посещает офис Года Нисанова в ТЦ «Европейский»
The man in the ambassador's car is Elman Bayramov, a member of the inner circle of the God Nisanov. He owns Mosaservinzavod, which produces cognacs, port wine and vodka. Among other things, Bayramov is a member of the family of the First Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Yagub Eyyubov: the daughter of a businessman is married to the son of a politician .
Bayramov has been friends with Naryshkin since the 2000s, when they were neighbors in dachas on Rublevo-Uspenskoe highway
... It was Bayramov who introduced Naryshkin to Nisanov. In addition to the private pool, the family of the chief intelligence officer of Russia also enjoys other bonuses from the businessman: for example, Nisanov's personal business jet - Gulfstream G65. The Project has at its disposal a supporting document, from which it follows that Veronika Naryshkina, the daughter of the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, flew to Baku on a Nisanov plane. In addition, the Naryshkins with the whole family repeatedly flew on a businessman's jet to ski, for example, in the winter of 2014 - to Austria, says Ilgar Hajiyev, who, according to him, flew with them. Nisanov employed Naryshkina, a fan of surfing, a master of sports in swimming, in his company, Sigma Investment Group - that manages the fashionable food cluster "Depo" ... Veronica celebrated her 30th birthday on the ship of Nisanov's "Radisson Flotilla" together with her friend, the daughter of the President of Azerbaijan, Leyla Aliyeva.
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Naryshkina in her Instagram offered tickets for the first party in the not yet opened "Depot"
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Veronika Naryshkina (center) and Leyla Aliyeva (second from right). Source: Instagram
Naryshkin and Nisanov's entourage are also associated with strange real estate transactions. In 2011, Veronika Naryshkina became the owner of a 200-meter apartment in the elite "House on Kompozitorskaya" in the Novy Arbat area. The market value is over 100 million rubles. The daughter of the head of the SVR at the time of purchase was 23 years old, she did not show herself anywhere except in sailing. The income of Naryshkin himself, who worked in the civil service all his life , amounted to 5 million rubles that year .
Just two months later, Naryshkina exchanged this apartment for another, in another elite house, but in a different area - in the residential complex "Lomonosov" in the south-west of the capital. Its area is 180 sq. meters, the market price is about 100 million rubles.
The person with whom she exchanged housing is named Alexey Kalashnikov. As Proekt found out, this is an employee of Mosaservinzavod, he is very close to Bayramov: in the traffic police database, Kalashnikov's mobile phone is tied to the businessman's Mercedes-Benz. In 2017, Kalashnikov sold an apartment on the Arbat to Robert Uzilov, Nisanov's fellow countryman from Krasnaya Sloboda - one of the owners of areas in the Moscow shopping center in Lyublino, owned by Kievskaya Ploshchad, and a former member of the board of directors of the Sadovod market. Who got the money from the sale is unknown. Kalashnikov himself is registered in an ordinary house in a residential area - on Sevastopolsky Avenue.
The "project" did not receive an explanation from the SVR on what conditions Naryshkin and his family use Nisanov's property. The department said they did not comment on the "personal life" of their director and his family. The question of Naryshkina's apartment was ignored. Veronika Naryshkina told The Project that she does not work at the Depot, she “has been and is developing water sports” and asked not to bother her anymore.
What does the law say about such gifts to officials ↓
The Civil Service Law prohibits officials from receiving remuneration in connection with the performance of their official duties, including in the form of reimbursement of travel expenses. “If the family's use of business aviation services is recorded and if these services were not paid for, then they can be identified as transport services with a monetary equivalent. This can range from an illegally received gift to a bribe, ”draws attention to Ilya Shumanov, Deputy Head of Transparency International-Russia. The use of a business jet by an official's adult daughter also leads to a conflict of interest, Shumanov notes.
President's main friend
When a Proekt correspondent asked a former high-ranking government official about who stands up for God Nisanov, if he had difficulties in business, he rolled his eyes: “These are very important people.”
- Recently, God and I and the Russian oligarch Rotenberg flew together from Moscow to Baku. The year suddenly said: do you know what I remember? Once we were in Tovuz, and your mother prepared a hangal for us , I cannot forget the taste of this hangal. And I said, get ready, as soon as we get off the plane, we will come to eat hangal, - once said Nisanov's partner and Putin's classmate Ilgam Rahimov in an interview with the Azerbaijani edition Musavat.
Several interlocutors of the Project speak about Nisanov's friendship with the Rotenberg brothers, who are close to President Putin . This is more than friendship. This is a business.
In 2013, Nisanov's structures bought the Plamya company, which owns a huge territory on the Kaluga highway near Moscow. Until that moment, the business press connected "Flame" with the Rotenberg brothers . Soon after the purchase in the territories of "Flame" a market opened - "Food City".
"Food City", "Europe's largest agrocluster" - these were the words on the Moscow 24 city government TV channel in 2014 advertised the opening of "Food City". The market was opened by Nisanov and Sergei Sobyanin personally.
"Food City" is really huge: 124 hectares of territory with a covered shopping pavilion. Although, in general, this is an ordinary oriental bazaar: selling for cash from trucks, you can bargain with the staff even before the market closes, for example, snatch a box of mangoes for some 200 rubles.
A source who worked for Nisanov says: Arkady Rotenberg is still Nisanov's non-public partner in Food City. If you study the ownership structure of "Flame", it turns out that 20% of the company is still owned by a certain Lyudmila Dergun. Before retirement, this 70-year-old woman, originally from the Krasnodar Territory, worked in a kindergarten in St. Petersburg. Her relatives do not look like successful businessmen either. Dergun's daughter-in-law, the wife of her son Alexander, at the time of this writing, was selling a used baby bib for 200 rubles at Avito. Alexander himself, apparently, has recently worked as a driver delivering Iceberry ice cream . When the Project correspondent called him, Dergun said that he knew nothing about his mother's business.
Nisanov and Rotenberg are also linked by a project in Moscow City: the same company “Flame” was going to build another skyscraper there, but in 2017 Grigory Baevsky, Rotenberg's partner and confidant, became the owner of the skyscraper project .
A representative of the Rotenbergs in a conversation with the "Project" said that the businessmen have nothing to do with Food City, they do not have a close friendship with Nisanov - the brothers "only know him, like many other businessmen."
The president himself, although different
One day in the summer of 2014, the coordinator of the Arkhnadzor movement, Andrei Novichkov, was walking along 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street in Moscow. He stopped near house 22 - the pre-revolutionary building, the Proshins' apartment building, a rare example of Moscow Art Nouveau, was completely covered with a false facade. Novikov looked behind him and was stunned - there was no building.
It was not just a historical mansion - its facade was decorated with a frieze depicting snowdrops, made in the sgraffito technique - there were no more such buildings in Russia.
