Ziyavudin Magomedov and his older brother Magomed, co-owners of the Summa group, are suspected of theft on an especially large scale (the investigation estimates the damage at 2.5 billion rubles) and organizing a criminal community. They were arrested until May 30 and are being held in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center.

The Magomedovs built their business according to the classic scenario of post-Soviet Russia: they started with the sale of electrical equipment and computers. Gradually, the business gained momentum: banking, oil trading, port business, agriculture. Over time, the main assets came under the control of the Summa group. “Summa” is a closed structure; it does not disclose not only its financial indicators, but even the shares of shareholders. In 2012, Ziyavudin Magomedov, in an interview with Vedomosti, named only revenue - about $10 billion.

“I make all the main business decisions myself, but, of course, I consult [with my brother Magomed],” he said. A person familiar with the brothers claims that Magomed was primarily the generator of business ideas, and Ziyavudin embodied them. In 2002, Magomed Magomedov became a senator from the Smolensk region (he remained so until 2009), and his younger brother actually began to manage the business.

Dormitory, computers and bank

Magomed and Ziyavudin were born in Dagestan into a poor family: mother is a teacher, father is a surgeon. In addition to them, the family had two more children.

Both graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University. During his studies, Ziyavudin’s roommate in the hostel was Ruben Vardanyan (the future founder of Troika Dialogue), and the current Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich studied with him. Ziyavudin Magomedov did not hide the fact that he communicates and is even friends with Dvorkovich (“We have known him since our student days and are still friends”), which has always given experts reason to link the growth of the Magomedovs’ business with the official’s career growth. In 2008–2012 Dvorkovich was an assistant to President Dmitry Medvedev, and since 2012 he has been in charge, in particular, of the fuel and energy complex, industry, agriculture, and transport as Deputy Prime Minister Medvedev. It is in these industries that the main assets of the Summa group are concentrated. Magomedov himself, when asked whether his acquaintance with Dvorkovich helps him, answered in 2012: “In business, I help myself.”

But the brothers started earning money while still at university. First we started selling electrical equipment to Poland, then we sold computers. Business reached a qualitatively different level when Magomed in 1991 got a job at the Union of United Cooperatives and the large foreign economic association Interagro. In 1993, the brothers created the Interfinance company: it took domestic foreign currency loan bonds from foreign economic associations, providing them with a fixed return. “The first serious money was made from this,” said Ziyavudin Magomedov. But then the ruble collapsed, and the business almost collapsed. Nevertheless, according to Ziyavudin Magomedov, Interfinance extended its obligations and by 1995 was again in profit.

Together with the Magomedovs, their cousin Akhmed Bilalov worked at Interfinance; in the future, he would be a State Duma deputy, a member of the Federation Council, vice-president of the Russian Olympic Committee and chairman of the board of directors of the North Caucasus Resorts company. After a loud scandal with the construction of ski jumps for the Olympics in Sochi and the initiation of a criminal case in 2013, Bilalov went abroad.

In the second half of the 90s, the Magomedovs acquired Diamant, Magomed headed its board of directors. The chairman of the board became Alexey Frenkel, who later, in 2008, would be recognized as the mastermind behind the murder of First Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank Andrei Kozlov and sentenced to 19 years in prison. “One of our classmates recommended him,” Magomedov recalled.

In 1997, Diamant increased its authorized capital 7 times to $170 million: several additional issues were held, bought by large foreign trade associations, Forbes wrote.

But in 1998, a hole of $100 million appeared in the bank, the Magomedovs sold almost all assets and real estate. “But the bank was closed at zero, having fulfilled all obligations <...> I have always had a philosophical attitude towards financial losses,” said Ziyavudin Magomedov. In 2001, the Central Bank revoked the license from Diamond with the wording “for repeated violations of the law on banks and banking activities.” The bank could engage in cashing, Forbes wrote. Magomedov did not comment on this. “A bank that has not been active for 1.5–2 years obviously could not fail to attract the attention of the Central Bank and other regulatory authorities,” he explained.

