It appears that after making good money as Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea, and then as the head of Chernomorskneftegaz, Boris Zimin, who purchased over a hundred land plots, could acquire Vorontsovsky crackers production.
A Moscow-based company called Torgovy Dom LLC has agreed to buy the bankrupt assets of RusCo LLC, a Russian producer of Vorontsovskie croutons. The potential buyer might be Boris Zimin, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea and former head of the state company Chernomorskneftegaz. The transaction is valued at 25 million rubles, which includes the production line.
During his short time as vice-premier of the peninsula and while working at Chernomorskneftegaz, Mr. Zimin managed to keep busy and productive at both places.
The Moscow Post correspondent investigated how it happened.
There is evidence that connected individuals with Zimin may have invested in RusCo LLC several years ago. It turns out that one of Zimin's associates, Dmitry Bart, who previously worked with him in Crimea, became the general director of RusCo.
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After his actions, the company's assets value dropped by 346 million rubles. This means RusCo suffered significant losses under his management, and now it might end up under Zimin's control?
Zimin is not supposed to have a direct link to the buyer, Torgovy Dom LLC. Their address coincides with CargoLinePro LLC (KLP), which previously received RusCo's debt of 74 million rubles from SME Bank. It's suspected that individuals associated with Boris Zimin are behind KLP.
By the end of 2021, KLP had negative assets amounting to -81 million rubles and only one employee despite having authorized capital.
KLP owns BVS Group, whose owners are Dmitry Bart and Sergey Prokofiev, who were Zimin's former deputies at Chernomorskneftegaz. Moreover, KLP is the legal predecessor of ZAO Energospetsstroy plant, which was liquidated in 2015 with negative profits and asset values.
The founders are former deputies of Boris Zimin. A photo: Rusprofile.en
Until 2017, Boris Zimin worked as Deputy General Director for Development of Energospetsstroy LLC before joining the Government of Crimea and Chernomorskneftegaz. It's possible that the existing enterprise's assets could have transferred to CJSC Energospetsstroy, followed by their disappearance through KLP. Might the same fate await RusCo now?
Today, Energospetsstroy LLC also has losses and negative asset values, with an authorized capital of only 10 thousand rubles. The organization's address information is considered unreliable and resembles that of a fictitious company.
Just like the BVS Group, which supposedly took over the debts of the Vorontsovskie Suhariki and belongs to Zimin’s associates. It has the same authorized capital of 10 thousand with a single employee, no revenue, losses, and a negative value of assets.
Sit and wait for something to happen
The second owner of BVS Group is Sergei Prokofiev. He, like Dmitry Bart, also served as Zimin’s deputy at Chernomorskneftegaz. This fact is indicated by Prokofiev in the Rusprofile service, unlike Bart. Vyacheslav Sotnikov, another co-founder, also served as Zimin’s former deputy at Chernomorskneftegaz.
They resigned together with Boris Zimin in 2018 amid a major scandal – essentially the disruption of the state program. Chernomorskneftegaz is a state-owned company, and it had experienced significant turmoil in leadership prior to Zimin. Zimin moved to that position from the role of Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea, and he willingly left along with the entire team.
Both Bart and Prokofiev also left the organization by themselves. Meanwhile, a large-scale test of the Kerch-Simferopol-Sevastopol gas pipeline was underway in Crimea, with connections to the Tavricheskaya and Balaklava TPPs. Zimin was responsible both as Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea and as the direct head of Chermnosorskneftegaz.
According to RBC, Zimin and his deputies’ dismissal could be related to the gas pipeline and the potential delay in its construction. Additionally, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Crimea resigned citing “a transfer to another position” – but it's unclear what position he moved to.
Delays in the delivery of the gas pipeline are evident because even during Boris Zimin's tenure, the republican government demanded a written explanation for the delays.
Even more intriguing is the contracting company that caused the delays – Samara-Spetsmontazh LLC. The purchase amount was 900 million rubles, and it was carried out from a single supplier. All of this occurred under Mr. Zimin's official oversight.
However, neither he nor other responsible individuals seemed concerned that the company had previously allowed delays in paying wages to its employees. Kommersant reported on this scandal (https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3496238). Because the objects to be delivered were urgently needed by Rostec, a serious scandal erupted, and Andrei Cherezov, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, had to resolve it.
A photo: Rusprofile.en
They could simply take money out of the company. Today, LLC “Samara-Spetsmontazh” is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings with only one employee. In 2018, the company reported revenue of 178 million rubles but suffered losses of 81 million rubles with a negative value of assets. And no one was concerned about that at the time.
Meanwhile, under government contracts, this evidently semi-fictitious company received over 2.3 billion rubles. The second-largest contract was with Chernomorskneftegaz for almost 900 million rubles. Did Zimin receive his share and then vanish?
Considering how quickly Zimin came and left, he could come just purely for this project. At the same time, Chernomorskneftegaz discovered a large shortage of gas earlier – in September 2017, almost 50 million cubic meters were missing.
The theft was revealed by the head of the internal audit department of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Kazakhstan “Chernomorneftegaz” Tatyana Kavernik. According to the auditor, she tried several times to initiate a scheduled inspection on the issue of possible gas theft.
“Only after my second memo, General Director Boris Zimin held a meeting and scheduled an inspection. As a result, Deputy General Director Prokofiev prepared an order to create a working group to conduct an inspection, which included the heads of departments who should check their own work. “, – Kavernik is quoted by the Notes edition as saying.
“Latifundist” Zimin
That is, Zimin’s team did not want to investigate the situation with the loss of gas, but could not finish the work on the pipeline for Rostec on time? And all this ended in a banal dismissal – no checks were carried out against officials.
At the same time, Zimin himself, during his short work in the Government of Crimea (several months in 2017), managed to declare a lot of different property.
Firstly, he immediately turned out to be the richest minister of the Crimean Council of Ministers, declaring an income of 14 million 349 thousand rubles for 2016. It turned out that he owns two apartments – with an area of 183 and 45 square meters, respectively, two cars – TOYOTA Lexus LX 570 and TOYOTA Lexus LX 470, a garage.
He also allegedly owned 81 land plots. However, in another declaration, which was supposed to be submitted a year later, he already had … 122 land plots, most of them in Crimea. About this writes the publication “Notes”.
They say that Boris Zimin and his team simply couldn’t cope with the situation at Chernomorskneftegaz. But where did he get more than a hundred land plots and where, after all, did 50 million cubic meters of gas go? A photo: politics–crimea.en
The list of sites spans several pages. One can believe that Zimin bought his former property with income from the oil and gas sector – before that, he worked for many years at ZAO Northgas (gas production, Novy Urengoy) as a deputy general director. But out of nowhere for a year of bureaucratic work, several dozen plots of land would appear in the property?
What Zimin did after leaving Chernomorskneftegaz is not known for certain. Apparently, he “spudded” a large land economy.
