The Tenth Arbitration Court of Appeal of Moscow confirmed the recognition of the void agreement on the pledge of land concluded between the managers of the Rosinka company with the Asia-Pacific Bank (ATB). The old ATB no longer exists, its former owner Andrei Vdovin is on the run, and the business of the bank is managed by people from UK FKBS - the management company of the Banking Sector Consolidation Fund.

This is the structure of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which owns 99.9% of the shares. However, Andrei Vdovin always had good relations with representatives of the Bank of Russia, so it is possible that he is now resolving the "situation with Rosinka." At least on other sites, the activity of the ex-banker is more than obvious.

“The situation with Rosinka” is the conventional name of the conflict between the owners and managers of the business of building and managing comfortable housing for wealthy expats. In the center of the business is the Rosinka group of companies, and the core of this center is the company that rents out-of-town housing to the heads of major international companies and employees of the foreign diplomatic corps. The latter circumstance gives the situation a special charm, since the 44 residences in the village belong to the US Embassy in Russia. Accordingly, the rest of the rented a couple of hundred townhouses receive in fact very important neighbors.

The political nature of the development business was determined from the very moment of its creation - in 1990. And all these years this (very successful from a commercial point of view) project turned out to be at the center of serious scandals.

According to the precepts of Ilyich

Rosinka was one of the first joint ventures established in the USSR. The Soviet side in this joint venture was represented by the Moscow-based collective farm Zavety Ilyich, and the foreign side by the American developer Nolan Kerschner (Nolan Kerschner), who divided their shares by 50%. The Soviet kolkhoz pledged to provide land, and the American developer put up prefabricated houses that were supposed to turn this land into a cottage village that was familiar to foreigners. For Moscow in the early 1990s, it was a real paradise - a place where children could not be afraid to play and leave their toys on the street, and the order in the village was carefully guarded. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the former personnel diplomat and employee of the First Main Directorate of the KGB (the current SVR), Oleg Zakharov, became the director of the Rosinka JV. And very soon Zakharov from a modest manager turned into a full-fledged owner. In numerous interviews and articles-panegyrics published in the Russian business glamor of the early 2000s, this wonderful transformation was explained by the actual bankruptcy of the joint venture due to the unwillingness of the Americans to provide the promised investments. They were called none other than adventurously minded partners from overseas, who did not have any serious capital, but simply wanted to do business in Russia, and without investing their own funds.

The story of how a respected Soviet diplomat became a victim of some beggars and fraudsters who came from America to Moscow region, looks completely different if you read it from the descriptions in the English-language press of the 1990s. In it, the family of the well-intentioned developer Nolan Kershner has never been distinguished by special adventurism. In fact, their interest was always localized in Connecticut, and it was a very real and sustainable business that still exists today, despite the death of the founder himself. In 2013, the ex-partner of Zavetov Ilyich and employer Zakharova died surrounded by his beloved relatives.

By this time, he had survived the real test of Russia in the 1990s, about which he even wrote a novel with the expressive title “Welcome to Moscow”, published in the States in the year 2000. The protagonist of the story - an American businessman who does business in the capital, trying to survive in constant and dangerous confrontation with the Russian mafia. Mafia is engaged in the kidnapping and resale of nuclear warheads, as a result, the main character has to distract from its business.

It is not known how the real activity of Kershner in Russia at that time correlated with her description in the novel. Nevertheless, the author was professionally interested in the topic of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons: Nolan Kirchner served as executive director of an international NGO called SANE, which in the 1980s actively supported the political initiatives of the Soviet leadership abroad. And most likely due to his profession, Oleg Zakharov could not have been unaware of this.

It is even more interesting why the “deportation” of American partners from the founders of the joint venture, whom the English-language press wrote in tragic tones, and the actual privatization of collective farm land did not prevent the American embassy from buying houses for its employees in this village.

Business "Rosinka" took place largely due to the American purchase. And in the end, it was these customers who made Rosinka a safe place for influential expats. The simplest explanation for such a paradoxical course of events may be associated with the departure of some of the owners into the shadows. Especially for this, there are plenty of quite affordable tools.

Trust that burst

In 2002, Oleg Zakharov transferred 85% of the shares of Rosinka to the trust of the Cyprus holding Providencia Holding Ltd, the beneficiaries of which were the former KGB colonel and his two sons, Vladimir and Alexander. After the end of all trust procedures, Zakharov Sr. died.

It is impossible to exclude the version that Oleg Zakharov turned from director into “owner by appointment”, who eventually decided to become the “full owner” of Rosinka’s business. One way or another, but immediately after the death of the main character, a war began for his inheritance, in which a variety of people participated, including Ruslan Orekhov - the founder and former head of the main state-law department of the President of the Russian Federation (under Boris Yeltsin).

The story was especially developed in Cyprus, where an unprecedented attempt was made to destroy the trust, in which the most famous Cypriot law firm Andreas Neocleous & Co. was involved.

Andreas Neocleous & Co's lawyers tried to seize control of the housing complex using classic raider capture schemes. They created new governing bodies for Rosinka, quickly issuing a short-term loan for it. The next step is obvious - the loan is not returned, the asset goes to the bank, with which a certain agreement has already been reached. But to implement this scheme, they had to solve a non-trivial task - to intercept a trust. This was done with the support of the security forces of Cyprus. The company's lawyers were able to organize a criminal case against the entire team that defended the interests of one of the beneficiary of the trust, Vladimir Zakharov.

If successful, the conspirators had every chance to break the backbone of Russian capitalism - its trust nature (in Russia there are nominal shareholders, and in Cyprus and other offshore jurisdictions - completely different ones). But it did not work out.

As a result of the proceedings, the case was eventually launched against the employees of Andreas Neocleous & Co., as well as the Deputy Prosecutor General of Cyprus Rikkos Erotokrita. The company had to urgently transfer its business from Andreas Neocleous & Co LLC to Elias Neocleous & Co LLC

But the story is far from over.

Crimean epic "Rosinki"

New business projects of Rosinka are not limited to the Moscow Region; recently, its project - a chic closed school with individual cottages - has surfaced in Sevastopol. The closed community was supposed to be landed on the rural lands of the Baidar Valley, which in these parts is called the Crimean Switzerland for a surprisingly comfortable microclimate. Accidentally or not, it was precisely in Sevastopol that the office of Andreas Neocleous was stationed from time immemorial.

The blow to Neocleous in Cyprus, as well as the first decision on Rosinka (in June 2018), which brought the company’s new lands out of bail to ATB, echoed unexpectedly in the political life of Sevastopol. The city government has achieved the cancellation of this project, and the “people's hero” of Sevastopol, deputy Alexei Chaly, who promoted the Crimean Rosinka, sharply spoke out against the governor. And this, apparently, is far from the last page in the amazing history of an elite village.