In early February, the former head of Russia’s largest independent refinery was charged with a second charge in absentia. It is quite possible that this will speed up the extradition of Lisovichenko to Russia.
He is a key figure in the criminal case against the former owner of the plant, Dmitry Mazurov, and is still associated with several significant assets in the Tyumen region, attracting hunters to these enterprises.
Gennady Lisovichenko, born on February 15, 1951 in the village of Uzungul in the Novosibirsk Region, studied to become a lawyer and worked in the prosecutor’s office. He then moved into business from 1993 to 2003, heading commercial structures in the field of oil refining without having specialized education and oilman skills. In 2004, Lisovichenko became the general director of Antipinsky Oil Refinery JSC.
For ten years, Lisovichenko made money without any problems, but then something went wrong. First, the punishment fell on the owner of the plant and not on the director. In 2019, a fraud case was opened against Dmitry Mazurov, the founder of the New Stream group of companies, which previously owned the Antipinsky Oil Refinery. Among other things, Mazurov is charged with appropriation of 29 million dollars of Sberbank funds and embezzlement of 473 million rubles. The second episode concerns the withdrawal of the company’s funds under a fictitious contract, which Mazurov, according to the UK, carried out together with Gennady Lisovichenko (the sale of a railway access track at a reduced price).
The second accusation against Lisovichenko is as follows: just before his dismissal in 2018, he produced a forged protocol of a board meeting to give himself a $10 million bonus – essentially, arranging a luxurious “golden parachute” for himself. This resulted in Lisovichenko fleeing to Bulgaria and then Italy after the initiation of a criminal case against Mazurov. It turns out that he was first in Bulgaria, and then in Italy, where he tried to lay low.
Unfortunately, the influential Siberian was detained arrested on January 20, 2022 by Italian police officers during a document check in the city of Bari. Now Lisovichenko is in a prison in the city of Lecce. Speaking in court, he asked the authorities to grant him political asylum, but his request was unsuccessful, failing to move the Italian Themis by playing a political card.
It is likely that 71-year-old Lisovichenko is waiting for extradition to Russia, court, and imprisonment. Under these circumstances, it is easy to assume that there are those who want to seize the assets of his family, who are already in a difficult situation.
Debts and divorce
The primary asset of the family of Gennady Lisovichenko is the Neo-Com holding, which manages most of the family businesses. In 2019-2020, this organization faced a dozen lawsuits totaling more than 30 million rubles. Several construction and energy companies filed monetary claims in the arbitration court. Around the same time, the holding changed its founder. Instead of Gennady Lisovichenko, his partner and likely the “family manager,” Vladimir Kalachev, the former general director of the Tyumen bitumen plant, became the 100% owner of the shares. Until the end of 2020, the son of Gennady Lisovichenko, Alexei, held the position of the general director of the enterprise.
The second enterprise of the family clan is the Polipak plant, which also belonged to the Neo-Com company. The opening of the plant in the Isetsky district of the Tyumen region was trumpeted by local media in 2017: more than 100 new jobs, hundreds of millions of investments and a serious state support (15 million rubles). Among the first persons who visited the enterprise was the then governor of the Tyumen region Vladimir Yakushev. The production site was shown to him by Lisovichenko Jr. Since September 2019, lawsuits have been pouring into the arbitration court at the Polipak plant. Suppliers of raw materials, a private security organization and several individual entrepreneurs presented their monetary claims against the closed enterprise.
Another, as it were, former asset of the Lisovichenko family smacks of a soap opera – Rost Grib LLC is engaged in import substitution of mushrooms – champignons and oyster mushrooms of the Lisovichenko clan were supposed to displace foreign products. The young wife of Gennady Lisovichenko, Ksenia, managed the enterprise. During the divorce proceedings, the court divided assets and property are approximately equal between them. However, it seems that this is the case when the dear ones scold – they only amuse themselves, so the same “family manager” Vladimir Kalachev soon became the owner of the company. Since the couple divorced only in 2020, when the spouse was wanted and was hiding abroad, it can be assumed that the reason for the divorce was an attempt to protect a number of assets at the expense of Ksenia Lisovichenko, which could be withdrawn for debts.
The influential family also owned the Bioswiss aesthetic medicine clinic, which Ksenia Lisovichenko got after the divorce, as well as a vertical wind tunnel in Tyumen, an expensive attraction estimated at 21 million rubles.
It is difficult to predict what part of the business the Lisovchenko clan will be able to keep after his extradition to Russia. However, it is striking that the problems of the family began only in 2019, and before that it was rapidly acquiring assets. It is very likely that the family of the former general director of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery had high patrons in the Tyumen region, whom the investigation bypassed. When the “roof” was gone, the business began to limp, and lawsuits rained down from contractors. What else will happen after the founding father of the Neo-Com holding returns to the country?
