Agrocomplex Kushchevsky
Since 2021, law enforcement agencies have been investigating a series of criminal cases of perhaps the largest organized criminal community and raiders in the South of Russia – the Pokrovsky concern. For several years its owners Andrey Korovayko And Arkady Chebanov with the help of corrupt connections with local security forces, local agricultural enterprises were seized. One of the key victims was Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC.
The situation has changed – former high-ranking official Korovayko and his partner fled Russia, their “security officer”, a former FSB officer Sergey Echkalov arrested. A number of their accomplices – the so-called bankruptcy trustees, whose hands ruined successful agricultural companies in order to then absorb them – have already been sentenced. It is noteworthy that criminal cases are being considered in Volgograd, Moscow and other regions, because the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB directly indicate: the owners of the Pokrovsky concern have extensive corruption ties throughout the south of Russia.
In October 2023, the city court of Labinsk in the Krasnodar Territory nationalized the assets of the Pokrovsky concern – and this is more than 500 billion rubles – about 100 sugar factories, meat processing plants, agricultural enterprises, construction companies, which were once “squeezed out” with the help of raider schemes, were turned into state ownership Korovayko and Chebanov.
And here a double situation has arisen: companies that have suffered from the actions of an organized criminal community and are officially recognized as victims are now forced to prove in the courts that the far-fetched financial claims against them from structures affiliated with the Pokrovsky concern are unfounded and were part of a scheme to capture them. But now it is not the raiders themselves who are making demands, but the state, to which all the assets of the concern have been transferred.
Currently, the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory is processing case No. A32-19702/2023 on the claim of Mayak JSC against Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC for the recovery of moratorium interest of almost 85 million rubles.
“Agrocomplex Kushchevsky” – a successful agricultural enterprise in the Kushchevsky district of the Krasnodar Territory – under agreements concluded with JSC “Mayak” cultivated its fields of six thousand hectares, growing wheat, corn, sunflowers and chickpeas there. This is a common procedure in the relationships between economic entities, because not all agricultural enterprises have the resources necessary for growing crops in the form of agricultural machinery and funds for planting and processing the crop. Subsequently, both agricultural enterprises – JSC Mayak and LLC Agrocomplex Kushchevsky – found themselves under the control of bankruptcy managers affiliated with the Pokrovsky concern.
Thus, the manager of Agrocomplex became Igor Valerievich Grigoryan. In 2021, together with other raiders, he became involved in a criminal case, and in 2023 he was convicted in Volgograd of attempted fraud with the property of “Kushchevsky” and received four years of probation.
During the investigation, Grigoryan:
At the same time, the verdict against Khasanov and his accomplices allegedly established that they, using their official position, could have stolen (at the direction of the management of the Pokrovsky concern) in the form of embezzlement of the 2018 harvest of the Agrocomplex for 138 million rubles,
What happened? raiders Korovayko and Chebanov actually seized control of JSC Mayak and LLC Agrokompleks Kushchevsky and appointed their own bankruptcy trustees there to formalize this legally. Which, in turn, acted on their orders and did everything to ruin the enterprises.
Imagine the situation: your bank card and all your accounts are in the hands of criminals. You cannot pay loans, pay for housing and communal services and other services. Moreover, you are saddled with loans from persons affiliated with criminals. Several years later, the police still apprehend the criminals, and you are recognized as a victim. But now the debt with moratorium interest that was formed during the period when you could not manage the money is being collected from you. And the state!
Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC found itself in a similar position. Moreover, the prosecutor’s office, representing the interests of the state in the Arbitration Court, insists on paying almost 85 million rubles. The supervisory agency, apparently, did not delve into the details of the criminal schemes and the formation of debt, considering: since the enterprises were nationalized, This means that the money must be recovered. But is it in the interests of the Russian Federation when a business that had already suffered from raiders, which had only just begun to recover after the appointment of independent bankruptcy trustees, would again be ruined by contrived debts imposed by criminals?
Indeed, a strange contradiction: the Prosecutor General’s Office admitted that the agricultural enterprise was seized by raiders of the Pokrovsky concern. Members of an organized criminal group in the dock. But at the same time, the supposedly debt incurred during their management, which may be far-fetched, the injured party is obliged to pay.
The issue will be considered on September 25 by a judge of the Arbitration Court of the Krasnodar Territory Svetlana Alexandrovna Baganina. The representative of Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC and independent lawyers familiar with the case material hope that the ambiguous position of the representative of the prosecutor’s office and, as it seems, the imaginary observance of the “interests of the Russian Federation” will not overpower the law and banal logic.