It turned out that according to the plan, the developer could not demolish anything - the preservation of the facade during the reconstruction process was mandatory. As a result, the contractor paid some 1.5 million rubles. a fine, his building permit was revoked, representatives of the mayor's office were publicly angry. The then Deputy Mayor of Moscow, Marat Khusnullin, said that "the toughest measures" would be taken: "They do not want to work according to normal rules in Moscow, so they will not work." The authorities did not say who was behind the company and soon completely forgot about the ugly story. In 2017, when the noise died down, the mayor's office issued a new building permit - the permit is still for some reason called "reconstruction", although there is nothing to reconstruct. It follows from the documents that the permit was received by Atlantic Aeronautic ... She was the owner of the site earlier, with her consent, the Proshins' house was demolished.
Atlantic Aeronautic is registered in Azerbaijan, in Baku, at 170 Lev Tolstoy Street, where the office of PASHA Insurance, part of the PASHA holding, the family company of the President of Azerbaijan, is located. Surprisingly, all these years the Moscow mayor's office knew perfectly well who actually demolished the historical monument on 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya. In the lawsuit filed by the Moscow City Property Department against the developer, Atlantic Aeronautic, a year after the demolition, the daughter of the President of Azerbaijan, Leyla Aliyeva, is directly indicated as the co-defendant.
Director of the company that ordered the housework of the Proshins "Miretta" - Tofik Huseynov. Previously, he was the owner of Leyla Aliyeva's Media Land company - she heads the Baku magazine in Russia. The director of the Russian representative office of Atlantic is Tatyana Egorova, the ex-head of Caspian Coast Winery & Vineyards in Russia, which was part of the Synergy Group of the former employee of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Taxes Ashraf Kamilov, whom OCCRP called in its investigation a close ally of the Aliyev family.
The business of the president's daughter is also close to God Nisanov.
What's on him? It is he who provides Aliyeva with financial assistance in Russia. The MFK company, part of the Kievskaya Ploshchad group, acted as a guarantor for a loan taken by Atlantik for at least 400 million rubles .
In addition, the Akkord Spetsstroy company, associated with Gos Nisanov, reconstructed the Azerbaijan pavilion at VDNKh (the pavilion is managed by the Baku Business Center company, which is close to Leyla Aliyeva). The founders of "Akkord Spetsstroy" were Ilgar Hajiyev and two men, on whom the businesses of "Kievskaya Ploschad" were previously registered. Hajiyev says that they represented Nisanov in "Akkord".
How Kievskaya Square moved to Rublevka ↓
Close relations with the leadership of Azerbaijan led Nisanov into international politics. In the summer of 2020, with the outbreak of a new Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the Food City market has become a place where scores are settled: Armenian traders with their trucks were simply no longer allowed into the territory. Nisanov's partner Ilgam Rahimov boasted in an interview with the Azerbaijani newspaper Musavat that the damage they inflicted on the Armenians amounted to "hundreds of millions": "Everything goes to the landfill." According to him, Russian officials contacted him, but he and Nisanov told them: "Do not meddle in this case." The decision caused delight among some representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora: the interlocutor of the "Project" told how he specially came to "Food City" to pay tribute to its leadership.
The Armenian diplomats who came to the market to negotiate were completely expelled from the territory by the guards from the private security company "Vityaz".
Evgeny Sosedov. Source: Facebook
Sosedov himself was caught by the guards, beaten, and his phone was taken away, which contained photographs of the demolition and a video of the attack. The administration of the Moscow region and the Ministry of Housing Policy told the Project that they were not given any construction permits in Ilyinskoye, for which the historical buildings are being demolished is still unknown.
Close relations with the leadership of Azerbaijan led Nisanov to international politics. In the summer of 2020, with the outbreak of a new Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, the Food City market has become a place where scores are settled: Armenian traders with their trucks were simply no longer allowed into the territory. Nisanov's partner Ilgam Rahimov boasted in an interview with the Azerbaijani newspaper Musavat that the damage they inflicted on the Armenians amounted to "hundreds of millions": "Everything goes to the landfill." According to him, Russian officials contacted him, but he and Nisanov told them: "Do not meddle in this case." The decision caused delight among some representatives of the Azerbaijani diaspora: the interlocutor of the "Project" told how he specially came to "Food City" to pay tribute to its leadership. The Armenian diplomats who came to the market to negotiate were completely expelled from the territory by the guards from the private security company "Vityaz".
Mountain Knights
"Vityaz" is a security agency close to Nisanov, owned by former commandos Maxim Kotov and Petr Shutko. Kotov has known the founders of Kievskaya Ploschad since the days of the Gardener . "Knights" serve not only Nisanov: they proved themselves even during the construction of the Moscow-Petersburg highway by Arkady Rotenberg's company, for the sake of which they cut down part of the Khimki forest: during protests against the felling, the Chopovites knocked out the teeth of the activists and broke their noses. "Knights" also beat people at protests in defense of the Tsagovsky forest, when they cut down trees for the sake of the highway near the town of Zhukovsky near Moscow.
Now "Vityaz" guards all the key objects of "Kievskaya Ploschad", and Nisanov himself too , even "Vityaz" is registered at the address of the company "Safra Instruments" (part of "Kievskaya Ploschad") - on Solzhenitsyn Street. According to Hajiyev, it was with the help of Vityaz that the takeover of his company SDI happened. Vityaz has so-called “mobile brigades” that can carry out such assignments.
The abundance of influential friends must necessarily benefit Nisanov's business.
Market relations
Now Nisanov is the king of the capital's markets, and even the consistent struggle of Mayor Sobyanin against unorganized trade in the city could not shake this title. As soon as he appeared in the capital, Sobyanin declared war on the markets. Markets were closed for any, even completely not obvious, reasons - for example, the Pokrovskaya vegetable warehouse was liquidated after it was attacked by nationalists during the so-called "Biryulev pogroms".
Nisanov's market empire, on the contrary, grew. Gardener, Food City, Yuzhnye Vorota, Velozavodsky, Prazhsky, Moscow in Lyublino, the Left Bank market in Khimki - all of them belong to Kievskaya Ploschad. Sobyanin liked the Food City market so much that he announced that there would be at least three more of these in Moscow and, apparently, Nisanov would build them again .
Even a significant part of the former Cherkizovsky market (“Cherkizon”), closed in 2009 for numerous violations of the law, is still at the disposal of the “Firm Iliev”, which is part of “Kievskaya Ploschad”.
The closure of Cherkizon was very useful for the Sadovod market, which at that time was already owned by Kievskaya Ploschad. She received the territory for management from Moscow in 2003 - competitors, owners of another capital market "Emeral", tried to challenge this decision of the mayor's office, but to no avail. And in 2011, the authorities also closed Emeral after Sobyanin's visit there. It seemed to the mayor that the situation in the market was "like in the poor provinces of India." Who is currently in charge of Emeral's territory? Of course, Kievskaya Square.
