The complaint against the founder of Dodo Pizza for drug trafficking could have been written by his franchisee

Yesterday, the founder of the Dodo Pizza network, Fedor Ovchinnikov, which in six years became the largest in Russia in terms of the number of pizzerias and in terms of revenue, wrote on Facebook that he was a witness in the case of drug trafficking in his own pizzerias and spent several hours under interrogation at the Moscow police department. South Medvedkovo area. According to him, a statement about the distribution of drugs to the FSB was written by a certain Pronina E.V., unknown to him. But, as The Bell found out, a person with the same surname and initials - Ekaterina Viktorovna Pronina - is a co-founder of the Dodo Pizza franchisee in Lyubertsy.

• According to SPARK, Ekaterina Viktorovna Pronina is a co-owner of Vitagold LLC, registered in the city of Lyubertsy. One of the Dodo pizzerias is located at the same address. Vitagold co-owner Vyacheslav Prokudin confirmed that he is a Dodo Pizza franchisee, but refused to answer questions about Ekaterina Pronina, as well as to pass on questions from The Bell to her. Pronina herself, according to SPARK, no longer owns anything.
• Ovchinnikov wrote in his post yesterday that during interrogation he was told that a criminal case had been opened under the article “On the illegal production, sale or transfer of narcotic drugs on an especially large scale” with a maximum penalty of up to life imprisonment.
• In the same place, the entrepreneur learned that the whole story began with a written and electronic statement by Pronina E.V., unknown to him. that “under the guise of a chain of pizzerias”, the entrepreneur and his franchisee partner are engaged in the distribution of drugs, and the supplies come from Latin America. On November 1, the statement got to the FSB, and on November 9 - to the Central Internal Affairs Directorate.
• According to Ovchinnikov, during the interrogation the investigator refused to explain who Pronina E.V. was, saying that the statement came by e-mail, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had no way to find out information about a person by last name and initials.
• Later in November, employees of a Moscow pizzeria operating under the Dodo Pizza franchise found a “bookmark” with drugs in one of the restaurant’s technical rooms and called the police, Ovchinnikov wrote. Police officers, he said, now claim that such "bookmarks" were subsequently found in other pizzerias. Ovchinnikov writes that neither he nor his partners know anything about this.
• “The accusation written by an incomprehensible person [we are talking about Pronina E.V.], who has no contacts, about whom nothing is known, is complete absurdity,” Ovchinnikov said in a conversation with Inc.
• We have not yet been able to contact Ovchinnikov himself. The Bell is also trying to get comments from the police department on the South Medvedkovo area.
• Later, Ovchinnikov himself explained that he did not personally know Pronina, but she wanted to become a Dodo Pizza franchisee and even came to study. But the partnership did not work out, because “the business itself is not very suitable for her, the cooperation did not take place, we returned the lump-sum payment paid,” writes Ovchinnikov. However, Pronina became an investor in another partner's pizzeria - Vyacheslav Prokudin. There were no conflicts with Prokudin, writes Ovchinnikov, and the signatures on the documents signed by Pronina at Dodo Pizza and on the statement are not similar.
• At the same time, in the statement that the investigator showed Ovchinnikov, it was said that

the applicant knows about the crime because he is related specifically to a pizzeria in Lyubertsy.

“Based on all this, I can only assume that someone used the name of Pronina Ekaterina to give credibility to a false denunciation,” writes Ovchinnikov.

Anastasia Yakoreva, Artem Gubenko, The Bell