Former Beeline CEO Mikhail Slobodin came up with a new business after leaving Russia

Former CEO of VimpelCom (operating under the Beeline brand) and one of the most popular Russian top managers, Mikhail Slobodin, left Russia in 2016, and a year later was put on the international wanted list in a criminal case of bribery by Viktor Vekselberg's energy company. He was recently spotted at the B2B Marketing Expo 2019 business conference in London, where he presented a startup for creating advertising videos, Agenda.Video , RBC reported this week. This is Slobodin's first project that has become known since his departure from the country.

What kind of business. Agenda.Video is a company that creates advertising videos for social networks under the management of a team of video editors. The project itself positions itself as "Uber for video".

• The company is managed by Agenda.Video Company Ltd., a legal entity registered in London. It was created back in December 2017.
• The main beneficiary (more than 75%) at the time of its creation was Anna Bleyer, who was repeatedly named in the media as Slobodin’s wife.
• A year later, the sole owner of Agenda.Video Company Ltd. became Mikhail Gerchuk, the former chairman of the board of directors of VimpelCom. Before that, the director of the company was the former head of VimpelCom's social media service, Oleg Barmin.

The official website of Agenda.Video has a section called "Blogs", where several posts like "How to Make the Best Facebook Page Cover Video" and "Top 10 Advertising Videos of 2019" were written by a user under the pseudonym Michael Freedom. Michael Freedom's avatar is a photo of a man, in whom several people personally acquainted with Slobodin recognized him.

Slobodin confirms his connection with the project, but in a conversation with RBC he said that he had to sell the project to Mikhail Gerchuk. According to him, now he only helps him "in an informal manner and without any payment."

Quote. “This is a good idea, which I supported, but then it became clear that it does not work as originally intended. In order for it to “take off,” you need to fully focus on the international market. I also wanted to involve Oleg Barmin in the project, given his experience in Russia, but he could not, and I also do not have the opportunity to develop the project. Then Mikhail [Gerchuk] left Veon in time, and I “sold” him the idea of ​​this startup. I was also at the exhibition [B2B Marketing Expo] at Mikhail’s invitation, it was interesting how this happens,” Slobodin told RBC.

An interesting detail. In the same 2017, when the legal entity Agenda.Video Company Ltd. appeared, the former director of Agenda.Video and manager of VimpelCom Barmin created LLC New Social Media Technologies in Russia. The company operates under the brand name Agenda.Media. Its work is based on promoting brands through native and direct advertising and running thematic advertising channels in social networks - Agenda.Media estimates their reach at 16 million users. Among its customers, the website lists Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, Megafon, VimpelCom and government agencies such as the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Kaliningrad Region.

• Barmin denies any cooperation with Slobodin. "Agenda.Video is a different business, it has nothing to do with me. I really tried to open a "little business" in London, but nothing worked out there, so I sold everything to Mr. Gerchuk, who is now doing it himself," he told reporters.

Context. In 2016, the head of Komi, Sergei Gaplikov, complained to Vladimir Putin that Viktor Vekselberg's energy company T Plus had created an emergency situation with Vorkuta's heat supply by putting the Vorkuta hydroelectric power station up for sale. In the same year, 2016, the Investigative Committee accused the chairman of the board of directors of T Plus, Yevgeny Olkhovik, the company's CEO, Boris Vainzikher, and Mikhail Slobodin, who headed the company until 2010, of bribing former Komi leaders to set inflated tariffs for the stations.

