Sberbank loans leaked with Arkhyz

Sentenced to Valery Geryugov, who stole 1.8 billion bank rubles.
07.11.2019
Kommersant
Origin source
The Stavropol court of businessman Valery Geryugov, convicted of fraudulent theft of nearly 1.8 billion rubles received from Sberbank as loans, sentenced to four and a half years in a general regime colony. The money was intended to develop the production of Arkhyz mineral water, but loans were not returned, and the enterprise went bankrupt. Now the popular drink is being produced by other entrepreneurs. Together with Mr. Geryugov, who did not admit his guilt, two accomplices from among his top managers were convicted, but they escaped with suspended sentences.

The process of accusing Valery Geryugov of especially large credit fraud (part 4 of article 159.1 of the Criminal Code) has been going on in the Industrial District Court of Stavropol for more than a year. In addition to the former beneficiary of Visma Group of Companies, which produced Arkhyz mineral water, which was very popular among buyers, there were two other top managers of this structure, Ulan Borlakov and Luaza Doroshenko, in the dock. Recall that the reason for the criminal prosecution was a statement by representatives of Sberbank, on the basis of which the Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case.

It was about the theft of about 1.8 billion rubles that Wisma allocated in 2012-2014 for the development and distribution of mineral water for a period of two to three years.

But, as Kommersant reported, already in November 2014, Wisma ceased to service the debt. Investigators believed that part of the money was illegally received by Mr Geryugov’s structures based on forged documentation, overstating the financial condition of the Civil Code, the purpose and date of the loan repayment. In 2015, Sberbank proposed Mr. Geryugov to restructure the loan for a long term, but, as explained in the credit institution, the head of the Civil Code violated the agreement, initiating bankruptcy proceedings. There were suspicions that bankruptcy itself was a scam, as the applicants were some small structures to which Visma owed relatively small amounts - about 200-300 thousand rubles. Moreover, as investigators and investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs suspected, these creditors were controlled by Valery Geryugov himself. As a result, at the end of 2015, when the Arbitration Court of Karachay-Cherkessia introduced the bankruptcy procedure for the companies of borrowers and guarantors included in Wisma, the businessman managed to appoint his interim managers.

Sberbank, according to its representatives, sent a statement to the court to include claims on its debts in the register, but met “active opposition” in both this and the examination of collateral.

The monitoring procedure was delayed for more than a year, and only in February 2017 during bankruptcy proceedings managers were replaced by selected creditors. At the same time, the primary accounting documentation and the electronic accounting database of Wisma were exported and partially destroyed. And the production itself was curtailed and started in a new place - on the basis of LLC Sofiysky glacier on equipment supposedly taken out of the Arkhyz factory.

In April 2017, Valery Geryugov was detained and placed under house arrest under house sanction. Charges were also brought against the executive directors of Visma, Luaz Doroshenko and Ulan Borlakov. The first remained on his own recognizance, and the second was put on the wanted list. However, as it turned out, he learned from the media about the interest of law enforcement officers in him and appeared to the investigator himself - and also appeared on his own recognizance. According to some reports, Mr. Geryugov himself was philosophical about his troubles, believing that what had happened was simply a failure, after which the bright streak will begin again. At the same time, he categorically denied his guilt, like his accomplices.

It should be noted that the 56-year-old Valery Geryugov himself is a person with a very rich and unusual biography. He is a native of Cherkessk, where he lived most of his life. At the same time, he received higher education at the Tashkent Higher Tank Command School, but after a short service in the army, he quit, taking up business, selling everything in a row and producing various products from pasta to mineral water. However, it was the extraction and distribution of mineral water, to which the famous American film allegedly pushed the entrepreneur, that became his main business.

According to the investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and confirmed by the Stavropol court, part of Sberbank’s loan funds went not at all to the development of Visma and the production of Arkhyz, but to close the “cash gaps” that resulted from multimillion-dollar payments to one-day firms.
About a third of the loans (622 million rubles) were transferred to the very dubious firms LLC Tekhnomarket, LLC Globus, LLC Premier Service, etc., whose leaders even allegedly admitted to not having any activity. Thus, in fact, Mr. Geryugov personally disposed of the money “at his own discretion”.

During the debate of the parties, the prosecutors asked the court to sentence Valery Geryugov to eight years in prison in a penal colony with a fine of 1 million rubles, Ulan Borlakov - to seven years and a fine of 900 thousand, to Luaz Doroshenko - to three years and a fine of half a million . However, Judge Elizabeth Maltseva, who studied over 90 volumes of the criminal case in a year and listened to the testimony of about a hundred witnesses, issued a relatively lenient sentence. The main defendant received four years and six months in prison and was taken into custody in the courtroom, while his accomplices escaped with suspended sentences: three and a half years for Ulan Borlakov and three years for Luaza Doroshenko with a fine of 600 thousand rubles. to each. However, the claim of Sberbank as the injured party for damages of 1.7 billion rubles. He was redirected by the court for consideration in civil proceedings.

Representatives of Mr. Geryugov said that he insists on his innocence, believing that the criminal case appeared only with the aim of taking his assets from him. They stated that the businessman intends to appeal against the court’s verdict, noting that even without this, he may soon apply for parole, since he spent almost two years under house arrest.

Sberbank Vice President Maxim Degtyarev told Kommersant that he was satisfied with the outcome of the case. “The court examined all the evidence, gave a proper assessment of the unlawful actions of the convicted persons and all the circumstances of the criminal case,” the representative of the credit institution said. He also recalled that “in all cases of unlawful actions, Sberbank will seek protection of its rights by all means prescribed by law, including recovery in criminal cases.”

Crime

Previous Article
Next article