The defeat of Voentorg

OAO Voentorg, established by the Ministry of Defense, is being prepared for liquidation by selling off 1,500 stores and transferring food supply and army laundry and bathing services to Yevgeny Prigozhin's company Concord-Catering

There was a grandiose goal, backed up by a well-thought-out plan and scrupulous calculations: on the basis of 1,300 stores and warehouses subordinate to the Ministry of Defense, to create a retail company comparable, or even surpassing such brands as X5 Retail Group or Magnit in terms of the number of retail facilities and turnover. After conducting preparatory work and rebranding for 2-3 years, this company could even be brought to IPO. With the denationalization of the trading network, the state represented by the Ministry of Defense could earn, according to the most minimal estimates, at least one billion dollars.

The idea was supported by Dmitry Bulgakov, who at the end of December 2008 was appointed Deputy Minister of Defense, chief logistics officer of the Ministry of Defense.

And precisely for the implementation of this ambitious task in 2009, four friends went to work in the newly established Voentorg OJSC. They were not new to the business. Having received a good education at the Red Banner Military Institute, they worked for a decade and a half in large business structures, everyone already had experience in working as top managers. Mikhail Sokol headed the Department of Trade of the Leningrad Military District in St. Petersburg. Maksim Malakhovskiy - trade department of the Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad, Dmitry Miroshnichenko - trade department of the Volga region in Samara. These departments were created as structural divisions of Voentorg OJSC, which in turn was established on April 30, 2009 by order of the Russian Minister of Defense No. 312.

All provided by friends, all calculated. Except one. The human factor. What more! The fact that Ekaterina Priezzheva was appointed General Director of Voentorg OJSC, who since June 2007 worked as an adviser to the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation on the social block and since April 2009 began to combine the positions of an adviser to the minister and the general director of Voentorg.

Together with Serdyukov, Priezzhayeva moved to the Ministry of Defense from the Federal Tax Service, where she headed the department of taxes and fees on alcohol and tobacco products. She also moved to Moscow after Serdyukov. In 2007. From St. Petersburg, where for several years she headed the inter-district tax inspectorate No. 1. Priezzhayeva always only controlled and checked, and was not burdened with experience in managing business structures, especially with experience in creating business projects. It is possible that this is why she had other views on the real estate of the Ministry of Defense, transferred to Voentorg OJSC. The idea of creating a retail company was buried. The task was set: simply to sell all real estate, all objects. At the same time, it was also about very attractive assets. Large department stores, cafes, trading bases in big cities.

The heads of the trade departments, who went to work at Voentorg OJSC, who hoped to implement the idea of creating a large retail chain, and who had already begun work on detailing the project, tried to torpedo Priezzhayeva's initiative and slow down the sale of real estate. For example, Maxim Malakhovskiy in Kaliningrad "on the sly", without notifying Moscow (which he should not have done in principle), rented out a number of attractive objects for three years. Lease agreements for shops and cafes were concluded at quite market prices and officially registered, the premises were transferred according to acceptance certificates.

Malakhovsky's "counter-initiative" infuriated the leadership of Voentorg. I had to initiate appeals from the military prosecutor's office to the Arbitration Court. Almost all lease agreements were invalidated. The court found the transactions to be large and therefore subject to approval by the Board of Directors of the Baltic Fleet Trade Department. And Malakhovskiy made decisions on the transfer of objects for rent alone.

It is clear that Maxim Malakhovskiy "did not work well" and quit. As well as his friends-colleagues in Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg Gennady Poznyak and Maxim Sokol.

The only one who agreed to “play” according to the new rules was Dmitry Miroshnichenko, head of the Samara department. Which almost got burned. When on February 8 this year, when, according to the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, operatives of the Department of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia caught red-handed while receiving 18 million rubles, retired Colonel MUR Alexander Ambarov. Ambarov did not deny, he told everything he knew, agreed to cooperate and, under the control of the security forces, transferred part of the bribe to Ekaterina Smetanina, general director of Expert Legal Support Center LLC, which was engaged in the sale of real estate of the Ministry of Defense.

According to investigators, for a kickback of 18 million rubles, Smetanina and her accomplices undertook to ensure the sale of four stores for 147 million rubles, with a real market value of at least 200 million. All four stores were located in Samara. And their "pre-sale preparation" was carried out by the Department of Trade of the Volga region, headed by Dmitry Miroshnichenko. In order to sell the stores, they even had to terminate the lease agreements concluded at the beginning of 2003.

Miroshnichenko was a witness in the February case of Smetanina and Co. This criminal case collapsed and was closed. But on November 1, the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of Ekaterina Smetanina and her husband Maxim Zakutailo in a new criminal case. Again associated with the sale of real estate of the Ministry of Defense (details - in the "New" dated November 7, 2012). The security forces intend to revive the February case on the sale of a store in Samara.

About how the business project of creating a large retail company on the basis of the Voentorg trading network was born and was buried, I was told by a person who is close associates of the Deputy Minister of Defense, Head of Logistics of the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Dmitry Bulgakov. He spoke under the dictaphone, not hiding his name. But on Thursday, he called and asked not to use his name. And explained:

After the resignation of Serdyukov, Voentorg started working almost around the clock. Documents are being cleaned up, transactions for the withdrawal of assets are being accelerated, advance payments are being made for work performed under outsourcing agreements. They strive to be in time before Shoigu gets up to speed and appoints audits. We are talking about hundreds of millions of rubles, if not billions. Nothing is sacred to them. And they have plenty of very powerful patrons who can make my life hell. Don't want.

I had to double-check the information received from other sources.

New details have also come to light. It turned out that Ekaterina Priezzheva realized very quickly that the position of the general director of JSC Voentorg was too troublesome. She quickly moved to lead the department of military education, but at the same time retained her membership in the board of directors of OJSC. She also left her man there - Leonid Teif, who also moved to Moscow from the banks of the Neva. Teif, an experienced entrepreneur, took the position of deputy director of Voentorg OJSC. And he has already sat out the change of several leaders, in fact, completely controlling the joint-stock company.

Leonid Teif's most significant asset is a trusting relationship with Evgeny Prigozhin, owner of Concord-Catering, a man rumored to be a Kremlin chef and friend of Vladimir Putin.

It was Teif who provided Prigozhin's company with the first outsourcing contracts for providing food to army units. Prigozhin, who already had experience in organizing catering for school institutions (details are in Novaya, October 17, 2011), liked his first army experience. And now the work has reached the finish line on the transfer to Prigozhin of all the assets of Voentorg OJSC involved in ensuring food supplies and bath and laundry services for the army. And these are stable contracts, estimated at 140 billion rubles a year.

That is why Voentorg OJSC is not very worried about Serdyukov's resignation and security checks. They still have a no less serious patron.