The Arbat Prestige chain is preparing to close the last perfume shop and cease to exist. The company's problems began almost a year ago, after the arrest of its owner, Vladimir Nekrasov, for tax evasion.

The company does not say when the last store will be closed. True, the network has long been selling off existing stocks of goods. At the end of November, all of its suppliers stopped working with the Arbat Prestige network. On the eve of New Year's sales, when perfume and cosmetic retail receives up to 25-30% of annual revenue, the retailer was left with a monthly inventory in warehouses.

The arrest of the owner put the network at risk

The collapse of the empire "Arbat Prestige" began in January of this year, after the arrest of the owner of the network, Vladimir Nekrasov, on suspicion of non-payment of taxes in the amount of almost 50 million rubles. True, on December 18, Nekrasov and businessman Semyon Mogilevich, who was arrested with him, were charged in the final version. The total amount of non-payment of taxes in new version charges increased from 50 to 115 million rubles. At the beginning of the year, Arbat had 98 stores. The chain's turnover in 2007 increased by 36.2% to $471 million. In the first quarter of 2008, the company received a loss of 281 million rubles, while sales fell by a third compared to the same period in 2007 and amounted to 1.6 billion rubles. "Arbat" owned 13 objects in Moscow with an area of ​​33 thousand square meters. m worth more than $ 300 million. In February 2007, the entire network was estimated at $ 1 billion, based on this capitalization, Nekrasov bought 40% of the company from Troika Dialog.

Sale

After Nekrasov's arrest, suppliers became nervous and began to refuse to ship goods without prepayment. In the spring, Beiersdorf, Procter & Gamble, L´Oreal and Max Factor stopped shipping to the chain. At the same time, the company had to reduce the number of stores, and then completely sell the premises in order to pay off creditors and suppliers. Four premises under the REPO deal were bought by the Uralsib bank, and the retailer is going to put up five more stores for sale in the near future. Last week, Alexander Dobrovinsky, chairman of the board of directors of the company, said that the company could rent out part of its premises. At the same time, claims against the company have already been filed by Nomos Bank for $27 million, Sberbank for 559 million rubles and suppliers for more than 200 million rubles. At the same time, the Arbitration Court has already ruled in favor of Nomos-Bank, which provided loans to the chain secured by shops on Mira Avenue and Prishvin Street. Earlier, Dobrovinsky assured that he had offers for real estate at high prices, in addition, he intends to negotiate with banks on debt restructuring.

Preparing for bankruptcy?

On December 22, the Moscow Arbitration Court approved a settlement agreement between the two subsidiaries Arbat Prestige: LLC Arbat & Co recognized a debt of almost 1.6 billion rubles to Capital Estate LLC and undertook to repay the debt to the plaintiff in several tranches by January 30, 2009. The debt arose due to the fact that "Capital Estate" acted as a guarantor for the bonded loan "Arbat & Co", placed in 2006. To repay the loan, a loan from Uralsib Bank for $81 million was raised against the security of three Arbat Prestige Moscow stores owned by Capital Estate. In June, to redeem the bonds, these stores located on Kutuzovsky, Leninsky and Leningradsky prospects were sold to Uralsib. Experts interviewed by RBC daily say that the company will be able to repay the debt only by selling the remaining properties of the network, which, however, is already all pledged to banks. In this case, experts see two ways out: either Arbat Prestige will find a buyer for its stores, who will offer a higher price for them than banks, or the company should prepare for bankruptcy. However, a lawsuit from a friendly company could be filed specifically - in order to gain control over the bankruptcy procedure in the future.

Plot

The case of the company "Arbat Prestige". Details

Two people have been detained in the so-called "Arbat Prestige case" - the owner of the company, Vladimir Nekrasov, and Evergate consultant Sergei Shnaider (Mogilevich). It is expected that the defendants in the "Arbat Prestige case" will be charged with tax evasion.

News, 10:07 18.04.2011

The case of the ex-owner of "Arbat Prestige" was dismissed, the lawyer said

The investigation has terminated the criminal prosecution of the former owner of the Arbat Prestige company, Vladimir Nekrasov, and businessman Sergei Schneider (Semyon Mogilevich), who were previously charged with tax evasion, Alexander Dobrovinsky, Nekrasov's lawyer, told RAPSI on Monday.

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The peasants loudly complained to the police and angrily waved their hand at the arable land, where the tractor was operating with the inscription "For Holy Russia!". The police sullenly scratched their heads, tried to talk to the tractor driver, but left after a couple of hours. The tractor was sent by billionaire Vasily Boyko-Veliky, who bought tens of thousands of hectares of land in the Ruzsky district in the late 90s and early 2000s. Questions about the methods of alienating collective farm lands arose in 2005, the billionaire was on trial for more than 10 years, and in 2016 the charges were dropped.

