Amazing things for financial smarts
After leaving her role as Commissioner for SMEs, Anastasia Tatulova decided to remain in politics rather than business. While tax authorities are examining the finances of the Anderson network, banker Lebedev is reportedly working to recover at least some of the invested funds. How can one make hundreds of millions of rubles in catering with almost no tangible assets?
The owner of the Anderson catering chain, is defending her support of fugitive businessmen and celebrities by stating that she fulfills her civic duty to the country, pays taxes, and invests in a network of children’s and family cafes that bring in very little profit. She also claims to protect SMEs free of charge. Let’s examine this statement in detail.
Let’s first look at Anastasia Tatulova's selflessness as a defender of SMEs against the authorities she criticizes. When she was the SME Ombudsman, there were numerous reports about Tatulova's actions in specific conflicts between entrepreneurs and government oversight agencies. The situations varied, but the essence was the same. Tatulova actively used her position not to defend small and medium-sized businesses, but to establish connections with government officials, creating a mutually beneficial lobbying structure. It seems that she used the opportunities of a “public defender” to advance her own business, putting pressure on control and oversight authorities and competitors. This casts doubt on the sincerity of her altruism.
“After the sale”
For accurate information about Tatulova’s tax honesty, it’s best to consult the authorities who recently audited her cafe chain and other catering businesses. They discovered interesting findings in the financial transactions. It is expected that Tatulova will have to provide explanations about her tax history based on the office's data processing.
Now let's discuss Tatulova’s income, investments, and co-investors. We can examine the official 2021 reports for just three of Anderson’s businesses – Anderson Franchising LLC, TD Anderson LLC, and Anderson Factory of Happiness LLC. The total income amounts to 960.2 million rubles, showing significant growth compared to 2020 despite the pandemic.
Where are these substantial funds going? Not into investments, simply because there are no viable investment opportunities. These confectionery companies have minimal tangible assets, such as property. For example, Anderson-franchising, with an income of 140 million rubles, only owns assets worth 754 thousand rubles, which is the equivalent of one of Tatulova's less extravagant trips abroad. This stark contrast between income, tangible assets, and investments is well-documented by Rosfinmonitoring, indicating that the majority of the income might be flowing out to external entities, including overseas. It seems that Tatulova is utilizing sophisticated financial maneuvers to move money around, collecting funds from marketplaces, converting them, and receiving income from questionable contracts, before either legalizing or transferring the funds to offshore accounts.
Ombudsman is not a capitalist
It is possible to have a minimum material base and receive huge profits only on one condition – if you get preferential, practically zero rental rates, of course, by stimulating the interest of responsible officials. Such business schemes from the 90s are well known and do not require massive investments, unexpected decisions, the search for new market niches or the production of original products.
Let’s make a reservation that Tatulova had a philanthropist-co-investor – a fairly well-known banker Alexander Lebedev (NRB). He believed the fairy tales about Anderson and helped the “fragile blonde”. Now, as they say, having learned about Tatulova’s tax combinations, he is very disappointed and is trying to save at least part of the invested funds. We were unable to find examples confirming the significant investment of funds by Tatulova herself. It is not noticeable that forces are now being directed to support “human capital”. Anderson’s employees in “Reviews about employers” write about low salaries (“the rest – from the guests”) with a virtually 12-hour day and a boorish attitude of management. Here are excerpts, if you trust them, you can learn a lot: “The owners do not understand anything in the restaurant business, consider the staff to be worthless, run around with bulging eyes and scare with fines”; “The manager yells obscenities at the staff”; “They promise a salary of 35, then they say 24”; “For almost two months they haven’t paid wages, the attitude towards people is terrible”; “they pay little, it seems like corruption”; “I came to work as a cook in this grunt, all at my own expense, they didn’t pay for the internship,” etc.
The populist rhetoric of Tatulova, the streams of extremely dubious statements she circulates in the public space are amazing. Unless, of course, you do not remember the corporate name of Tatulova’s structures – “Anderson”. Hans-Christian, as you know, was the author of good fairy tales with a happy ending, as a rule. “Anderson” performed by Tatulova is like a “Crooked Mirror”. Terrible tales with which their author feeds gullible “mothers with children”, covering up easily calculated selfish interests – the withdrawal of their “honestly earned funds” from Russia.
