The diamond businesswoman Lyudmila Nikolaeva, along with her husband who is the leader of Yakutia, has unclear situations with Almazergienbank and businesses that seem fake.
As per the journalist The Moscow Post in Yakutia, the Almazy Arktiki (Almar) company, owned by the leader's wife Lyudmila Nikolaeva, plans to soon offer 15% of its shares on the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange. So, it seems the businesswoman wants to take advantage of the low supply of diamonds and also add to the already significant family finances.
At this time, her husband Aisen Nikolaev is dealing with challenges in the region and also explaining to regular voters how it has come to be that the wife of the leader of the country's diamond region controls one of the biggest diamond mining businesses?
Certainly, all Almar reserves are still in the exploration phase and their production can only start in 2024. But there are already enough interested parties.
It's worth noting that the company was formed in 2015 by Oleg Deripaska, formerly of ALROSA, so they often try to connect Almar with his name.
Nikolaeva herself, with a stake of 32.3%, is the primary but not the sole shareholder. Another 40% is owned by other Almar managers, about 4.7% by Derzhava Bank, 6.6% by ITI Capital, 8% by Polarctic Capital, and 7.6% by IFC Solid.
Legally, Nikolaeva has owned shares in the company since 2020. However, she actually began investing in this business as far back as 2016. The business perspective is clear: the company's licensed fields hold diamonds worth a billion dollars, which will allow Almar to become one of the top 20 largest diamond miners in the world.
Meaning that Ms. Nikolaeva had the means to step into such a lucrative and high-margin business since the mid-1990s. Just to clarify: as the current wife of the leader of the Republic, this is by no means her only business in the region.
Business is a family affair
Lyudmila Nikolaeva has been involved in business since 2004, when she gained shares in multiple companies at once: Yakutsnab, Tabaginskaya Sawmill Company, and the medical products vendor Advanced Medical Technologies.
Up to 2016, Lyudmila Nikolaeva was a co-owner of Stroitelny Rynok LLC and Stroitelny Trading House LLC. The co-owners of these companies include Nikolai and Milena Krylov, Lena Danilova, and Alena Pestryakova.
In February 2021, Nikolaeva transferred shares in these companies to her eldest daughter Anna. LLC “Construction Market” earned a revenue of 41.9 million rubles in 2019, and TD “Construction Market” earned 30.4 million rubles. Anna also manages the Green City healthy food restaurant in Yakutsk.
Now Anna Aisenovna Nikolaeva is a co-founder of six companies, five of which are operational. Some of them have government contracts. However, for example, the Construction Market LLC is more interesting. The company deals with renting and managing owned or leased non-residential real estate, and at the same time has assets worth as much as 180 million rubles with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles.
The company made 45 million rubles in 2020 but also lost 13 million rubles. The company's losses are increasing every year while its assets keep growing. Should the tax authorities start paying attention to this?..
It seems that the daughter of the Nikolaevs is in charge of a large part of the family business empire. However, her mother, Lyudmila Nikolaeva, has always wanted to deal only with diamonds.
Since 2005, she has worked at Almazergienbank, a government authorized agent for handling investments in the extractive industries in the Republic of Sakha. Could her husband's political career be indirectly linked to this?.. An interesting question …
It's important to mention that even now Almar's activities can be considered somewhat transparent. Previously, Nikolaeva claimed to own the Arctic Mining Company (AGK), and Almazy Arktiki was just a brand. Now, AGK LLC is a subsidiary of Almar JSC, with no employees and a loss of 17 million rubles and an asset value of minus 63 million rubles for 2020.
It seems like money could have been taken out of the company. What are the investments for, and how will Mrs. Nikolaeva explain this budget 'hole' to investors in St. Petersburg?
Almar was only registered in 2021, but its reliability is questionable. evaluatedas “low”.