Invaders of private property appeared in Russia along with private property itself, but they began to call the phenomenon of hostile takeover of assets raiding only at the turn of the 90s and zero. Raiders used different ways seizure of land, real estate and other assets: blackmail, forgery of documents and signatures, exacerbation of shareholder conflicts and others. In the middle of the 2000s, the raiders became especially active, as there were many people interested in their services - businessmen who had made capital in the 90s. At the same time, a large number of real estate in attractive locations, such as in the center of Moscow, has been owned since Soviet times by collectives with weak managers who barely made ends meet by renting out dilapidated premises. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia for five years from 2000 to 2004 counted approximately 5,000 seizures, in 2005 alone - already 1,900. Many call raiding a natural economic phenomenon: assets had to go to new owners in order to get a second life. Alas, this transition was almost always painful, accompanied by bribery of officials and other government officials, as well as by forceful actions, popularly called “mask shows”.

22 Moscow department stores and a shoe factory

In early July 2003, employees of the Asta factory, which produced women's fashion shoes and was located in the very center of Moscow at 4 Pevchesky lane, could not get to work. The way was blocked by special forces soldiers with machine guns and in balaclavas. Deputy director Kirill Myamlin was taken out into the street by the arms. He was shown the decision of the Abakan City Court to reinstate a certain citizen of Khakassia as the director of the factory; Myamlin, who had worked at Asta for many years, saw her name for the first time. It turned out that in January 80% of the production shares from minority shareholders were able to buy out the Rosbuilding company. The majority shareholders carried out an additional issue and diluted the raider's share to 3.2%, but the invaders - the Rosbuilding company - challenged the issue of the additional issue in court.

Many call raiding a natural economic phenomenon: assets had to go to new owners in order to get a second life.

Rosbuilding is one of the first to be remembered in conversations about raiding. At the beginning of the 2000s, its name appeared in the press only with the adage "notorious". For the first time she loudly declared herself in 1998, when she bought up 22 large Soviet department stores, including Bucharest, Belgrade, Perovsky, Pervomaisky. The shares of the stores belonged to labor collectives, that is, they were distributed among hundreds of people. "We have accumulated tremendous experience how to buy stores with a "collective farm" distribution of shares, where there is no single owner, ”said Alexei Tulupov, founder of Rosbuilding, about the transactions. In 1998, he was 22 years old, his partner Sergei Gordeev - 21. The media wrote that Rosbuilding was buying up shares from poor department store employees in the interests of the British retail network Tesco, but the latter never made it to Russian market and Tulupov had to sell stores one at a time. By the way, a year later the court returned the Asta factory to its former owners.

NIIEMI

In the hierarchy of raider takeovers, the absorption of research institutes was considered the most difficult task. Owners of shares in collective farms willingly parted with their assets, less willingly and for big money, shares were sold by employees of enterprises. Employees of institutes have always stood up to the last - rooted for science, despising material wealth. Institutes attracted specialists in hostile takeovers location and area. The Research Institute of Elastomeric Materials and Products (NIIEMI), for example, occupied a hectare in Khamovniki, on Efremov Street.

On February 7, 2004, about a hundred armed masked men broke into the main building of the Institute. They expelled the leadership from the offices, ordered the employees to leave the premises and occupied all five buildings of the institute. Director Sergei Reznichenko was furious, he wrote to all the newspapers, announced that "the paralysis of the NIIEMI led to the disruption of work on the creation of products for sea-based strategic missiles, Topol, Topol M, Zaryadye missile systems," filed application to the prosecutor's office and achieved the initiation of a criminal case.

In 2008, the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow sided with the scientists and found four Russians and a Ukrainian citizen guilty of raider seizure of real estate and property of the institute. The decision stated that the raiders “forged the documents of the contracts for the sale of shares in this enterprise. They ended up fraudulently stealing over 173,000 majority shares." By that time, this package had already been acquired by Roman Trotsenko's AEON Corporation. Trotsenko was primarily known for buying the Southern River Port in Moscow in the late 90s, expelled the tenants and tuned the half-dead asset so that he was noticed in the Ministry of Transport - Trotsenko was offered to head the Moscow River Shipping Company. By the way, at the beginning of the fight against the raiders, the leadership of NIIEMI stated that the seizure of the property of the institute was carried out in the interests of the Shipping Company, but by 2012 this was forgotten - Trotsenko and Reznichenko concluded a peace settlement. The scientists received compensation, the amount of which was not disclosed, and moved to Perovo. And Trotsenko demolished the research institute and built a business center in its place.

