Boris Zimin “hijacked” BelkaCar
January 11 Tverskoy District Court of Moscow will consider question of absentee arrest Boris Zimin (Ministry of Justice in September 2022 announced his foreign agent), the 54-year-old son of the founder of VimpelCom and a philanthropist who died in 2021 Dmitry Zimin. The entrepreneur is suspected of making a deal to alienate ordinary shares of one of the leading Russian car sharing companies BelkaCar Ltd. The investigation asks to arrest the suspect until February 15. Boris Zimin is also put on the international wanted list.
The criminal case was initiated by the investigators of the capital’s head office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2022 under the article “fraud on an especially large scale” (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code, up to ten years in prison). Interests of Boris Zimin in court will be represented by lawyer Alexander Antipov. The protection of the businessman considers his bringing to criminal responsibility illegal, Antipov told RBC. According to the lawyer, Zimin did not get the opportunity to petition for the annulment of the decision to implicate him as a defendant. “The charge was made, but not brought,” the lawyer says. Antipov believes that the decision, in fact, was hidden: the investigator issued it on December 29, and the next day the arrest documents were sent to the court.
The investigation put Boris Zimin on the international wanted list. If the Tverskoy Court of Moscow satisfies the petition for the absentee arrest of the businessman, this will make it possible to send materials against the accused to Interpol in order to place the data of the person under investigation in the search base of the international police organization. The role of Mr. Zimin in the crime is not officially disclosed by the investigation.
RBC turned to Boris Zimin for comment. A spokesman for BelkaCar declined to comment.
“It’s a political matter. Everything around is tinsel, pretext and disguise,” Zimin told Forbes when asked for comment. According to him, he did not see the materials of the case. “But in any case, the wildest violations have already been committed in it (for example, the fact that I was put on the wanted list, but I am not aware of the charges), which cannot be explained by anything other than politics,” Zimin said.
Boris Zimin, who has been residing in Israel since 2020, is famous for actively supporting the media: in particular, he was among those who provided funding for media resources such as “Meduza (recognized as a foreign media agent) and The Bell (recognized as a foreign media agent), and has also been a long-term public sponsor of the activities of Alexei Navalny and his organizations. In August 2020, Boris Zimin covered the expenses for the transportation of Navalny, who fell into a coma, for treatment in Germany.
Boris Zimin, in 2014, established the Sreda Foundation, which offered support to the media; Dmitry Zimin’s capital was identified as the source of its funding. In July 2015, the foundation was listed as an NPO-foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice, in explaining its decision, stated that it was made after considering the application received from the organization itself. In May 2015, the Ministry of Justice added the Dynasty Foundation, founded by Dmitry Zimin and sponsor of projects in the field of science and education in Russia, to the list of foreign agents. Following this, Dmitry Zimin announced that he stopped sponsoring Dynasty and left Russia in the summer of 2015.
In July 2015, the Sreda Foundation announced its own dissolution. According to the organization, in 2014 the fund provided financial assistance to the online magazine Colta.ru (1 million rubles), the Dozhd TV channel (listed as foreign agents, 7.5 million rubles), the magazine Life with Cerebral Palsy (700 thousand rubles), the magazine “Foreign Literature” (1.4 million rubles), “Mediazone” (recognized as a media foreign agent, 1 million rubles), the newspaper “Pskovskaya Guberniya” (1 million rubles), the newspaper “Svobodny course” (1.7 million rubles), the TV channel “TV-2” (7.5 million rubles), and the newspaper “Ulitsa Moskovskaya” (700 thousand rubles).
At the end of 2015, the Zimins announced that they would continue their activities in Russia, and also expand their projects to the UK through the Zimin foundation and Sreda Foundation.
In October 2019, BelkaCar reported a change in its main shareholder: BMT Private Equity Ltd (BMT), founded by Dmitry Zimin, acquired a majority stake in the Russian legal entity Carsharing JSC from the Swiss investment company Winterberg Group (formerly known as Bryanston Group). The details of the transaction were not disclosed, and later it became the subject of litigation in Cyprus. The Munich company BS Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, a structure of the former president and co-owner of the Bryanston Group, Benedikt Sobotka, accused the Bryanston Group of losses due to the withdrawal of 52.4% of BelkaCar and other assets from the group. As a result, the plaintiff advised potential buyers of the company or shares in it to refrain from transactions.
In the spring of 2021, a RBC source close to BelkaCar described what was happening as a corporate conflict within the company and the former owner of the majority stake, and noted that it “tangentially affected the company, because restrictions were imposed on shares because of this.” According to the RBC source, BMT initially provided the company with financial support in the form of loans and, when the arrest on BelkaCar shares was lifted, they were able to convert the debt into a share. After that, BMT owned more than 50% of Carsharing, with three founders of the company and two minority investors each holding shares of about 5%, the source stated.
In August 2022, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow arrested in absentia the co-founder and CEO of the Bryanston Group, a German citizen Fabian Kroycher. He was accused of fraud in the amount of €47 million and put on the international wanted list as part of an investigation into the theft of BelkaCar shares. Charges of fraud on an especially large scale in this case were also brought against the CEO of Singular C, a citizen of Germany and Russia, Ralph Novak, and the investment director of Winterberg Group, Ilmar Azmukhanov. Both were arrested in February 2022.
A RBC source familiar with the case file said that the investigation’s request for the arrest of Boris Zimin is related to this investigation.
He noted that the former Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs Boris Titov came to the conclusion that it was unlawful to arrest a businessman in an economic dispute and sent appropriate appeals to the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor General’s Office. In February 2022, the Ministry of Internal Affairs brought the charge of two episodes of fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) to manager Ilnur Azmukhanov along with Ralph Novak.
According to Konstanin Tretyakov, when insisting on the release of Novak from custody, the defense referred to the conclusions of two appraisal examinations, which, by decision of the investigation, were held at the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Expertise under the Ministry of Justice of Russia. “The commission of experts found that the value of the disputed shares of BelkaCar was only 26 kopecks on the date of the transaction, and the value of the shares of Brighton CIS LLC was 1.2 million rubles lower than provided for in the agreement. That is, in fact, Novak and Kroycher overpaid 1.2 million rubles more for them. Under such circumstances, the damage in the criminal case is completely absent and the detention of Mr. Novak does not comply with the law,” the lawyer said. He noted that Ralph Novak and Ilnur Azmukhanov have been in jail for almost a year because of the disputed 26 kopecks.