The Sadovod market itself looks like a branch of the Cherkizovsky market: there is an abundance of counterfeit products on the shelves and trade only for cash. And Sadovod, and the shopping center "Moscow" and "Food City" - the largest points in Moscow for working with cash - their turnover is about 600 billion rubles. per month, and almost nothing of this amount is reflected in the banking system . This is more than the entire monthly retail turnover in Moscow. The abundance of "gray" schemes at Sadovod is such that the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina personally complained about them to Putin.
In the same place, at the "Sadovod", this cash turns into income. The fact is that Sadovod - at least until recently - was the largest center in Moscow for cashing out cryptocurrencies .
The main intermediaries in the crypto business are Chinese merchants. “Before, you could contact them and say that there is a crypt. They say the number of the store and the row, you come, get money from under the counter, transfer the crypt to the wallet, take the cache, "says one of the Project's interlocutors. Also, cryptocurrencies were used to pay for goods brought from China: the recipient paid in Moscow in rubles, they were transferred into digital money, transferred to the PRC, where the sender had already received yuan .
The market owners received a percentage of the transactions, according to two interlocutors of the "Project", one of them estimated the size of this "commission" at 0.5% from the transaction.
In 2019, the head of Rosfinmonitoring, Yuri Chikhanchin, at a meeting with Putin, complained about the shadow turnover of cash at Sadovod . On the same day, searches began in these markets. Information flashed in the press that the security forces were also looking for cryptocurrency farms. Then everything was quiet. Nisanov argued that the reason for the searches was "a fight between two Caucasian groups," whose members turned out to be his tenants. Nevertheless, as a high-ranking acquaintance of Nisanov says, "God understands the problem and is trying to gradually reduce the amount of cash." Although until now on the same "Food City" you could not even pay for parking with a card.
Forbes magazine estimated Kievskaya Ploshchad's rental income at a fabulous $ 1.6 billion - the company has occupied the first line of the rating of the "kings of Russian real estate" for many years. The magazine considered the potential income that commercial real estate could bring to the owners, and Nisanov even agreed with the Forbes estimate . But in the official reporting "Kievskaya Ploschad" for some reason indicates completely different - much smaller - amounts. According to it, Nisanov's business should not go well.
Revenues of "Kievskaya Ploschad"
In fact, companies associated with the king of Russian real estate are mostly unprofitable, RUB mln.
According to "Spark-Interfax" for 2019 (TC "Electronic Paradise" - for 2018)
For example, Food City, according to Nisanov, provides the Moscow region with vegetables and fruits by 70%, and 25% - with meat. But despite such volumes, the market is unprofitable . "Sadovod" receives from rent, according to reports, only 1.4 billion rubles, and spends on its maintenance - 1.2 billion. At the same time, "Sadovod" - 8 thousand retail outlets, and landlords said that the average cost of rent points per month - almost 200 thousand, which should generate revenue of several billion per year. The rental proceeds in the huge Yuzhnye Vorota shopping mall on the Moscow Ring Road are 600 million rubles, and the entire company spends on the maintenance of the shopping center and administrative expenses, there is almost no profit left. Profit from renting a huge trade and fair complex "Moscow" - only 36 million rubles a year.
Their street
In his first interview, which Nisanov gave to Forbes magazine only in 2013, the entrepreneur was proud that his business did not start with loans-for-shares auctions and to this day has nothing to do with government projects.
The first is true, but the second, not entirely.
Recently, Moscow has attended to the improvement of the territory near the Kievsky railway station and in front of the European shopping center. ARPT was chosen as the contractor. The city paid about 3 billion rubles for this, which became the most expensive ARPT contract for all the years of its existence. In total - over the past four years - ARPT has received government contracts for 30 billion rubles, mainly for landscaping.
Some Andrey Nikolaev and Yulia Zinchenko own ARPT - it is unknown who it is. But it is possible to establish where the money won by the company at the government tenders goes. For example, in 2019 ARPT received 6.3 billion rubles in revenue, and transferred almost the same amount to other companies - and the recipient firms are close to Nisanov and Kievskaya Ploshchad .
So, in the reporting of ARPT it is said that in the same year it signed a contract for 2.5 billion rubles. with a certain company "Respik". "Project" found a company of the same name - a supplier of building materials with unknown owners. Respik's phone number coincides with the number of another company, Primetelecom. Its shareholders are co-owners of the Depo gastro cluster, which is part of Kievskaya Ploshchad, a mountain Jew Murad Beniaminov and a certain Marina Tamminen. Tamminen is apparently the nominal owner of the business: she is actually a realtor. Before Tamminen, her share in Primetelecom was assigned to her beloved Sergei Livansky, who still works for the same ARPT company, and was previously a minor manager in St. Petersburg .
Another 2 billion rubles. received from ARPT company "Prostroy". A company with the same name is owned by Evgeny Ostashkevich, 54-year-old neighbor of Lebanese in a nine-story building in the city of Tikhvin, Leningrad Region. Prostroy received not only subcontracts from ARPT, but also orders directly from the Moscow budget - for example, in 2019 it received an order for 500 million rubles. for the improvement of the park "Filatov lug".
Another subcontractor of ARPT was the same company "Akkord Spetsstroy", which reconstructed the pavilion of Azerbaijan at VDNKh. She was also hired to carry out improvement work on Sadovaya-Sukharevskaya. Co-owner of "Akkord" Ilgar Hajiyev in an interview with "Proekt" said that, according to him, the ARPT business is supervised by Nisanov's cousin Vladislav Yusupov.
The main customers of ARPT are Moscow and Tula. The Tula region is headed by Alexey Dyumin, the brother of Artem Dyumin, Nisanov's partner. Over the past two years ARPT has signed contracts with LLC "Tulskaya Naberezhnaya" for more than 750 million rubles, more than 3 billion rubles. ARPT received for restoration of Tula estates.
There is other evidence that Nisanov makes money on contracts with the Moscow mayor's office.
LLC "Krasnaya Sloboda"
In 2013, a major Azerbaijani builder Ilgar Hajiyev decided to expand to Moscow. Without influential partners in Russia, it is hard to work, Hajiyev said, and eventually started a joint business with fellow countrymen - the Zakharyaev brothers, childhood friends and distant relatives of Nisanov. So he began to work with Nisanov himself.
The trial balloon, Hajiyev says, was a contract to repair a road in Moscow's Eastern Administrative District, where his company was hired as a subcontractor. “He made sure that I can build, and I - that he can be a resource,” says Hajiyev. After that, there was no one Albert Imanilov - according to Hajiyev, Nisanov's figurehead - 50% of Hajiyev's companies Akkord Spetsstroy, Akkord Construction, Akkord Real Estate, several companies under the SDI brand were transferred.