Research Institute "Gipromez"

A beautiful Stalinka not far from the Alekseevskaya metro station at the beginning of the summer of 2005 was under siege. 70 armed fighters in camouflage stormed it four times - on June 3, 6, 15 and 16. All four times, the invaders managed to break into the buildings of the State Institute for the Design of Metallurgical Plants, beating the security service of the research institute and the private security company hired by scientists. For the first three times, the police managed to recapture the buildings, and on June 16, even they failed. Gipromez, unlike many of the assets claimed by the raiders, was alive and well. The Institute kept project documentation major Russian steel companies, including NLMK and Severstal. The company has signed more than 70 contracts worth 200 million rubles for the design and modernization of metallurgical plants in Russia and abroad.

In the hierarchy of raider takeovers, the absorption of research institutes was considered the most difficult task.

Lawyer Andrey Tyukalov, who is still involved in supporting mergers and acquisitions and fighting raiding, said that a primitive scheme was used in the capture of Gipromez with a forged sale and purchase agreement. “According to rumors, the raiders brought $ 800,000 to the Federal Registration Service in order to remake one piece of paper. After that, they entered the building, carried out the old owners. They ended badly, ”recalls Tyukalov. In the fall, Nikolai Fedorov, who was hiding under the name Ulyev, was detained in the Gipromez case. At first, he behaved boldly and threatened the police that he would seize the building of the central department, since he had already appropriated 12 real estate objects in Moscow with impunity. After being charged under the articles “Fraud” and “Arbitrariness”, he began to cooperate with the investigation. His further fate is unknown. Gipromez was reconstructed several years ago, now there is a business center, but the entrance to the building still resembles a bunker - a small window from where security looks at the visitor, an armored door, a control zone.

Agricultural land of the Ruza district

Vasily Boyko-Veliky is one of the most odious and colorful businessmen in Russia. In his youth, he graduated from the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and worked as a nuclear physicist. Now he wears a caftan, high boots, advocates traditional values ​​and crosses out barcodes on the products of his Ruza dairy plant, because he considers them to be the seal of the devil. Boyko-Veliky was under investigation for more than ten years and spent a year and a half in prison, only in February 2016 he was acquitted of charges brought in 2005 under the articles “Fraud on an especially large scale” and “Legalization Money or other property acquired as a result of the commission of a crime.

Boyko-Veliky began buying up land in the Ruzsky district of the Moscow region back in the 90s. He acted according to the standard scheme - he acquired shares from collective farmers and thus, through his company "Your financial trustee" became the owner of 9 out of 11 collective farms in the region, or 23,500 hectares of land. Here is how he himself spoke about it: “I think almost everyone understood that the case was sucked out of thin air. All the citizens in the Ruzsky district were standing in lines, selling shares not only to us, but also to Nerl. At night they stood in lines to sell. If a family sold two or three shares, they could buy a house in Ruza or a two-room apartment in Tutskov. It's solid. Most could buy used Zhiguli. Somewhere he paid 150,000, somewhere 250,000. The investigation considered the prices too low, many who parted with the lands agreed with this and demanded compensation. In addition, the structures of Boyko-Veliky now and then came into conflict with the peasants who did not sell their lands to Ruzskoye Moloko, since the boundaries of property were not clearly marked. In 2012, it came to shooting and a rally outside the White House. Boyko-Veliky brought to the field tractors with banners "For Holy Russia!" on the sides, the machines began to collect hay from the fields, which the peasants considered their private property, as well as to threaten the destruction of the Cossack stables. Buses with Chopovites soon joined the tractors, and the first shots rang out: the Cossacks and the guards of the Ruza Moloko collided in the disputed territory, in the Neverovsky quarry, and fired at each other from traumatic pistols. 12 people were injured in the shootout.

According to investigators, from January 2005 to December 2006, Arbat & Co (the legal entity that manages the network) transferred payments for allegedly delivered products to the accounts of one-day firms allegedly controlled by Nekrasov. After that, Arbat & Co filed documents for a VAT refund and thus underpaid 49.5 million rubles to the budget. The company's turnover at that time was 1.5 billion rubles. Nekrasov's lawyer Alexander Sadukov called everything that is happening "an attempt raider capture". He told the press that a few weeks before his arrest, Nekrasov received an offer to sell the company, but the businessman did not negotiate.

Due to the arrest of Nekrasov, the network was in a difficult position. The maturity date for the bonds was approaching, the banks began to demand debts and did not give the opportunity to refinance. Almost a year later, in December 2008, Arbat & Co sold five stores and announced that the chain was ceasing to exist. In early 2009, the last of the 98 Arbat Prestige stores closed, and in the summer of that year, both former owners were acquitted of charges for lack of corpus delicti.

