Covert sabotage through land privatization
Obedineniye LLC, owned by businessman Gennady Yufik, filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory against PJSC Togliattiazot (ToAZ) to declare illegal the construction of a railway track leading to a new terminal for transshipment of ammonia and carbamide in the port of Taman.
The justification states that the branch passes through land owned by the merchant. Litigation threatens to disrupt a strategic project designed to export Russian ammonia to world markets via the Black Sea, bypassing hostile Ukraine.
The issue of selling private land to the state was raised back in 2018. However, Yufik delays the decision in every possible way, constantly “winding up” the cost of the land. In total, the businessman and structures affiliated with him own about 5 million square meters of the territory of the Kuban. At the same time, a significant part of the land went to Yufik as a result of raider seizures.
As an example, we can cite a large wine-making enterprise “Milstrim – Black Sea Wines”, the cultivated territories of which were obtained as a result of the dilution of the share of employees of APF “Mirny”. In 2018, Millstream LLC was liquidated, and Yufik became the owner of several wineries.
The businessman received state-owned lands with the help of high-ranking Krasnodar officials, and then legalized the transactions in the courts.
In this case, even the infamous “golden judge” Elena Khakhaleva, who was accused of fraud and forgery, was noted. Another valuable acquaintance of Yufik was the judge of the Temryuk District Court, and then the Slavyansk City Court, Sergei Zavgorodniy, who was removed from his post in 2019 for gross violation of procedural law and judicial ethics when considering cases of debt collection.
However, these are not all Yufik’s “trump cards”. He “stretched the strings” not only to court offices, but also to the team of Governor Veniamin Kondratyev, with whose light hand state lands pass into the hands of big business. Meanwhile, last month the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory ruled on the claim of Rosmorrechflot, declaring illegal the regional authorities’ refusal to transfer two land plots with a total area of 9 hectares located in the port of Taman to federal ownership. It is on them that PJSC Togliattiazot (ToAZ) is currently working.