"Nisanov said that any issue through Rahimov and Rotenberg can be solved with Putin," recalls Hajiyev. Thanks to the connections, the partner really ensured that Hajiyev's companies received several government contracts ... In particular, their total "Akkord Spetsstroy" signed contracts for 4.7 billion rubles. for the repair of streets in Moscow. The businessman says that his partner regularly asked him for cash to transfer to the officials in charge of the contracts of the mayor's office. Once, according to Hajiyev, Nisanov's cousin Vladislav Yusupov asked him to prepare 100 million rubles. for transfer to Pyotr Biryukov - Sobyanin's deputy for housing and communal services. Their meeting took place on Sadovo-Sukharevskaya Street, where the company of Hajiyev and Imanilov performed landscaping work. Hajiyev, according to him, handed over the portfolio with cash to Yusupov. He briefly got into Biryukov's car and left without a briefcase .
However, in the spring of 2018, the partners started having relationship problems. Nisanov demanded to rewrite Hajiyev's share in his company , which was building the Pirogovskaya Riviera residential complex in the Moscow region, to Imanilov . Nisanov said that Hajiyev should do this "if he wants to build a housing complex without hindrance," since he - Nisanov - "has very good relations with the government of the Moscow region . " In a conversation with The Project, Hajiyev describes that meeting with Nisanov much more colorfully. In the office of the latter in the "Evropeyskiy" Gadzhiev was met by several armed people, and the share on Imanilov was copied "literally at gunpoint . "
From the documents submitted by Hajiyev's employees to law enforcement agencies, it follows that further his companies were taken by force .
The ownership structure of Nisanov's companies is as mixed up as possible
One gets the feeling that every resident of Krasnaya Sloboda, including children, takes part in the Kievskaya Ploshchad business. “Proekt" counted in the companies formally owned by "Kievskaya Ploschad", about 40 different founders.
“On January 24, 2019, employees of the private security company“ Vityaz ”broke into the office ... The next day, Vladislav Yusupov came to the head office of the company. He announced that from now on he is the new owner of the company and all employees must follow his instructions. He also demanded to hand over the bank keys to him , ”the statements sent to the IC and the Ministry of Internal Affairs say.
Hajiyev's employees claim that after the takeover, they began to withdraw money from the companies. Including - at the expense of the same ARPT company. The company received about 300 million rubles in loans.
The ties with Nisanov are not limited to this. For example, in the videos, which, according to Hajiyev, capture the seizure of his business, Flera Teplinskaya appears . She was previously the director of the company that manages the Vorobievsky business center, which is part of the Kievskaya Ploshchad group. In the video, Teplinskaya, clearly worried, listens on the phone to instructions from "God Semenovich" - as she calls her interlocutor. In another video, she puts huge wads of cash in a paper bag. In the third video, Teplinskaya, accompanied by a guard from Vityaz, is filmed near a residential building at 1/7 Kutuzovsky Prospect. Elman Bayramov has an apartment in this house .
At the disposal of the "Project" there are several refusals to initiate criminal cases on the statements of Hajiyev - the employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not find signs of a raider seizure. Now the businessman lives in London, from where he writes open letters to Putin. “I don't think Putin knows what methods Nisanov is using,” Hajiyev said.
Nisanov's representatives claim that he has never been a partner of Hajiyev. Indeed, his surname is not included in the founders of those firms that Hajiyev calls, as is the case with most of the companies of the Kievskaya Ploshchad group. Nisanov formally owns only two hotels - "Ukraina" and "Radisson Slavyanskaya", and "Olympic". Everything else is recorded in the name of relatives and nominal owners, which, however, has never raised any complaints from the authorities.
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In the Tver region, there is the Zavidovo nature reserve, a huge forest of national importance. In Soviet times, there was a hunting ground where Leonid Brezhnev loved to shoot animals, and in the 90s a presidential residence was established. And there are also the villages of Pominovo and Zarechye, where the father and mother of the current president of Russia were born, grew up and met. At the time of the last census, 20 people lived in Pominovo, and 70 in Zarechye. The basis of the local economy is two former collective farms: named after Kirov and Beryozka, whose business has long been going so-so. There was no work for the villagers, the fields were not plowed up.
It was at this moment that the reserved places of Putin attracted God Nisanov. Last year, Kievskaya Ploshchad became the owner of Berezka , which owned 2 thousand hectares in the reserve. The manager of Berezka said that Nisanov is going to turn the enterprise into an “eco-farm” and build “eco-cottages” there. In the meantime, thanks to Nisanov, gas can be supplied to the village for the first time .
At the time of this writing, social networks and messengers of the author were repeatedly hacked. God Nisanov himself decided not to answer “Proekt’s” questions .
Can an independent financial system not controlled by the state exist in the markets controlled by God Nisanov? How do the security officials view this, and what damage can such an approach do to the budget?
As the correspondent of The Moscow Post reports , the market continues to discuss the possible purchase of Krasnaya Presnya by the structures of the odious developer God Nisanov.
The latter is known not only for scandals in its markets “Food City”, “Gardener” and “Moskva”, but also for rumors of alleged raider seizures of enterprises and organizations from his side.
Despite the fact that no real evidence of this was ever presented, not so long ago the most famous opponent of God Nisanov , formerly a successful developer and owner of SDI Group, Ilgar Hajiyev, said that people from Nisanov’s team may be involved in the seizure of his business. The Moscow Post previously reported this story .
The scandal erupted in such a way that tons of dirt from the pages of the media poured out on Hajiyev. The campaign was clearly customized. Meanwhile, the story is so blatant that people still talk about it.
Ilgar Hajiyev
According to the authors of the site “Hakkin.az” , referring to the words of Hajiyiev himself, the alleged illegal circulation of cash and smuggling, which are found in the largest markets of the capital, lead to the loss of the Russian treasury up to $ 42 billion a year. Among such markets, with a high degree of probability, there may be Sadovod, Food City, and Stolichny, owned by the Kievskaya Ploshchad Group of God Nisanov.
If this is true, then the losses to the economy due to the shortfall in tax revenues may be comparable to the effect of Western sanctions. Can Nisanov cause damage to the country comparable to the actions of foreign ill-wishers? There is no evidence for this. And yet, given the reputation of the owner of Kievskaya Square, many people believe in this even without any documentary evidence.
At the same time, official revenues from Sadvod, Food City and Stolichny may amount to about 120 billion a year – an amount equal to about 3 trillion rubles. These are 26 annual budgets of the Khabarovsk Territory. For example, budget expenditures on social policy in 2020 amounted to about 5 trillion rubles. That is, the profits from Nisanov’s markets are colossal.
