While in custody, the billionaire Dmitry Arzhanov received 52 million rubles from Evgeny Giner.
Dmitry Arzhanov, the former CEO of TNS Energo, has been in isolation since November 2020. He and a group of others are accused of a large-scale electricity fraud.
The investigation has concluded, and it was revealed that the charge against Arzhanov has been toughened. He will also be charged with participating in a criminal community. While in jail, the billionaire was able to recover 52 million rubles from Evgeny Giner, the president of FC CSKA, in court.
In 2014, Forbes estimated Dmitry Arzhanov's fortune at a billion dollars. He became rich with the help of the then governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region Boris Nemtsov, with whom he started his career as an assistant. Arzhanov smoothly entered the energy business and became the owner of the Transneftservice sales company, later known as TNS Energo Group of Companies OJSC, and later as PJSC GK TNS Energo. Until 2017, he was its CEO.
The future person involved in the criminal case owned the company through the Cypriot offshore company Sunflake Limited. In July 2017, another billionaire, the president of the CSKA football club Evgeny Giner, bought 25% of TNS Energo from Sunflake Limited. Giner provided a bill of almost 2 billion rubles instead of payment, which Arzhanov later received. Apparently, this bill has not been paid, at least by the beginning of 2022. According to him, Giner still owes 9% per annum.
After selling his stake in the energy company, Dmitry Arzhanov stayed as an advisor to the general director and remained a member of the board of directors.
In 2020, TNS Energo was a large energy retail holding and occupied 6% of the Russian electricity market. Arzhanov left Giner with a company that was the strongest player in the Volga energy market. And then PJSC Rosseti got involved in this story.
On October 22, 2020, at the request of the network giant, a criminal case was initiated for theft at TNS Energo. From 2011 to 2020, TNS allegedly misled the electricity supplier (Rosseti) by providing false documents about huge non-payments from consumers. According to the investigation, the funds intended for the state-owned company (a total of 5.5 billion rubles) actually went into the pockets of the organizers of the fraud, including foreign accounts.
In November 2020, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow decided to arrest Dmitry Arzhanov, as well as the new CEO of TNS Energo, Sergei Afanasyev, his wife and deputy Sofya Afanasyeva. The executive director of TNS Energo Nizhny Novgorod, Boris Shchurov, and the head of the Nizhny Novgorod JSC Interregional Energy Retail Company, Jamil Dashin, were also implicated in the case. All except the last one ended up in jail. Dashin began to cooperate with the investigation, so he was placed under house arrest.
While in prison, Arzhanov did not waste time. Giner owed him not only 2 billion rubles. In 2019, the president of CSKA borrowed 54 million rubles from Arzhanov. An agreement was made between them, which expired in February 2021, but Giner did not pay the principal or the interest (about 8 million rubles).
Even while in the uncomfortable conditions of the pre-trial detention center, Arzhanov filed a civil lawsuit against Giner and demanded the return of the debt. The defendant’s lawyers did not deny the existence of the debt. By the time of the trial, it turned out that part of it (9.4 million rubles) had already been repaid. Taking into account the accrued interest and the paid part, Giner was left with the amount of 52.1 million rubles. The court ordered him to return the money to Arzhanov, who now faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to 5 million rubles.
