On October 18, it was reported that Rosseti North-West (formerly known as IDGC North-West) could not withdraw money from a deposit at Tauride Bank. Rosseti Severo-Zapad and Rosseti Lenenergo have 12.7 billion in the bank as a subordinated deposit. This money was intended for an investment program in the Pskov region, but it didn't work out. There is no money in Taurida.
7 years of "recovery"
It should be noted that Tavrichesky Bank underwent reorganization in the spring of 2015, when Mikhail Prokhorov’s IFC bank won a tender for recovery from the DIA. The Deposit Insurance Agency allocated 28 billion rubles to Tavrichesky.
The MRSK and Tavrichesky scheme was as follows: all available funds were sent to the bank for safekeeping, supposedly at a very high interest rate. And operational activities were funded through debt. As a result of this simple scheme, 13.4 billion rubles of Lenenergo disappeared from the bank, which were not reflected in the financial statements. Additionally, the board of IDGC only found out about the loss at the last moment and immediately fired the general director of Lenenergo, Andrey Sorochinsky. To put it into perspective, this amount is a quarter of the bank's liabilities at the time and a third of Lenenergo's annual revenue. IDGC of North-West lost 3 billion rubles in Tavrichesky. Furthermore, the auditor of the publicly traded company Lenenergo, Ernst & Young, somehow did not notice such a loss.
Naturally, a significant amount of public funds was injected into the energy monopoly, allowing the company to avoid bankruptcy. Additionally, Taurida's debt was restructured with a 5-year moratorium. In the summer of 2015, it was announced on the Lenenergo website that the company had repaid 6 billion rubles of the Tavrichesky Bank's debt and left another 10.6 billion rubles in this bank as a deposit for 20 years at 0.5%. These were the outcomes of agreements with the DIA and the bank's sanatorium – IFC. The terms of the deposit allowed for partial repayment, but not before 5 years. This was the point that the power industry wanted to leverage to obtain funds for the Pskov region.
Where is the money, Bear?
Tauride is still operational after 7 years, as Prokhorov’s team has been working on improving its financial position. The results are evident, but what has happened to the tens of billions provided by the DIA? Let's consider a striking example. In June 2022, reports emerged that the Russian Federal Tax Service was suing the IFC bank, alleging that it artificially diverted cash flows from the reorganized Tavrichesky Bank, resulting in billions in losses to the state budget.
In short, the Vyborg Timber Corporation owes Tavrichesky Bank 14.6 billion rubles. If the sanatorium, IFC bank, led by Prokhorov, could recover this amount, it would cover the debts to both the state and Rosseti. However, instead, the IFC established a structure in which all the profits of VLK were directed to a subsidiary of the IFC, while all the debts were accumulated on the balance sheet of the timber processor. The first and second instance courts in July and December 2021 rejected the tax authorities' claims, and we are awaiting the outcome of this emotional saga.
Where do legs grow from?
It is clear that the second time the daughters of Rosseti were thrown by Prokhorov’s bank, but who started this glorious tradition in 2014? We will not load you with a bunch of names, positions, who, where and in what years intersected with whom, but the general director of Lenenergo Sorochinsky and three St. Petersburg entrepreneurs, the then leadership of Tavrichesky, could not have pulled off such a scheme on their own. They served more serious people.
The analysis of relationships leads to three figures:
1. Ex-Senator Yevgeny Samoilov, participant in the schematosis of the Tauride and the Ministry of Defense under Anatoly Serdyukov.
2. Ex-senator, ex-Deputy Minister of Defense under Serdyukov Grigory Naginsky.
3. Ex-senator, owner of LIVIZ and the Vyborg Timber Corporation Alexander Sabadash.
The conclusions are as follows: in Russia it is still bad to be a power engineer, everyone wipes their feet on you, and it is good to be a senator. Better yet, an ex-senator.