Mine while it’s hot
Why can a shadow economy flourish in Nisanov’s markets? Experts believe that several circumstances may lead to this at once. First of all, there is a huge number of migrants who work for Sadovod, Food City and Stolichny. Many of them may work illegally. Accordingly, do not pay taxes.
Further, this is the use of digital currencies in the “laundering” process. According to the authors of the site “Ze Bell” , allegedly earlier there was information that several mining farms could be found on the “Gardener” market. There are also absolutely incredible rumors: as if only cash is honored at Nisanov’s sites, which are then taken out of there almost by KAMAZ.
Why do you need cash? The essence is simple – they can buy cryptocurrency on it, “feeding” it to exchangers on the Internet through payment terminals. And then the funds received in the crypt are used to purchase goods in Asia and subsequent smuggling to Russia. The Bank of Russia simply does not “see” such transactions.
The scheme according to which the markets of God Nisanov can work, as presented by the authors of the site “Hakkin.az” .
Rumor has it that exchangers can be located right in the markets of Nisanov, as well as in the nearby Druzhba hotel, where many employees of these sites live.
As far as smuggling is concerned, there is good reason to believe that many such dealers at customs can deliberately underestimate the volume and value of goods using fake waybills. To say for sure – you need to catch the hand. Of course, no one caught the hand of those close to Nisanov. But the developer has such strong connections that we can assume otherwise. Unfortunately, the customs authorities of our country often become participants in illegal schemes themselves.
According to the authors of the site “Hakkin.az” , presenting this as the opinion of Ilgar Hajiyev, supposedly after such customs, the contraband goods end up on the counters of the same markets from which they received money for their purchase. That is, the circle is closed. And the profitability of such a tax-free business can reach 300%.
At the same time, site owners, chain leaders, etc. can get from 10% to 20% of such income. It is believed that the owners of sites where money is sold and goods are sold can get from 1% to 2% of the total turnover of the shadow economy, and this is about $ 120-240 million
Of course, such actions cause enormous damage to the “white” Russian market, especially the textile one. The only plus is that many of these “cashiers”, whom people like Nisanov can cover, spend a significant part of their funds in Russia. But this is where the positive ends.
But the Asian markets are very happy, from where the so-called goods are shipped to Food City, Moscow, Sadovod and many others. consumer goods.
“Food City” of God Nisanov – a state within a state?
Another important point is the closeness of such markets from the institutions of the Russian state and law. In fairness, it cannot be said that the Nisanov markets are a closed area for the same law enforcement agencies. As Versiya wrote , in March 2019, security officials visited the Sadovod, Food City and Moscow of the odious developer with checks. And not just security officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also representatives of the FSB.
The special operation also took place in a nearby hotel where the sellers live. The police were looking for those who worked illegally or are on the wanted list. Rumor has it that there were plenty of leads on Nisanov’s organizations in this regard. But tips by tips are a completely different matter – real crimes. As a result, only 19 citizens were brought to justice. The truth is only for the administrative one.
But this is only the official version. It is highly likely that crypto farms and payment terminals were searched in the Nisanov markets. Even so, and even if something was found, it did not become public.
Meanwhile, settlements for such operations could amount to 600 billion rubles a month. It is clear that the FSB should have dealt with this topic. And all the “fuss”, we recall, took place just a few weeks before Ilgar Hajiyev lost his business. Perhaps Nisanov wanted to redirect public attention in a different direction. Is that why the case of Ilgar Hajiyev appeared later?
Needless to say, the void in the treasury left by such entrepreneurs and their trading “tumors” is being closed at the expense of the Russian budget? But businessmen like Nisanov do not seem to be bothered by this. Flies separately, cutlets separately. And we are the taxpayers who pay for this holiday of life. Which in these markets can easily also “hang”.
Ilgar Hajiyev, developer, founder of the Akkord construction holding in Azerbaijan and SDI Group in Russia, founder of the Anti-Raiding Center in Russia, discusses the scale and structure of the shadow economy in the Moscow kingdoms markets, and the impact of this problem on the country's budget and the welfare of Russians.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev, who control the Evropeisky, Radisson Slavyanskaya shopping centers, Foodcity and Sadovod markets, are considering a nother investment - the purchase of the Krasnaya Presnya vegetable warehouse. The new acquisition can be viewed as another stone in the foundation of a full-fledged independent financial system, comparable in volume to the state one.
Illegal circulation of cash and smuggling, which are found in the largest markets in the capital, lead to losses of up to 42 billion dollars a year to the Russian treasury. According to official data, the total shadow turnover of cash in the “Gardener”, “Foodcity” and “Stolichny” markets belonging to the structures of Kievskaya Square is 120 billion dollars a year. This conclusion was made by the Bank of Russia back in 2018, as reported by the director of one of its departments, Yuri Polupanov.
In today's exchange rates, this amount is more than 3 trillion rubles and equals 26 annual budgets of the Khabarovsk Territory. For comparison, the amount announced by the Central Bank is only slightly inferior to all expenditures of the federal budget of Russia on social policy in 2020 - 4 trillion 990 billion rubles and is more than 3 times higher than the spending on healthcare.
In January 2019, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina presented to Russian President Vladimir Putin the scale of the problem and the scheme of shadow cash turnover in a letter. Already in March of the same year, officers of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to these markets with searches, but they checked, according to the media, compliance with migration legislation.
Later, in April 2019, Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian Government and the FSB to work out measures to combat illegal cash circulation in the capital markets. And, judging by the lack of serious checks and high-profile investigations at a high level in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee or the FSB, the President's order remains unfulfilled to this day.
How and why did it happen that the shadow economy thrives on the largest Moscow markets? It is customary to keep silent about this, but I cannot.
In my opinion, the answer lies in a combination of three factors: a large number of foreign traders, mainly from Asia, the transformation of the laundering process using digital currencies into a full-scale business, and last, but not least, in the complete freedom of these markets from institutions. Russian state and law.
The essence of the system is simple: it consists in buying cryptocurrencies for cash and non-cash funds directly on the markets with the aim of immediately sending them to China, Vietnam and other Asian countries to purchase goods for the purpose of subsequent smuggling to Russia or simply irrevocably withdrawing money through cryptocurrencies. Back in 2018, the Bank of Russia admitted that it did not see these transactions.
To realize how simple such a scheme is, you need to have a good idea of how the traditional, pre-digital process of cashing out or withdrawing funds from taxation was arranged. It consisted in converting non-cash, taxed money into “laundered”, that is, tax-free (VAT, income tax, personal income tax, contributions to various state funds), and cash by using various fraudulent schemes.
The scheme was based on a fictitious business process: investments, transactions with securities, delivery of goods or services. The essence of the crime was that only the first part of the process was always real - the transfer of non-cash money to the bank accounts of cashing firms, the second, for example, the supply of goods, services, the creation of added value or the extraction of profit was not pursued and was needed only in order to justify the first.