Oil trading, seaport and shipping

The Magomedovs got into oil trading thanks to Diamant. In 1997, they received about 6% of Nizhnevartovskneftegaz (production - 19.8 million tons) - these shares were collateral for a bank loan, which the company did not return. “We got the shares for pennies,” said Ziyavudin Magomedov. So they started trading in oil and petroleum products.

In the early 2000s. their cooperation with Transneft began. At that time, the company was headed by Semyon Vainshtok. At first, several small construction projects appeared, and a serious relationship began when the brothers bought land in Primorsk. Later, the Primorsky commercial port on the Baltic Sea was built there - the end point of the Baltic pipeline system. Cooperation with Transneft continued after Nikolai Tokarev headed the company in 2007. In 2010, the Magomedovs, together with Transneft, bought a 50.1% stake in the largest Russian port operator in terms of cargo turnover - Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port ( NCSP ) from the structure of Arkady Rotenberg, Alexander Ponomarenko and Alexander Skorobogatko. The deal was valued at $2 billion. In addition, Transneft owns another 10.5% of NCSP .

“Our relationship with Transneft is one of the most successful examples of public-private partnership,” Magomedov said in 2012. But the cooperation of the companies in NCSP was not smooth. They had disagreements on the port development strategy, and in 2014 the idea came up to divide the assets of NCSP : the state company was to receive oil terminals, Summa - dry cargo terminals. Negotiations dragged on, then Transneft even considered the possibility of withdrawing from the capital of the port. But in 2018, she announced that, on the contrary, she was buying out Summa’s share. The deal was approved by the FAS. It was planned to close in March, said a person familiar with the negotiations. But on Friday, March 30, Ziyavudin Magomedov was summoned for questioning and detained, and the next day he and his brother were arrested. At the same time, on March 30, President Vladimir Putin met with Transneft President Tokarev. whether the deal with NCSP shares was discussed at the meeting Neither Transneft nor Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov commented on . Formally, the arrest of the Magomedovs does not limit their legal capacity, does not affect the legal status of their stake in NCSP, which can be sold and transferred to management only if there is the will of the owner, explains managing partner of Law and Business Management Company Alexander Pakhomov. But Transneft said it had suspended negotiations with Summa. Although a representative of the state-owned company clarifies: “We remain interested in increasing our share in the capital of the Novorossiysk port.”

It is with NCSP that one of the most common versions of the attack on the Magomedovs is associated. applied for the acquisition of the company's shares in 2013 Rosneft : the company's chief executive officer, Igor Sechin, approached President Putin with a request to sell the state-owned 25% of NCSP to this state-owned company. In January 2014, Sechin asked Prime Minister Medvedev to conduct an additional issue of NCSP shares in favor of Rosneft. However, she never managed to become a shareholder. Therefore, according to one version, it was Rosneft that could be interested in disrupting the deal between Transneft and Summa.

Another transport asset of the Magomedovs is the transport company Fesco . Summa owns 32% of the holding's parent company, the Far Eastern Shipping Company. Fesco . includes a port in Vladivostok, 19 ships, five terminals, a fleet of containers and wagons In addition, Fesco controls 25.07% of TransContainer, a large container carrier in Russia.

Construction

Summa has participated in many construction projects. Its “daughter” “Stroynovatsiya” won tenders for the construction of sections of oil pipelines of the Baltic Pipeline System - 2, Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean, and the Caspian Pipeline Company. After a series of scandals with the protracted reconstruction of the Bolshoi Theater, the Magomedovs acquired SUIProekt, the general contractor for this project. The Accounts Chamber estimated the cost of reconstruction at 35.4 billion rubles. “I didn’t earn any money from this project,” said Ziyavudin Magomedov. “We probably didn’t break even, but I’m happy with what I did.”

Thanks to large orders, the Magomedovs are included in the Forbes rating of “Kings of Government Orders”: the last time - in 2015, the amount of state contracts was 49.4 billion rubles, among the customers were Rosaviation, Rosavtodor, IDGC of Siberia, RAO ES of the East.

