Operational search for grain and flour

Moscow police uncovered a conspiracy to inflate prices for food products

The Department for Combating Economic Crimes (UBEP) of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate announced yesterday that it was carrying out a “large-scale operation with an unjustified increase in prices for food products.” Although the police claimed that they were carrying out this operation jointly with the Moscow government - the department of consumer market and services and the department of food resources, yesterday officials first learned about this from a Vremya Novostei correspondent. Nevertheless, the UBEP has already reported on its first achievements - the discovery of a certain criminal organization that, through fraud, managed to inflate grain prices by up to 50%. And this, the UBEP claims, is only a “special case” of their inspection. Apparently, this case may soon be followed by a series of similar ones.

As the UBEP said, the large-scale operation began “somewhere in mid-October.” The reason for the check, according to the police, was a sharp rise in prices for popular food products in September. And in October, the detectives, in their own words, received information that some “unscrupulous swindlers” decided to take advantage of this crisis for their own selfish purposes and developed a scheme to implement their criminal plan. First, they registered two shell companies - Diaston LLC and Anvey LLC. “These companies did not formally conduct any activities; they had zero balances. But in fact, they were engaged in the purchase and sale of grain crops, but did not pay taxes and since the beginning of the year they owed the state more than 20 million rubles,” Philip Zolotnitsky, head of the press service of the UBEP of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, told Vremya Novostei. “It turned out that these companies were registered with lost passports.”

According to Mr. Zolotnitsky, the fraud scheme “was simple.” “Diaston” and “Anvey” purchased barley and other grain crops from producers in the Stavropol and Krasnodar territories, as well as in the Ryazan region. Then the grain was sold to flour mills at an inflated price - by 20-50% - at a price. Moreover, the leaders of the scam forced the flour mills to buy grain from them, otherwise they “threatened with reprisals.” Based on this fact, the Department for Economic Crimes opened a criminal case under Article 150-4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on an especially large scale). “Yesterday, our operatives managed to detain one of the organizers of this grain scheme,” Mr. Zolotnitsky reported, “He has not yet been charged, but he was interrogated for the whole day. It is possible that in the future he will be charged with evasion. from paying taxes.” The name of the detainee, as well as the other suspects, has not yet been disclosed in the interests of the investigation.

According to the Department for Economic Crimes, “the large-scale operation involves not only inflating prices for grain crops, but also for other food products.” Mr. Zolotnitsky promised to report on its results later. “So far this is an isolated case associated with a deliberate increase in grain prices,” explained the press secretary. “But it is possible that after the inspections are completed, a whole series of similar cases will be initiated, but for other goods.”

At the same time, the department of consumer market and services and the department of food resources in Moscow were very surprised yesterday by such a loud statement from the UBEP, noting that recently their employees “have not participated in any joint actions with law enforcement agencies.” “Our task is to find grain where it is grown or sold, purchase it in the required quality, deliver it to the city and organize storage,” explained the mechanism of their work, press secretary of the Moscow food resources department Leonid Ivakin. — Next, this grain is processed into flour, and bakeries bake the product. But this is already being monitored by the Department of Science and Industrial Policy. After the bread arrives at the retail chain, the department of consumer market and services stands guard. I don’t know at what stages and what exactly the law enforcement agencies found.” According to the official, the Moscow government works only with large grain suppliers. “As far as I can remember, there were no cases of deliberately inflating grain prices in the city. Well, as for the companies mentioned by the UBEP, they were never on our list of suppliers,” said Mr. Ivakin.

By the evening it became clear that the “criminal” grain was supplied not to the capital’s flour mills, but to one of the Moscow suburbs. However, yesterday the UBEP found it difficult to answer which one.

In addition, it became known yesterday that Russian producers and retail chains may extend the moratorium on price increases for a number of food products until the end of March. The head of Wimm-Bill-Dann, David Yakobashvili, told reporters about this. This company is one of the parties to the agreement signed in October to freeze prices until January 31, 2008. “There is a certain agreement that we can extend the moratorium for some more time, perhaps two months,” Mr. Yakobashvili said. He recalled that his company fixed prices for 31 types of dairy products. This applies to low-price goods that are purchased by low-income segments of the population.

Ekaterina KARACHEVA