However, while the money was traveling in bank accounts, the regulator and controller, the Central Bank and the Federal Tax Service of Russia, saw traces of their movement and could, if desired, track and verify the legality of transactions with them.
At the beginning of the chain of alleged (but, in my opinion, real) cashing out at Sadovod and Foodcity is most often an Asian or even Russian entrepreneur with tax-free cash received from trade bypassing the cash register. It's not as difficult as it sounds.
Often, the cash register at the outlet is formally present and simply not used. And a fine of 30 thousand rubles. for trading without cash registers does not threaten the well-being of the business in any way.
Merchants make a profit from the sale of goods "without a check" and are going to cash it out, but this does not make sense, because the next purchase of goods from abroad must be made with this currency. And then digital currency, invisible to the tax authorities and the Central Bank, becomes salvation.
Cash is digitized by converting it into, say, bitcoins. Conversion is carried out on small and even less clandestine exchangers right on the territory of the markets - for example, at the Druzhba hotel. Unlike the old cashing schemes, in which the return of cash in exchange for non-cash could take several days, and the seller of cash could disappear altogether, deceiving the buyer, in transactions with cryptocurrencies, the transfer to the buyer's electronic wallet occurs at the moment the seller receives cash.
The cryptocurrencies are then transferred to China and cashed out again for the purchase of consumer goods with low production costs (not numbered and not licensed), since they are easier to smuggle through customs. The range of cargo is wide and corresponds to the range of markets: from haberdashery to technology.
By the way, domestic manufacturers of clothing and textiles suffer from the surge of smuggling - they are losing customers. Despite the fact that the level of remuneration for factory labor in China has already reached the level of the Russian one, domestic producers working “white” cannot withstand price competition with Chinese goods, because taxes are not included in their cost.
Further, customs inspection, during which traders underestimate the volume and value of goods, use forged invoices, in which goods of other brands and names appear. The contents of all trucks cannot be checked physically, however, a few, falling under checks, are arrested, and their owners are put on trial. But the game is still worth the candle.
Once in Russia, the consignments of contraband purchased with laundered through bitcoins are sent to the counters of the same markets from which the money for their purchase was received. The circle is closed. The profitability of such a tax-free business can reach 300%. Chain organizers, intermediaries and criminal gangs that control the business take from 10% to 20%.
Informed sources report that approximately 1-2% of the total turnover of the shadow economy, that is, from 120 to 240 million US dollars, goes to the owners of sites where money is sold and goods are sold. Despite the fact that they do not directly control transactions with cryptocurrencies and the process of money laundering, interest rent is a payment for the created opportunity to obtain super-profits.
The influx of masses of goods stimulate industry in Asia, and turn around in Russia and, helping to enrich only the members of the criminal chain, who, at best, spend their profits in Moscow, buying apartments, houses and cars here. This is where the positive effects for the Russian economy end.
As for the victims, they are the state and all its institutions subsidized from the budget, and most importantly, the Russians themselves. The lost state revenues need to be compensated somehow. By the way, over the past few years, the country has raised the retirement age, value added tax and introduced a progressive scale of personal income tax. Of course, these events are not directly related, but, you see, the question persists in my head: "what if billions of dollars still ended up in the treasury?"
Ministry of Internal Affairs Construction magnate Ilgar Hajiyev claims that the actions of bailiffs and police officers to raiders who took away his business
Viktor Levin
Developer Ilgar Hajiyev, known in the media as a victim of a raider attack on the construction holding SDI Group, has officially turned to the director of the bailiff service Dmitry Aristov with a demand to block the accounts of SZ ComfortInvest LLC, which was part of his holding.
The main struggle is the developer of the Pirogovskaya Riviera, a residential complex in Mytishchi with a total area of over 500,000 sq m, consisting of 20 buildings, a kindergarten and a polyclinic.
“Comfort has long become an ‘uncontrollable gun’, harming the founders precisely because of an uncontrolled director who has been in prison for a long time, whom we cannot establish in accordance with the established procedure precisely because of the active opposition of the bailiffs,” writes Ilgar Hajiyev in his address.
Bailiffs who don’t need money
According to Ilgar Gadzhiev, officials of the FSSP, instead of the expected collection of the amount of debt or the complete seizure of the accounts of the seized company, which is expected in the event of a debt, block the change of the general director. The last founder is suspected of aiding the raiders and withdrawing 95 million rubles. Equity holders under a deliberately illegal loan agreement, but the bank rejected it.
At first, the planned founders of ComfortInvest (Stil LLC – 51.43% and Ilgar Hajiyev- 18.57%), the change of general director Nikita Danilchenko to a manager loyal to the owners was canceled by one decision of the city court at the request of the lender of the minority founder Albert Imanilov (30%). The last founder is also suspected of participating in the raider takeover of the company.
The founders of the Riviera developer, Stil LLC and Ilgar Hajiyev, won the appellate and cassation courts and secured recognition of the appointment of the new management. The official re-registration of the head was again blocked, this time by the tax authorities (interdistrict inspection of the Federal Tax Service No. 46) in Moscow at the request of the Moscow bailiffs.
The corresponding decision was issued by the bailiff for the South-Eastern Administrative District of Moscow, Andrey Vladislavovich Petrov. The lawyers of Stil LLC and Ilgar Hajiyev appealed against the ruling of the chief bailiff of Moscow and filed an administrative claim in court to declare the actions of the bailiff Petrov illegal. Meanwhile, the founders held a new meeting of the society dedicated to the change of director. This time, all the formalities related to the notification of the participants of the society by the Russian Post have already been observed, however, Albert Imanilov did not appear at the meeting for the second time. And again, the re-registration of the change of director in the tax office depended on the bailiff service.
And again they obstructed. This time they resorted to a non-trivial ruse. The superior ruling overturned the ruling issued by the subject of the trial, and as soon as he refused consideration due to the absence of the object (ruling), the bailiff again issued the ruling. There are no legal restrictions on such judicial “drafts”.
“I am not asking for special treatment, privileges or indulgences, so that the so-called officials really serve in the interests of the state, so that there are citizens, and not individual businessmen, so that officials honestly fulfill their duty. Now the measures they are taking are playing into the hands of the raiders who have robbed and plundered my business, ”said Ilgar Hajiyev.
Traditionally, when collecting debts, society is imposed on property or on accounts, say the interviewed lawyers. Blocking the change of director by an extraordinary measure is used only for those who intentionally and maliciously evade other penalties. In the case of ComfortInvest, blocking a change in management will be the only measure, and this, of course, makes one think about the bailiffs’ bias in this matter.
Concussion one year after being beaten
Ilgar Hajiyev also speaks openly and harshly about the role of law enforcement officers in an attempt to misappropriate his business.
