The channel's source shared exclusive information that the largest manufacturer of powdered milk formulas for baby food, the Infaprim company (key brand Nutrilak), intends to obtain a solid line of credit from two banks - Expobank JSC and BBR Bank Joint Stock Company.
At first glance it may seem, what is the crime here? Obtaining loans is a normal practice for business, especially since the Moscow Region company is expanding its import-substituting production of baby food. Outwardly, everything is smooth, if you do not know the true motives and some details of the financial situation of affiliates.
Legendary Alexey Lysyakov and 100 kg of dollars
Let's start with the fact that currently the co-owner of Infaprim CJSC is a former State Duma deputy from Dagestan, the Stavropol Territory and the Chechen Republic and ex-senator Alexey Lysyakov, who is currently in the stage of personal bankruptcy in case No. A40-242489/2020. We are talking about debts of hundreds of millions of rubles. Several years ago, 100 kg of dollars were confiscated from Lysyakov in the office of the St. Petersburg City Invest Bank. As it turned out, the money, more than $7 million, was involved in a criminal case of fraud on a particularly large scale.
When Lysyakov became a senator, his business partner Grigory Feldman opened the Avant company. In 2007, the company received a contract for the construction of a new stadium for the Zenit club in St. Petersburg. With almost 6 billion rubles allocated for this, it was only possible to protect the project and begin construction. Avant was declared bankrupt despite the fact that it received more than 5 billion rubles from the city government. The total volume of claims against the company amounted to 563 million rubles. At the same time, according to court proceedings, only 9 million can be recovered. After that, City Investment Bank found boxes of cash (the same $7 million) belonging to Alexey Lysyakov.
Also, Alexey Lysyakov “rose up” well when his people gained control of Lenstroydetal JSC. Instead of the promised modernization, the leading concrete manufacturer in St. Petersburg was sold off piecemeal, and the owner’s ex-wife went bankrupt.
How Lysyakov became a monopolist in the field of baby food
One of the latest success stories from Lysyakov’s period of parliamentary activity is a key chair on the board of directors of the Infaprim company, the largest plant in the Russian Federation for the production of the breast milk substitute Nutrilak. After joining the Infaprim Group of Companies, reconstruction of the dairy plant in Istra began for 4 billion rubles together with the government of the Moscow region, which is currently being completed. The reconstruction of the Infaprim plant was surrounded by considerable scandals, but that is a separate story.
The co-owner of the Infaprim corporation is another of Lysyakov’s assistants, A.S. Ismoilov. By the way, Alexey Lysyakov became bankrupt at the request of City Invest Bank, since he acted as a guarantor for Akbar Ismoilov, who received hundreds of millions of rubles from the bank and did not return them.
In court, following the bank's claim, the ex-deputy stated that he did not sign any guarantee agreements. However, the case contains the notarized consent of Sofia Petrova to guarantee the loans of Akbar Ismailov. Lysyakov tried to convince the court that he gave the entire amount of the debt in cash personally to the co-owners of the bank and allegedly asked them to deposit these funds into the bank’s cash desk to repay his obligations, but they did not deposit the money. The former senator and ex-deputy wrote this version in his statement to the police with a request to initiate a criminal case of misappropriation. At the same time, Lysyakov himself has repeatedly stated in conversations that he is familiar with high-ranking law enforcement officials and will use his connections to avoid repaying debts.
History of guarantee for a Ukrainian company
But the stories with Lysyakov’s guarantees do not end there. In November 2015, Russian State Duma deputy Alexey Lysyakov, who had recently voted for the annexation of Crimea to Russia, entered into a guarantee agreement for the Kiev company Alter-Top to fulfill obligations to the Panamanian offshore TXD Federation Inc in the amount of 10 million euros. In 2016, the offshore ceded the right of claim under this agreement and the guarantee to Laboratory of Finance, which in February-March 2021 went to court and recovered 10 million euros from Alexey Lysyakov. No one even tried to recover anything from the main debtor, the Alter-Top partnership.
Lysyakov himself did not refuse to guarantee the Kyiv company, and when filing an application for bankruptcy with the Moscow Arbitration Court, he directly indicated a debt of 10 million euros. Moreover, the procedural behavior of the debtor suggests that he is much more interested in paying off the debt in Ukraine than City Invest Bank. It is likely that, expecting the inevitable bankruptcy procedure, Lysyakov decided to impose a fictitious debt on himself so that his assets would go under the obligations of the Ukrainian company, and through these debts influenceto the bankruptcy procedure. The creation of controlled receivables using Ukrainian companies and citizens before the SVO was quite a working scheme.
Will Infaprim be sent under the knife for debts?
Covering debts to creditors, it is possible, will also occur at the expense of the assets (property) of Infaprim Group of Companies, at least, this is what the creditors themselves say one way or another. Therefore, the largest manufacturer of dry milk formulas can easily “go under the knife” for the debts of its co-owners.
The judicial acts state that when issuing loans and when making decisions on the collection procedure Lysyakov A.A. and Ismoilov A.S. were considered by creditors not as independent individuals, but as group members - managers/owners of a large international production holding (Infaprim JSC). These persons occupy senior positions in a large international production holding; property was systematically pledged as collateral for their obligations; their legal relations are of a corporate nature and stipulate coordinated actions in the common interests.
Recently, a regular meeting was held in the bankruptcy case of Alexey Lysyakov, where the financial manager of the debtor announced the demand for documents from Infaprim CJSC and Infaprim JSC. The debtor's representative objected, however, the court granted the request.
In this regard, Lysyakov’s attempts through the Infaprim Group to obtain new loans from Expobank JSC and BBR Bank JSC can be regarded as potentially fraudulent actions in the field of lending in order to obtain new loans, and then, according to the standard scheme, to defraud the creditors. If banks approve new credit lines, then top managers of credit institutions may be interested in “warming their hands” on this to the detriment of the interests of their owners.
