The oligarch Trotsenko scatters in Saransk

How Roman Trotsenko got his hands on another regional airport and whether omnipotent Igor Sechin can stand behind it.
18.11.2019
The Moscow Post
Origin source
The new owner of the state-owned Mordovian Airlines is the Moscow-based Aerositi-Development company, which is associated with the odious oligarch Roman Trotsenko, an airport management holding Novaport.

The deal amounted to about 150 million rubles, and Trotsenko himself earlier convinced the Mordovian authorities that he could increase the passenger flow of the region’s air harbor by five times at once - up to 500 thousand people a year. In addition, the number of flight directions should also double.

So, the beneficiary of Novaport and, more recently, Roman Trotsenko, a player in the country's mining market, has taken over another airport asset. Recall that in addition to Mordovia, its Novaport already operates 16 regional airports.

AeroCity-Development LLC with a registered capital of only 12 thousand rubles is 99% owned by Oksana Sychova. The company is affiliated with LLC “Kemerovo International Airport named after Leonov”, but its beneficiary is precisely the Trotsenkov LLC “Novaport Holding”.

In general, Trotsenko’s desire to “chop off” another asset is understandable: things in his structures are not going to be said to be very good. For example, his investment company Novaport Invest LLC is clearly experiencing problems: according to the results of 2018, its revenue fell by 31 million rubles, amounting to only 4.3 million rubles.

At the same time, the profit in this company, in which - attention, is working by zero (!) Employees, was somehow at the level of 608 million rubles. How can this be?

At the same time, the fact that the structures of Trotsenko and Novaport Holding and Novaport Invest are registered in the Cypriot offshore T.si. Trans. Saybiria Co. Limited is not causing any questions. That is, the air harbors, which are of strategic importance for the country, can be controlled by uncontrolled foreign structures.

In this context, it becomes clear why Novaport Invest can show tremendous profits with no revenue - after all, the movement of finances in these structures is opaque.

But what if, through this offshore, control of the country's airport infrastructure is gained by ill-wishers of our state? Why is no law enforcement showing interest in this?

There aren’t many airports

In general, one gets the impression that Roman Trotsenko, like an octopus, stretches out tentacles to everything he can reach. His actions are like a creeping capture of everything and everything that can only generate income. In addition to the Mordovian airport, now its structures continue to struggle for other assets, including abroad.

In the summer, the Supreme Security Council of the Republic of Moldova ordered the government to terminate the concession agreement with Avia Invest, the operator of the Chisinau airport. Experts noted that Trotsenko’s “ears stick” behind this decision: the latter has been trying for almost five years to gain control of this asset.

AEON Corporation (which includes the Novaport airport asset management holding), co-owned by Roman Trotsenko, has tried at least twice to buy the rights to the concession company of NR Invesments Limited from the owner of Avia Invest, Ilan Shor, at least twice. However, for various reasons, the deal fell through.
 
When is Trotsenko full of assets?

Apparently, he managed to agree with the Moldovan authorities that it was he who would get control - only such agreements can be legal in nature? As practice shows, the question of legality is far from always at the forefront of Trotsenko’s actions.

As already mentioned, Novaport managed to take over as many as 16 regional airports, including very “fat” assets: Novosibirsk Tolmachevo and Kaliningrad Khrabrovo. It is believed that far from all of them went to Trotsenko legally.

One of the latest acquisitions of the oligarch was the right to modernize and manage the airport in Irkutsk. There Trotsenko managed to skip such "mastodons" as the "Airports of the Regions" by Viktor Vekselberg and "Basel Aero" Oleg Deripaska.

Initially, these structures along with Novaport participated in the competitive process, but suddenly the Irkutsk authorities decided to refuse the competition altogether. Like, we will modernize the airport ourselves, but it will help us in this ... Novaport Trotsenko.

Nobody understood such a sharp somersault - rumors spread that Trotsenko had simply brought someone who needed to, not wanting to lose Vekselberg and Deripaska in a fair fight.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service also did not understand this situation: in July 2019, the department demanded to break the agreement on modernizing the airport with Trotsenko’s structures. The reason is just that the investor was chosen outside of the competitive procedures.

But the agreement seems to be still valid: the FAS was also fed so that they wouldn’t beat hands, but only threatened with a finger?

Ears of Igor Ivanovich

In general, the story is extremely muddy, and one of the key versions is the pressure that the omnipotent Igor Sechin, who is called the direct patron of Roman Trotsenko, could have exerted pressure on the Irkutsk authorities and the FAS.

Trotsenko was an adviser to the president of Rosneft and, according to rumors, even his right hand. They say that a run over the assets of Dmitry Kamenshchik several years ago in an attempt to "grab" his airport at Domodedovo was connected precisely with Sechin's interests.
 
It is believed that it was with the help of Sechin that Novaport managed to get Mineralnye Vody and Kaliningrad airports in just a couple of years. Trotsenko could also take methods of contacting influential patrons from his past: they say that at the dawn of his career he even managed to sit in jail, but in 1996 a criminal case, to which he could be related, was “ruined”.

One of the most iconic stories associated with Trotsenko concerns the bankruptcy of Investbank, which lost its license about five years ago. Then the bankruptcy of this bank was considered a record for our financial market - a “hole” in the organization’s capital amounted to 50 billion rubles.

Rumor has it that Trotsenko’s interest in the aviation industry is precisely connected with Investbank. In 2001, Investbank was a major lender to the Kaliningradavia SUAI. Around the same time, he was bought out by the structures of businessman Sergei Grishchenko.

Trotsenko also worked with the latter in the future. After the purchase of Grishchenko "Investbank", the bankruptcy procedure of Kaliningradavia was initiated. The assets of SUAI were transferred to Investbank, which created Kaliningrad-Avia OJSC on their basis. And after only a couple of years, KD-Avia came under the control of Trotsenko.

Apparently, already becoming a self-sufficient quantity in business, Trotsenko did not stop working in the interests of Igor Ivanovich. For example, they said that Trotsenko purchased from VTB-Capital the former Levenson printing house in the center of Moscow at an obviously low cost - almost three times less than the 6 billion rubles that the seller requested.

Allegedly, it was under these conditions that the deal was secretly agreed by Sechin and the head of VTB Andrei Kostin. At the same time, Sechin himself clearly did not want to "light up." Therefore, he preferred to make a deal with Trotsenko’s hands?

It is also not entirely clear how Novaport Trotsenko got the Sky Port Hotel in Novosibirsk. First, he acquired a 30% stake in the hotel, and then started a lawsuit with another co-owner - Skyport Invest Group, after which he simply “swallowed” the hotel, “moving” the former partner out of business.

It was after this story that Trotsenko began feverishly buying up airports, chemical plants, and now mining companies. Rumors that Igor Sechin is behind the purchase by Trotsenko Petropavlovsk and GeoProMining structures continue to go on. It is very likely that it is so.

Such an investor went to the Saransk airport. And this time there was a competition, however, against the background of Trotsenko scandals, who can guarantee that he went honestly? Let the FAS and law enforcement agencies answer these questions.

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