A judge of the Vsevolozhsk City Court of the Leningrad Region allowed the arrest of accounts worth 25 billion rubles of the former Russian partner of IKEA Konstantin Ponomarev at VTB 24, the Vedomosti newspaper reported on Friday, citing a court ruling.

Ponomarev received 25 billion rubles from IKEA in 2010. On April 4, 2014, the investigative department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region opened a criminal case into the theft of funds from IKEA Mos LLC. According to investigators, the case contains signs of a violation of Article 159.4 of the Criminal Code - “fraud committed by an organized group on an especially large scale.”

IKEA mos, the Russian structure of the Swedish retailer IKEA, faced with bureaucratic obstacles in obtaining permission to connect to the electrical grid, often rented diesel generators to supply already opened shopping centers with electricity. The tender for leasing these generators was won in 2006 by ISM LLC, owned by Konstantin Ponomarev.

Litigation between Ponomarev and the Swedish company has been dragging on since 2008. According to a Russian businessman, since July 2008, IKEA has stopped paying for power plants and refused to repay debts. IKEA disputed the lease agreement itself.

By the end of 2010, the parties signed a settlement agreement, as a result of which Ponomarev received a record amount of 25 billion rubles from the Swedish corporation (more than the entire revenue of IKEA Mos for 2010). And he demands another 36 billion rubles. “You see, IKEA is extremely arrogant,” Ponomarev told Forbes. “In the summer of 2008, they could have paid me 5 billion rubles, even 2.5 billion rubles, if they had asked to terminate the contracts early and bargained. I would probably agree. But they began to threaten to put me in prison, citing their greatness and connections. Three years later they paid 25 billion rubles. Now we owe 36 billion rubles. And their debt is growing at a rate of 0.1% per day.”

The decision of the Vsevolozhsk City Court of the Leningrad Region, Vedomosti writes, states that Ponomarev “by deception received 24,994,970,000 rubles into the accounts of the company SAE LLC controlled by him, which he subsequently transferred to his personal accounts through a series of financial transactions.” Ponomarev himself told the publication that he learned about the criminal case against himself on May 12. “I was never summoned or interrogated in this case,” he noted.

The court arrested 25 billion rubles in the accounts of ex-IKEA partner Ponomarev