The investigation's main claims against the Magomedovs relate specifically to contract work, including the construction of the 35,000-seat Kaliningrad stadium, which will host four World Cup matches. The stadium is being built on a wetland on Oktyabrsky Island, at the junction of the Staraya and Novaya Pregola rivers. The area next to the stadium will be a new microdistrict in the center of Kaliningrad, Governor of the Kaliningrad Region Anton Alikhanov told Vedomosti in December 2017.

However, back in 2012, the chairman of the Kaliningrad district council of deputies, Alexander Pyatikop, stated that the island was not suitable for construction, since it would require “crazy money” to strengthen the soil. No one has ever built anything higher than country houses on this site, confirms a local official.

Globalelectroservice, a subsidiary of the Summa group, was just preparing the site for the construction of the stadium. In 2013, he received a contract worth 752 million rubles. But, according to investigators, he used sand that did not meet the technical requirements. The main contractor of the facility, Crocus Group Arasa Agalarova, had to strengthen the soil and spent more than 1 billion rubles on this, said a person close to the company. Agalarov told RBC that he could not start construction due to the poor quality of the soil. Globalelectroservice denied the claims. In 2014, the investigative committee of the Kaliningrad region opened a criminal case for the theft of more than 500 million rubles. during the construction of the stadium. And in July of this year, the former minister of construction of the region, Amir Kushkhov, and the top manager of Globalelectroservice, Khachim Eristov, were arrested in connection with the case. Measures to protect the territory of Oktyabrsky Island from flooding and flooding have been completed in full, the finishing of the interior and landscaping of the area around the sports arena are being completed, said a representative of the government of the Kaliningrad region.

“The Magomedovs were systematically forced out of the field of road repair and construction; the quality of their work did not always meet the necessary requirements,” two officials say. “But they found ways to get new contracts.” Magomedov’s people conducted negotiations and business strictly, says a top manager of one of the subcontractors who worked with the Intex company (a structure of Summa) on the construction of a stadium in Kazan (it was commissioned in 2013 for the Universiade). “Our company had an agreement with Intex for several billion rubles. Closer to the commissioning of the project, Intex began to delay payments and began to redistribute the most marginal part of our contract to other subcontractors,” he says. Some of the work was never paid for, “this was the beginning of the death of our company,” Vedomosti’s interlocutor complains.

Grain business

Two people familiar with the top managers of Summa and the United Grain Company ( OZK ) say that one of the episodes of the criminal case against the Magomedovs is related to OZK , one of the largest infrastructure projects in the Russian agro-industrial complex. Summa bought a blocking stake in it during privatization.

UGC was created at the end of 2009 on the basis of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Agency for Regulation of the Food Market” for the development and regulation of the Russian grain market, as well as for realizing the export potential of Russian grain on the world market. As a contribution to the authorized capital of OZK, the government transferred stakes in about 30 enterprises, among which was the pearl of the Russian grain infrastructure - the Novorossiysk Bread Products Plant (NKHP), the country's largest grain transshipment terminal. In addition, UGC acts as an agent for managing the state grain intervention fund: as of April 2, 2018, it contained almost 4 million tons of grain worth 36.4 billion rubles.

It was decided to partially privatize OZK seven years ago, and not in the traditional way - by selling existing shares to a private investor - but through an additional issue of company shares. The deal assumed that 50% plus 1 share would remain with the state. The corresponding decree was signed by the then Russian President Medvedev on November 7, 2011.

Summa was the favorite from the very beginning. Six months before the signing of the decree on the privatization of OZK, Summa structures bought almost 30% of the shares of NKHP for more than 1 billion rubles. from the owner of grain trader WJ Group Yuri Drukker and his partners (the controlling stake in NKHP belonged to OZK). About a third of all Russian grain is exported through NKHP and the Novorossiysk grain terminal (part of NCSP ), recalls Andrey Sizov, director of the Sovekon analytical center.

But Summa was not the only contender. Applications were submitted by Vadim Moshkovich's Rusagro Group , Oleg Deripaska's Kuban agricultural holding, Louis Dreyfus grain trader, Bio-ton and Neftegazindustriya companies. Only Summa and Rusagro received the right to make a mandatory offer - the work experience of other contenders in the grain market was not enough. As a result, Summa made the best offer and became the owner of 50% minus 1 share of OZK for 6 billion rubles.