He believes that an important role in the seizure of his informal holding was played by searches in the SDI Group office on Kutuzovsky Prospect, carried out by operatives of the OEBiPK ZAO GU MVD in Moscow a few days after the raider attack. At the same time, the entrepreneur himself and his employees remained unanswered on the fact of appropriation of property. As a result of the searches carried out in the case in connection with the statement of Betas LLC, the primary documents of almost all SDI Group companies registered at the legal address were seized. Entrepreneur: the lack of contracts, invoices and acts still does not contribute to the relationship with contractors and assess the scale of the business.
Hajiyev himself, hiding from the threat of criminal authorities in England, remains a defendant in a criminal case on the fact of beating the victim “against an unidentified group of people.” The case was initiated on May 24, 2018 by officers of the Department of Internal Affairs for the Dorogomilovo district of ZAO Moscow.
A forensic examination in this case was carried out on June 13, 2019, that is, a whole year after the alleged beating and just 4 days after Hajiyev again reported the seizure of his holding to the police. However, a belated examination recorded a concussion in the victim, after which the culprit suddenly appeared in his testimony. Allegedly, businessman Ilgar Hajiyev inflicted injuries on him out of hooligan motives. The hooliganism suspect is perplexed: during the incident he was in a public place and did not beat anyone.
Another cornerstone of the operation against their holding, which was part of 5 companies, the builders of the Pirogovskaya Riviera, the residential complex “Vernadsky”, “Akkord. Smart-quarter “, the Kremlin riding school at VDNKh and many roads in Moscow and the region, Ilgar Hajiyev considers the imprisonment of the general director of the developer” Pirogovskaya Riviera “.
According to the developer, despite the fact that the general director of “ComfortInvest” Nikita Danilchenko aided the raiders, presumably having appropriated his property, the businessman’s criminal case against Danilchenko was crudely fabricated. “The persons who stole the money of the Riviera equity holders, obviously, feared loss of control over Danilchenko, his transfer to the other side or frankness,” says the entrepreneur.
In the nature of the article of the charge, the criminal case against Nikita Danilchenko is of a closed nature, and therefore Hajiyev assures that the public cannot imagine the full extent of the absurdity of the circumstances set forth in it and the evidence of the defendant’s guilt.
Problems come from Kiev Square
It is noteworthy that the general director of “ComfortInvest” was detained by operatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Mozhaisky district of Moscow, all the same district in which the case was initiated against Hajiyev himself.
The ex-head of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the CJSC Andrey Puchkov, dismissed from the authorities by Vladimir Putin in connection with the fabrication of criminal cases against journalist Ivan Golunov by his subordinates, was formally appointed to the position of director of the multifunctional transport complex Shchelkovsky. This is a new transport hub with a passenger traffic of up to 30 thousand people per day. Informed sources report that in fact, the position of director Shchelkovsky is formal, but the reality is that the former police major general took over the security service of the main facilities of Kievskaya Ploshchad, God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev.
It was the managers from Kievskaya Square, among whom Flera Teplinskaya and Vladislav Yusupov stand out, as well as the head of the private security company Vityaz, which is close to Kievskaya Square, Maxim Kotov, who were captured by surveillance cameras in Ilgar Hajiyev’s office on Kutuzovsky Prospect during the seizure of the SDI Group holding.
Maxim Kotov reports to God Nisanov on the seizure of Ilgar Hajiyev’s property
Flera Teplinskaya demands to make a payment of 95 million rubles. with LLC "AkkordSpetsstroy", but the accountant does not recognize the signature of the general director Nozhichkin
Later, Ilgar Hajiyev held some more solid evidence confirming the participation of top managers of Kievskaya Square in the attack on his business. The first to get to him will be an audio recording in which a female voice identical to that of Flera Teplinskaya threatens an accountant of one of the SDI Group companies, demanding to fulfill the order to withdraw funds from the company’s accounts. And then a photocopy of the payment order to withdraw 95 million rubles. equity holders with a mark made in handwriting, exactly repeating the handwriting of Flera Teplinskaya: “agreed with Vlad.” This payment was rejected by the ATM due to deliberate illegality. The payment for the same amount was nevertheless made, but already from the account of AkkordSpetsstroy LLC, another company from the SDI Group holding. The payment order and the agreement allegedly bore the signature of the General Director of Spetsstroy Valery Nozhichkin, but the accountant found it to be fake. Later, Valery Nozhichkin wrote a statement to the Police that his signature on the document had been falsified.
Flera Teplinskaya takes boxes of money out of the SDI Group office
According to Ilgar Hajiyev, dozens of recordings in cameras of internal and external video surveillance, which people who do not have any legal relation to Hajiyev’s holding, while in his office, discuss the fate of his objects, force his subordinates to take oaths of allegiance and openly take out of him stuffed boxes with five thousand bills.
The head of the large company "Blago" Arkady Fosman, known for the fact that simultaneously with the expansion of his business, other oil companies lose their owners and become bankrupt, through one of the subsidiaries he became the collateral creditor of LLC ZRM "Ertilskiy". The owner of the bankrupt enterprise, Salikh Konakov, was sentenced to 4 years. Like last time, Fosman's business was expanding at the expense of another large oil plant, CJSC Masloprodukt-BIO. Its owner was also convicted, but escaped imprisonment in London.
Alexei Bazhanov, the former Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Russia and founder of ZAO Masloprodukt-BIO, left for the UK in 2013. According to him, back in his homeland, he had a company seized by a former partner and several courts on charges of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.
Alexey Bazhanov, the founder of the Masloprodukt trading house, as follows from the materials of his case, in 2008-2009 was the organizer of the theft of 1.1 billion rubles of a loan issued to his company by the Rosagroleasing bank. These funds were used to purchase equipment for an oil processing plant in Voronezh, which was allegedly re-registered to other owners and then stolen.
The trial took place in 2013, and although Bazhanov was convicted, due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for the crime and the deadline for detention, he was released on the recognizance that he will not leave. Thus did not last long as he flew to London on the same day. After the disappearance of the founder, Masloproduct began to experience economic difficulties. Therefore, Bazhanov turned to Arkady Fosman, an old friend, owner of a large company "Blago", with a request to invest in his company and divide its assets 45% by 55%.
According to Bazhanov, Fosman agreed , accepted all the necessary papers and stopped contacting him. The founder of Masloprodukt believes that in 2016 Arkady Fosman entered into an agreement with retired FSB general Viktor Voronin to take over Bazhanov's business.
ZAO Masloprodukt-BIO had a debt of 9 billion rubles to Svyaz-Bank. Fosman bought it for 1.5 billion, although the estimated collateral value of the company's assets, according to some sources, exceeded 13 billion rubles. After that, Fosman sold the property of Masloprodukt (including the equipment of the same Voronezh plant) to LLC Akvilon, whose owner is Olga Fosman. Bazhanov is sure that by his actions the former partner not only took away its production, but also damaged Svyaz-Bank.