Cover photo: Alexandra Karelina / Sekret Firmy

Investigators stopped the criminal prosecution of the former owner of the Arbat Prestige company, Vladimir Nekrasov, and businessman Semyon Mogilevich (aka Sergei Shnaider). On April 18, reports RIA News referring to a lawyer Nekrasova Alexandra Dobrovinsky. Lenta.ru

Headquarters MIA in the Central Federal District dropped the criminal case against the owner of a chain of stores " Arbat Prestige" Vladimir Nekrasov and businessman Sergei Schneider. "The case against them was closed due to the lack of corpus delicti," the lawyers for Nekrasov and Schneider said. Vedomosti

According to the Prosecutor General's Office, Nekrasov with the complicity Schneider from 2005 to 2006, by entering false information about income into the declaration, he evaded paying taxes totaling more than 115 million rubles

Let's remember how it started:

The week turned out to be busy in terms of traveling around St. Petersburg and meeting new people. Perhaps one of the main revelations is the story of the former manager of the St. Petersburg stores of the Arbat Prestige chain that almost the main reason for the destruction of this large perfumery network was the refusal of the owners to give the business to Svetlana Medvedeva.

It is not known for certain what kind of toilet water the First Lady of our country smells of, but her fragrances will undoubtedly haunt Vladimir Nekrasov, the former owner of the Arbat Prestige chain, the largest in the country, for a long time to come. Dmitry Medvedev had not yet become President of the Russian Federation, and already in January 2008 a powerful scandal erupted with the arrest of the founders of Arbat, in which hundreds of millions of dollars were spinning, and the cost of the entire network was estimated at $2 billion. It is worth noting here that this company was organized by Nekrasov from scratch, promoted with its own brains and forces, and became the leader in its market segment. But if in the nineties, having big business, it was necessary to "share" with the authorities, then in the Putin-Medvedev country the concepts are completely different. When you become successful, representatives "from above" come to you and offer to give away half of the business, or better, all 100%. At the same time, you may be offered to remain the director of the company or, if you refuse to "cooperate", you can be imprisoned. A typical case here is not even Khodorkovsky, but Chichvarkin and Euroset. So they came to Nekrasov.

No one has yet publicly announced the names of those who promoted the "Arbat Prestige case", but inside the former team of the company everyone knew: Nekrasov refused to give the business to Svetlana Medvedeva, who is considered in the party to be the owner of another chain, Ile de Beaute. The offer was made to Nekrasov almost simultaneously with Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was appointing Dmitry Medvedev as his successor. Vladimir Nekrasov himself, described by my friend as an impulsive gay intellectual, reacted unequivocally negatively to the proposal "from above", almost sending me away.

“This is my brainchild and I will not give it to anyone, I will fight if I have to,” Nekrasov told his employees at the very beginning of the scandal. However, events took on a spontaneous character. Nekrasov was imprisoned and is still in jail. It is curious that already in February last year, Nekrasov's lawyer Dobrovinsky openly stated: "In exchange for business, we are offered to terminate the criminal case. Arbat Prestige costs from $1.5 to $2 billion. This is a very tasty morsel that they want to take away from Nekrasov."

Further events are known. "Arbat Prestige" was slammed, Nekrasov is sitting and, according to rumors, is subjected to constant humiliation in a pre-trial detention center, due to his unconventional orientation, "Ile de Beaute" by Svetlana Medvedeva is flourishing, the Medvedev thaw promised by analysts turns out to be a smaller version of Putin's vertical of power. Such is the aroma.
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and one more thing (a kick from the appointed mayor, squandering city property):

The owner of the bankrupt perfume chain may also lose his office, located in a mansion built in 1917 near the Atrium shopping center. Arbat Prestige" Vladimir Nekrasov. The Federal Property Management Agency is trying in court to invalidate the lease agreement concluded by the businessman with the mayor's office until 2024. The Federal Property Management Agency insists that the object is owned by the Russian Federation.

Nekrasov - bankrupt, yeah, right now it's called that. A wonderful mansion, by the way, and how it was always well maintained.

In general, it's over - and okay, it's good that the person is free, and these ... let them choke.
By the way, what about Madame's declaration?

UPD
by the way, in the comments: oh, that's why all Arbat prestige discount cards are exchanged for Ile de Bote cards.
but, I’ll tell you, Arbat prestige VIP cards were exchanged for the same Ol’ Good.
And who does he belong to? ..... Really-e-ate??? who knows?