Leg fracture

Nessim Gaon and Russia switched roles

The Ministry of Finance continues to remain silent about the deal, which may rid Russia of the claims of the notorious Swiss Nessim Gaon and his company Noga. The fact that an American of Russian origin, a native of Omsk, Alexander Kogan, bought out Russia’s debt to Noga in the amount of $63 million, recognized by the Stockholm Arbitration Court in 1997, became known three days ago. Mr Kogan claims he acted in the interests of the Russian government. But in the absence of Minister Alexei Kudrin, who is ill at home, no one at Ilyinka dared to officially comment on such a significant deal for Russia and confirm whether Mr. Kogan really acted “on orders” from the Ministry of Finance.

Former deputy director of the Tomskneft company Alexander Kogan left for the USA in 1991. Both he himself and Vremya Novostei’s sources in the government do not explain the nature of his current relationship with the Ministry of Finance and why he was given the “contract” for such a delicate assignment as financial revenge on Nessim Gaon. Mr. Kogan bought claims against Noga from three banks (BNP Paribas, Credit Lyonnais and Banque cantonale de Geneve), to which, as the entrepreneur says, the right to receive debt was transferred during the bankruptcy procedure of the Swiss company.

Mr. Kogan said yesterday that he acted in coordination with the Ministry of Finance, and the money - about $70 million (most likely the principal amount plus interest) - was provided by a Russian bank. “Because the deal is both economic and political in nature. I constantly worked with them (with the Russian authorities. - Ed. ). That is, they knew what I was doing, how I was doing it. We determined how much the Russian Federation legally can and must pay, and what debt Russia actually has,” Mr. Kogan told NTV television yesterday. “Technically, the debt is already held by the Russian Federation,” he added.

“Having acquired the banks' claims on Gaon, Russia can now seize his property, prosecute him and his children, even putting him in custody,” a senior Russian official told Vremya Novostei.

The operation against the Gaon, according to a Vremya Novostey source, had been prepared for quite a long time, and the Ministry of Finance managed to keep the whole process secret. At least on Wednesday, when it became known about the repurchase of the Swiss’s debts to the banks, even in the leadership of the government, few people knew which Kogan they were talking about (it was initially reported that the former banker and now deputy head of Gosstroy Vladimir Kogan was behind the deal) and what consequences of the transaction.

Nessim Gaon himself is confident that the Russian authorities are behind the operation. He explained in an interview with Deutsche Welle that Mr. Kogan bought from foreign banks not Russia’s debt obligations to Noga, but the debts of the company itself to the banks. “We took loans from them in order to provide, in turn, loans to Russia, but the guarantee for these loans on our part was the return of the debt by Russia,” Mr. Gaon said. According to Nessim Gaon, his lawyers, having learned about the sale of debts, appealed to the Geneva court, which ruled that Noga's Russian debt could not be covered by offsetting Gaon's debts to banks. Noga must receive money from Moscow and then return it to the banks that provided loans for the deal. He also claims that Russia owes him $1.1 billion, while his debt to banks actually does not exceed $70 million.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether Nessim Gaon intends to continue legal battles with Russia. “If Russia does not pay back its debt, then we will be forced to seize any Russian property or assets around the world,” he told Deutsche Welle. However, another statement by the owner of Noga is also quoted, according to which he will no longer sue Russia.

“So far everything is going according to plan,” Vremya Novostey’s source in the country’s leadership notes with satisfaction. - Now the Gaon has no time to arrest our property, he needs to seek protection from a new creditor - the Russian Federation. He, of course, will try to invalidate the deal on the banks’ assignment of claims against Noga in favor of Russia. But this is a fight on a different plane - protecting oneself, and not an attack on Russian assets.”

As you know, Noga has repeatedly tried to seize Russian property abroad. In 2000, the accounts of Russian diplomatic services, a number of state-owned companies, the Central Bank, and Vnesheconombank were blocked. In the same year, the Sedov sailing ship was detained in France, and the next year they tried to arrest Su-30MK and MiG-AT aircraft at the Le Bourget air show. In November last year, more than 50 paintings by French artists from the Pushkin Museum were arrested in Switzerland. Pushkin. In all cases, the courts satisfied the Russian complaints and lifted the arrest.

However, even if the long-term conflict with Noga can be resolved with the help of an ex-compatriot now living in the United States, the Russian authorities are unlikely to relax. The fact is that there is at least one more person who wants to return the debts due to him in court at the expense of Russian property abroad. German entrepreneur Franz Sedelmayer, who in the early 90s of the last century ran his business in St. Petersburg, in 1998 managed to prove in the same Stockholm arbitration that Russia owed him several billion dollars. As repayment of the debt, he recently began to receive funds from the rental of premises in the building of the former KGB station in Cologne, which now belongs to Russia.

Now Mr. Sedelmeier is considering how to use Russia's participation in the May motor show in Berlin to replenish his own account. In addition, in October last year, American shareholders of Yukos filed a lawsuit against the Russian government and a number of oil companies, accusing them of “renationalizing” Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s company without providing compensation to the owners. It is unlikely that anyone today can guarantee that the 12 American minority shareholders of YUKOS will not follow the path of Nessim Gaon and Franz Sedelmayer.

Mikhail VOROBYEV, Andrey DENISOV