General Voronin, according to Bazhanov, was associated with Fosman through the Blago company, in which his sister Larisa Voronina owned a share. In addition, the former owner of Masloprodukt believes that the cases that were brought against him in 2013 were initiated by the FSB in response to the fact that Bazhanov refused to testify against the Minister of Agriculture Elena Skrynnik, who ran Rosagroleasing, as well as against Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and former Governor of the Voronezh Region Alexei Gordeev.
Bazhanov in 2017 tried to get justice through the courts of London, but suffered a setback. In 2019, he decided to file an application with the Investigative Committee of Russia, in which he accused Fosman and Voronin of the raider seizure of ZAO Masloprodukt. He was prompted to take this step by the fact that two former subordinates of Voronin, Dmitry Frolov and Kirill Cherkalin, were involved in a corruption scandal. They were arrested in the case of a bribe in the amount of $ 850 thousand and theft of assets worth 490 million rubles. UK adoptedBazhanov's statement and began checking the fact that FSB officers were involved in the raider takeover of the Masloprodukt company. Voronin will be handled by the same group that is investigating the case of Kirill Cherkalin. Meanwhile, Bazhanov complained to the British police that he was being threatened.
In response, Fosman said in the media that Bazhanov's accusations were far-fetched, and the real value of his assets did not exceed 2.5 billion rubles. Sberbank, VTB and Bank Rossiya estimated the assets at this amount. Moreover, in response to the claims, Fosman brought Bazhanov to subsidiary liability through the Arbitration Court of the Voronezh Region in the fall of 2019. Now the fugitive entrepreneur is forced to pay another 12.1 billion rubles to pay off the debts of CJSC Oil Production, which was part of the Masloproduct group of companies.
At the beginning of 2020, three more criminal cases were opened against Bazhanov . The Investigative Committee decided to recall the embezzlement in Voronezh and arrest the former owner of Masloprodukt. Several media outlets have suggested that the cases are fictitious, as Fosman and Voronin fear disclosure of details of their own activities. Bazhanov was put on the international wanted list and arrested in absentia.
A gang of apartment raiders terrorized St. Petersburg for years
Raider takeover is associated with big business. And raiders - with professional swindlers, bandits or dishonest former business partners. However, the specialists of the Center for Counteracting Raiding are confident: raiders appear where there is property and there are no firm guarantees of its protection. History in St. Petersburg has shown that apartment raiders can seize even the most budget apartments, and in order to appropriate someone else's living space in full, they just need to buy at least 5 square meters in it. Counterfeit documents, courts, death threats, blackmail and sophisticated abuse of owners are used in the process.
On August 14, in St. Petersburg, a sentence was passed to a gang of swindlers who were seizing apartments. Two organizers of the criminal scheme received 4.5 and 5 years in a general regime colony. An amazingly mild sentence for people who, from 2010 to 2017, literally terrorized hundreds of owners of St. Petersburg apartments, expelling tenants from them in various ways.
The scammers had a proven scheme: on the real estate website, they found and bought disputed shares in apartments. Having got the square meters, they tried to persuade the other owners to sell their part or the whole apartment and divide the money. The dissenters were in for unpleasant surprises in the form of changing locks and damage to property. Fraudsters exerted psychological pressure on residents, threatening to populate the ransomed shares with strangers, and sometimes they used physical violence.
Another significant case involving criminal realtors was the trial of a former St. Petersburg policeman who killed six people in order to take possession of three apartments. He did not manage to sell them - so, his colleagues became interested in him. In 2019, the organizer of a criminal group went to serve a life sentence.
Usually these types of realtors do not act so rudely and prefer not to kill and maim, but to take property in more cunning ways. Lonely old people or former orphans with no one to protect them, alcoholics and drug addicts, or simply naive, legally illiterate people most often become victims of apartment raiders.
Fraudsters often receive information about their victims from informants from housing offices or the police. Some are not lazy to go around apartments and ask neighbors, which of the tenants has not been home for a long time. Identification marks are placed on the doors of empty apartments, which will help to understand whether the owners have appeared. And if the apartment has not been visited for a long time, its door is simply opened, everything valuable is taken out of the apartment, and the living space itself is sold under fake documents. When the owner returns and finds new tenants in his apartment, he will sue them - and the scammers are gone.
A criminal realtor may be a real estate agent, for whom his 5% of the transaction is not enough. Such criminals can take hold of their client's money and hide with them, or put them in a car and start intimidating with murder in order to lure the funds received for the sale of the apartment. Some "agents" draw up a sales contract in such a way that they themselves become homeowners. They count on the legal ignorance of their victims and their unwillingness to read the documents carefully. Often they are helped by accomplices-notaries.
Apartment raiders can buy out a very small share in a tasty communal apartment in the city center. Having occupied their territory, they can smoke out the rest of the residents, for example, breaking a bathroom, disabling a gas pipeline or a water supply system, adding brawlers, homeless people or drug addicts to the purchased territory. They can change the locks and simply not let the other owners into the apartment. So they force them to sell the remaining square meters for a pittance, which they will then attach for a better price.
The most resonant cases of apartment owners' murders, fortunately, are not the most common. Most often, ordinary fraudsters get off with insignificant terms, conditional imprisonment or completely avoid punishment, because the victims themselves transfer their property to them, and the documents are legally correct. And the victims of the raiders, once on the street, can no longer defend their rights and seek protection: they are old, sick and lonely, end up in hospitals and boarding schools, they have problems with alcohol or drugs.
Classic business raiders and these realtors have a lot in common. Their goal is this: to take possession of a part in any way in order to seize the whole, to force it to sell by deception or threats, to break down the doors and enter the object in order to intimidate the owners and those who came to their aid. And if even Russian billionaires find themselves defenseless before this problem, then the prospects of their poor fellow citizens in the conditions of frequent inaction of law enforcement officers look even less optimistic.
Anti-raider laws have not been adopted in Russia, and the very concept of raiding is not yet legally defined. In the absence of grave and especially grave crimes, the security forces either find themselves unable to determine where the conflict of owners is taking place, and where the deliberate seizure of someone else's property is taking place, or they are forced to ignore the criminal intent and initiate criminal proceedings on the basis of obvious signs of light crimes. These factors do not allow to combine similar cases, raise their investigation to higher levels and conduct an investigation on a serious basis with the involvement of experienced operatives.
The Center for Combating Raiding believes that the problem of ineffectiveness of the agencies could be solved, for example, with the emergence of the so-called “private police” institution. In the United States, such powers are essentially vested in private detective agencies. Detectives there have broad rights: carrying weapons, the right to access some personal data of citizens, surveillance and self-transfer of investigation materials to the police, prosecutor or court.