After Summa became the second shareholder of OZK after the state , the company changed six general directors. Moreover, three of them left the company in connection with criminal investigations, two people close to the company know. The OZK representative does not comment on this.

Last week, documents were seized at the OZK , Vedomosti’s interlocutors say. Investigators are looking into how the company's money was spent. According to another interlocutor, investigators were interested in the history of 2012–2013, namely cooperation with the company Newbey Investments. Magomedov assured at the trial that he had repeatedly drawn the attention of law enforcement agencies to the results of an audit conducted at UZK after he became a shareholder of the company: according to its results, the company’s loss amounted to 1.5 billion rubles, and accounts receivable amounted to 3 billion rubles. At the same time, according to Vedomosti sources, the investigation has no questions about the privatization procedure.

Gas and telecommunications

In 2007, Summa acquired the Yakut Fuel and Energy Company (YATEK), a major player by the standards of Yakutia in the gas and NGV fuel market for Yakutia. In 2016, the company produced 1.7 billion cubic meters. m of gas, total reserves are estimated at 400 billion cubic meters. m. The company could increase gas production, but there is no demand for it in the republic, and YATEK does not have access to the gas transportation system that would allow it to be supplied outside of Yakutia. In the fall of 2017, YATEK announced that it had found a way to monetize its reserves; for this, it would like to build a gas chemical complex for the production of methanol. In January, Summa reported that it plans to involve the Chinese CEFC in the project as a partner. However, this company, which is also vying to purchase 14% of Rosneft, is itself now experiencing problems with financing.

Summa’s telecommunications business didn’t work out at all. In 2006, the company received licenses for wireless Internet access in the WiMax standard, but was unable to build this business - problems arose with the use of frequencies. In 2016, it became known that the Summa group included the Summa Telecom operator. This is an Internet provider operating in 10 cities of Russia, according to the company’s website. TMT Consulting estimates the subscriber base of Summa Telecom at the end of the first quarter of 2018 at only 114,000 subscribers.

Politics

The arrest of the Magomedovs may be connected with a large-scale purge of power structures in Dagestan, some experts believe.

In January, a group from the Prosecutor General’s Office arrived in Dagestan and began checking the authorities. More than 70 criminal cases were initiated. As a result of the force operation in Dagestan, new information could have appeared, which became the reason for the arrest of the Magomedovs, a former federal official believes: “The Magomedovs had interests in the republic.” It is difficult to find a direct connection between the force operation in Dagestan and the arrest of the Magomedovs, Vedomosti’s interlocutor in the leadership of Dagestan disagrees. They had authority in the republic, they supported young people, created the Peri Innovation business incubator to support start-ups, he says: “They had influence in the region, but could not interfere with anyone. In 2010, Magomed Magomedov was considered as one of the candidates for the post of head of the republic. But they had no serious interest in Dagestan.” The Magomedovs did a lot for Dagestan, assures United Russia member Umakhan Umakhanov, who represents the republic in the State Duma: they worked in kindergartens, schools, and hospitals. Everyone in the region knows them, and now people are shocked by the accusations in the media - they come and ask why such injustice, says the deputy.

The detention of Magomedov puts Prime Minister Medvedev in an ambiguous position, says political scientist Mikhail Vinogradov: “This situation is no less ambiguous than it was after the arrest of [Economic Development Minister Alexei] Ulyukaev. This is testing the positions of Medvedev and Dvorkovich, the situation is sensitive for both of them.” When law enforcement agencies begin to act on people who are linked to Dvorkovich and Medvedev, “and in a deliberately harsh manner,” this has at least a public impact on personnel decisions, agrees political scientist Evgeniy Minchenko: “It is clear that this is an image blow to the prime minister.” minister - although the scenario for Medvedev’s reappointment is considered basic, perhaps other elite groups have a different view on this.”

Vitaly Petlevoy, Olga Adamchuk, Artur Toporkov participated in the preparation of the article