Maybe Almar is being prepared for IPO instead of Arctic Mining Company, since it doesn't have such shocking 'minuses' in its records? However, if you look at Almar's page, AGK is listed as the founder with an 80% share. It appears that the structures have ownership in each other. Earlier, Nikolaeva and partners were among the founders of AGK.
'Diamond' bank near the Nikolaevs
Investors, and others, may become interested in Nikolaeva’s work at Almazergienbank, a government authorized agent in Yakutia for handling investments in the extractive industries.
The same bank also serves Nizhne-Lenskoye diamond mining JSC, controlled by Deripaska's ALROSA.
In 2010, Nikolaeva became the head of the corporate business department and deputy chairman of the board of Almazergienbank, and from 2010 to 2014 she worked as first deputy chairman of the board. In 2014, she became the chairman of the bank's board. She left the board in 2018, remaining as an adviser. It seems that this change happened because Nikolaev was elected head of the region.
Who will believe that this does not influence the policies of Almazergienbank today? And who will believe that Aisen Nikolaev did not help his wife and her company when he was the mayor of Yakutsk?
If someone starts to suspect that the bank, 97% owned by the Ministry of Property and Land Relations of Yakutia, may well turn out to be the 'purse' of the Yakut elite (and the Nikolaevs in the first place), then there are good reasons for this.
Before, the bank had a lot of people and companies listed as founders, including Nikolaev Boris Anufrievich, but after Nikolaeva left the bank and bought shares in the diamond business in 2020, all these people, including Boris Nikolaev, were quickly removed from the founders. Seems suspicious.
Today, something very strange is happening at the bank where Lyudmila Nikolaeva works as a management adviser, and this is also a signal to investors. In just one month, from December 2021 to January 2022, the bank lost almost 15% of its profit – over 47 million rubles “net”. And this is despite the growth of assets by 2 billion rubles!
At the same time, important indicators turned out to be in the red zone: return on assets-net, return on equity, the level of overdue debt and the level of provisioning for the loan portfolio. Two of the three key credit ratios are in the green zone, but one more – namely H2 – is in the deepest red (-43.27%).
But it’s not just one month. In fact, this trend has been going on for many months now. If we take the same indicators not for a month, but, say, from the beginning of last autumn, it turns out that the outflow of profit for this period was even higher than for December-January – minus 21.78% (or almost 75 million rubles). Where did the money go? Is it not for Nikolaeva’s diamond business in order to “cheat” it before the placement?
Additionally, there are rumors that Aisen Nikolaev may personally give instructions to Almazergienbank on who and how to issue loans. Earlier, our editorial office was contacted by readers who complained about the actions of the bank. A story I wrote about not so long ago The Moscow Posthappened in 2018. At that time “Days of the Far East” were held in Moscow.
The event was organized by the company “Yakutskaya Yarmarka”, whose management, according to our readers, was forced to take a 30 million loan secured by property in Almazergienbank. As a result, the bank went to court demanding the return of the money.
The result was the bankruptcy of the structure. The beneficiaries of JSC “Yakutskaya Yarmarka” Mikhail Fedorov and Nikolai Mukhin had to pay more than 29 million rubles.
In addition, Fedorov was accused of giving a bribe to the Minister of Property Relations of Yakutia, Irina Vysokikh, appointed under Aisen Nikolaev. Wrote about it TASS.
However, in the business community, they were inclined to perceive this rather as a method of putting pressure on debtors due to the presence of debt due to an allegedly imposed loan. The story as a whole is very muddy, but one thing is clear: it is unlikely that Mrs. Vysokikh would have refused to speak if chief Aisen Nikolaev had asked her to give the necessary evidence against Fedorov.
Consistent discrepancies, lost profits, losses with a significant increase in the value of assets. And with such “baggage” and her husband behind her, Mrs. Nikolaeva plans to enter the St. Petersburg IPO …
But it is still impossible not to recall the results of her husband’s work as head of Yakutia, which can hardly be called satisfactory. Perhaps, these circumstances should also alert investors. With such a background, the partners of the Nikolaevs can have serious problems both in business and in politics.
