2018 turned out to be the most difficult in the career of a Tomsk entrepreneur Denis Shtengelov. Prior to his success, the KDV Group, Russia's largest producer of snacks and confectionery, on March 25 last year, the businessman hit the headlines in the dramatic context of the fire in the Kemerovo Zimnyaya Cherny shopping center. Shtengelov was co-owner of most of the area of ​​the object, although not engaged in its operational management.

192 million rubles for victims

At the time of the incident, the entrepreneur was abroad, but quickly got involved in the process of helping the families of the victims of the fire, and also told RBC that his company was “working with the investigation.” As a result, payments to victims of the Shtengelov structures amounted to 192 million rubles - at the rate of 3 million rubles for each of the 64 dead (later the authorities specified the number of victims - 60). The money was promptly transferred to the budget of the Kemerovo region. Since the victims were paid by the Kuzbass administration, in May, Igor Vostrikov, a resident of Kemerovo, who lost his wife, sister and three children in a fire, said at a press conference that “there was no payment from Shtengelov: everything that came from the region’s reserve fund”. Both local authorities and the management company KDV Group have denied this information, explaining that the promised amount was fully transferred by the businessman’s structures to the budget.

A year after the tragedy, several managers of the KDV Group subsidiary company - the Kemerovo Confectionery Plant (KKK), which operated the Winter Cherry, are in custody. Law enforcement agencies did not name Shtengelov himself among the probable persons involved in the investigation during this time. Although the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, a day after the fire, reported to Vladimir Putin that the KKK "was in violation of the established procedure, was transformed into Winter Winter Cherry LLC, a shopping center." "The main sponsor and co-founder" of the company with a share of 78% of the chairman of the UK then called Shtengelova. He also clarified that the businessman "lives mainly in Australia." A few days after the tragedy, the entrepreneur was mentioned in the video message by Aman Tuleyev, at that time the governor of Kuzbass. The head of the region then said that he had appealed to Putin with a request to prevent the departure of those responsible for the fire from Russia. “He sits still, the owner, in Australia. I will not reach this Australia, ”said Tuleyev. Shtengelov, in an interview with Kommersant FM, in response to the claims, stated that he himself wants to “find the guilty, to finally have a trial, to find out what really happened,” and also clarified that “ planned to come [to Russia] in the second half of April ”.

For the year that has passed since the fire, the state of the entrepreneur has not decreased. In 2018, Shtengelov was among the 200 richest businessmen of the country for the first time - in the ranking he took the 175th line with a fortune estimate of $ 600 million. According to Forbes, for the year his fortune increased by $ 50 million - to $ 650 million. Shtengelov?

Faster, "Brighter!"

The exact ownership structure of the Shtengel companies is unknown. The entrepreneur himself in an interview with RBC reported that in all the major assets - the KDV Group and the retail chain “Brighter!” - he owns a package close to the control one. All listed projects continue to develop actively.

Thus, the revenue of KDV Group in 2017 increased by about 14%, from 95.3 billion rubles to 108.5 billion. The structure of the holding employs more than a dozen enterprises in several cities of Russia, which produce 700 different product names under 40 trademarks . The most famous ones are waffles, cookies and Yashkino chocolate, Kirieshki crackers, 3 crusts, and Grandma's seeds. In the Forbes ranking of the “200 largest private companies in Russia in 2018”, the KDV Group ranked 80th, rising two positions up.

Holding and following the results of 2018 is among the three leaders of the Russian confectionery market together with the United Confectioners and the international Perfetti Van Melle, follows from the report of the analytical company Euromonitor. The experts noted that in the last two years, KDV Group has strengthened its positions through competitive prices, new product launches and expansion of the distribution network. Shtengelov in 2017 declared that the company's “internal task” is to continue “to grow at double digit rates”.

For this purpose, the second large business of a Tomsk entrepreneur is doing particularly well - Yarche! The average annual growth rate of revenue in 2015-2017 was 82%. In 2017, the figure for the year to year has doubled and reached 31.8 billion rubles. According to Shtengelov’s plan, who calls “Brighter!” A startup, in the near future the retail business will continue to grow by 20-30% per year. In the fall of 2018, Brighter! Entered the list of fast-growing INFOLine Retail Russia Top-100 networks.