Bolloev is “escorted” by clothes
Where does Taimuraz Bolloev get billions for investments, and why can BTK Group hide income?
UtroNews correspondent states that Taimuraz Bolloev’s BTK Holding plans to invest 5 billion rubles in building a melange plant in Altai.
The investment will go towards updating the Barnaul melange plant and starting construction on a new finishing factory in 2022.
Recently, the company’s business has been struggling, and there are increasing legal claims against BTK in court.
Change of opinions
Taimuraz Bolloev, the former president of the Baltika brewing company and ex-president of the state corporation Olimpstroy, has transitioned to being a dominant figure in producing uniforms for security forces. The government awards billion-dollar contracts to his holding, but the income figures appear modest for some reason.
The origin of the five billion rubles is unclear, especially since BTK Group has been unprofitable and has not released any financial statements in recent years.
The holding’s clients are all government law enforcement agencies, and the contract amounts reach into the billions. However, as seen from the 2018 data, Bolloev’s holding operated at a loss.
In May this year, Bolloev’s company barely won a lawsuit from a law enforcement agency. The Moscow Arbitration Court of Appeal rejected the claim from VTB Group for 623 million rubles, seeking a penalty due to delays in delivering uniforms. Although the court acknowledged the claim as valid, it disagreed with the penalty amount, ultimately collecting 983 thousand rubles from BTK Group instead of 623 million rubles.
Yet, the court's decision can be seen as a partial victory for BTK. According to Rusprofile, the holding has amassed debts of over one billion rubles in arbitration, with many cases still awaiting resolution.
Since 2014, BTK Group has been the sole supplier of clothing for law enforcement agencies, leading to criticism from detractors regarding the inefficient use of budget funds.
Unofficial calculations
Additionally, it is alleged that the holding’s head may have utilized non-transparent budget expenditure schemes. According to Blokha-Info, one instance of inefficient use of budget funds involves signing contracts with third-party collaborators to produce 6,100 all-weather sets of field uniforms for over 250 million rubles.
Originally, the holding was supposed to produce the uniform sets internally, but in mid-2015, despite already having some products made and in storage, the company’s management outsourced most of the production to LLC “Ideal-Teks” and LLC “Mayak-service.”
The documents suggest that products were bought from other companies at much lower prices than their actual cost. It's possible that the products were stolen from previous deliveries and resold, or that there was no delivery at all. The BTK Group holding is accused of using fraudulent schemes, as reported by the banned website The CrimeRussia. The website had published a series of articles investigating Bolloev's activities, but it was blocked in 2016 as it violated personal data laws. However, abbreviated versions of the articles were still available on the Blokha-Info portal.
Fall from Olympus
There were previous concerns about Bolloev, especially during the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi. In 2013, serious allegations of corruption surfaced during the construction by Olimpstroy, prompting Bolloev to leave his post as head of the state corporation, citing health reasons.
Taimuraz Bolloev
Bolloev's departure coincided with a series of corruption scandals at Olympstroy after investigators from the Russian Investigative Committee for the Krasnodar Territory began looking into corruption in preparation for the 2014 Olympic Games. By early January 2011, 27 criminal cases had been initiated related to corruption in the Olympic construction.
For instance, there were six criminal cases related to fictitious employment in various managerial positions at the Olympstroy State Corporation. The investigation revealed that the suspects obtained over 23 million rubles illegally from the Olimpstroy State Corporation by using forged documents.
Bolloev led the state corporation for two years, becoming the first vice-president of Olympstroy in January 2009 and resigning in 2011. While no formal charges were brought against him publicly, it's possible that he could have been questioned uncomfortably by law enforcement.
grain bins
Bolloev’s name reappeared years later in connection with the wheat supply to Egypt by major players, Marathon Group and the state bank head Andrei Kostin. The largest supplier was Mirogroup, owned by VTB, Agronova owned by Taimuraz Bolloev, and Marathon Group. It's worth noting that the individuals behind “Mirogroup” have been involved in scandals.
Agronova holds a 25% stake in Demetra Holding, whose trader is Mirgroup. Previously, the company was fully owned by Andrey Doluda, the son of the former vice-governor of the Krasnodar Territory Nikolai Doluda.
Bolloev, still active in the construction market, owns several cottage settlements in the Kurortny district of St. Petersburg and the Vyborgsky district of the Leningrad region, as well as the department store “At the Red Bridge” in the new multifunctional complex Au Pont Rouge on the embankments of the Moika River in the center of the Northern capital. Additionally, the businessman has the support of Kostin.
As Vedomosti wrote, back in 2018, the ex-president of Baltika and VTB together bought out Gelendzhik Airport LLC from Oleg Deripaska – each got 49.5%. Therefore, most likely, the experience of the joint work of Bolloev and Kostin could be useful in the business of supplying wheat to the Middle East. At the same time, Bolloev’s entrepreneurial activity is not considered unambiguously successful. Behind him are many assets with not the most healthy financial performance. For example, LLC “Management Company at the Red Bridge” shows strange and contradictory financial data.
Considering that the BTK Group indicators for 2018 are unprofitable, and there are again no data for subsequent years on Rusprofile, the question involuntarily begs: where, in fact, is the money?
Can funds be transferred offshore? Considering that Alexander Vinokurov is Bolloev’s wheat business partner from the Marathon Group, then this version has the right to exist. The fact is that Vinokurov’s Russian pharmaceutical companies are controlled by the Cypriot MG Marathon Group LTD. Pharmakontur LLC, which is part of Vinokurov’s holding, is the founder of Bentus Laboratories LLC. The co-founders of the office are also two foreign legal entities – RMG Holding Limited from Cyprus and Simonyan and Associates Consulting Inc. from the US state of Alabama.
It should be assumed that financial flows from the structures of the former owner of Baltika can also flow abroad through Vinokurov’s offshore channels. We emphasize that BTK Group is the only executor of orders from the country’s law enforcement agencies for the tailoring of uniforms, and, accordingly, Bolloev enriches himself at public expense, therefore, financial transactions should be a priori as transparent as possible. And this, as we see, is not. At the same time, the businessman has billions of dollars to invest in expanding the holding.
Such contradictory circumstances in the activities of the holding may raise suspicions of the non-transparency of doing business, and taking into account the specifics of the activities of BTK Group, the tireless eye of the law enforcement agencies may turn on Taimuraz Bolloev himself, the chief tailor of law enforcement agencies.