• According to investigators, in 2007–2015, under the guise of charity, they paid the Komi leadership about 800 million rubles in bribes for setting inflated tariffs for heat energy.
• Vainzikher and Olkhovik were detained in September 2016 right in their offices. Slobodin, who at that time had already worked at VimpelCom for three years, was on a business trip in France and, upon learning of the arrests, did not return to Russia.
• All the accused deny their guilt, and Slobodin wrote that energy tariffs in Komi were indeed inflated, but not for T Plus, but for energy companies associated with Deputy Governor Romadanov.
• Mikhail Slobodin was the first CEO of T Plus (the company was previously called KES Holding), he headed the company from 2003 to 2010. Then, for two years, it was headed by Vekselberg's long-time partner Olkhovik, and since 2012, the company's CEO has been the former technical director of RAO UES of Russia, Vainzikher.
• Olkhovik and Vainzikher were arrested by the Syktyvkar City Court, they spent a year in custody, after which they were transferred to house arrest.
• Slobodin is on the international wanted list.

Leaving Russia. Due to the criminal case, Slobodin had to resign from his post as head of VimpelCom. Before leaving, he wrote a long letter to VimpelCom employees, in which he said that no real claims or facts had yet been presented, and the investigation of the case would probably drag on for a long time , since it concerned issues with a long statute of limitations.

• There he also thanked his subordinates, with whom he had worked for three years, for their work and expressed hope that the top management would cope without him: “You will miss my energy, enthusiasm and humor – I would like to think that I have all of this – now you must find these resources within yourselves to charge your teams in this difficult time. I truly believe in you. This is a test for me too – after all, the quality of a Leader is tested not when he is at work, but when he is not. Don’t let me down!” Slobodin wrote.
• Six months later, Slobodin spoke publicly for the first time about the criminal case and the charges brought against him, publishing details on his Medium blog about how he managed to leave the country in time. In the posts, he showed screenshots of his correspondence with VimpelCom managers, which confirmed that the trip to France was planned and he did not try to flee abroad in advance.

Quote: "I was just lucky. It happens. Very rarely. But, thank God, it happens," he said.

• There, Slobodin repeated that there was no reliable evidence in the case, and refused to return to Russia while he faced immediate imprisonment.
• The former top manager of VimpelCom pointed out several oddities in the case. For example, investigators claim that the tariffs set by T Plus were inflated. In one of his posts, Slobodin cited statistics on tariffs in the region and pointed out that all the indicators set by T Plus were at the average market level, and the company suffered losses because not all consumers paid them.

The brightest top manager in Russia. Slobodin has always relied on openness and communication - he corresponds with his clients and employees on social networks, loves to write posts and columns in the media. For example, about oil prices in simple language and the characteristics of VKontakte users . At the peak of his career, he had an audience like small media outlets, journalists wrote: more than 6 thousand subscribers on LiveJournal, 11,300 on Facebook, more than 7 thousand on VKontakte and almost 11 thousand on Instagram. He was even called the most popular top manager in Russia on social networks.

• Perhaps this is what Slobodin loves about bloggers. It was he who took Oleg Barmin from the Livejournal team as the head of SMM, and threw all his efforts into cooperation with influencers, who became the main faces of Beeline on billboards on the streets all over Russia. At the same time, Slobodin proposed developing the first digital tariff in Russia, the payment terms of which were offered to the subscriber individually after analyzing his profile on social networks.
• It was not always like this. “Mikhail’s main feature is that he can change depending on the needs of the business,” recalled former TNK-BP vice president Irina Kibina. According to the top manager himself, during his 20 years of work experience, he changed five industries: the graduate of the economics department of the Ural State University worked at Sual and developed TNK’s energy business, created IES Holding and oversaw oil production at TNK-BP. In 2013, TNK-BP was bought by Rosneft for $55 billion, and Slobodin moved to telecom. Two years later, as the general director of VimpelCom, he came to work in a bee costume.
• In his new position, Slobodin replaced 85% of the first-level managers (vice presidents, branch managers), 70% of the second-level managers (heads of directorates at headquarters and regional directors) and third-level managers (line management), fined people for being a minute late for meetings by 5,000 rubles, which went to charity, cancelled corporate tariffs in the company and sent all managers to the fields several times a year - to mobile phone stores. "We have a service business, we serve people, if you don't want to serve - you're free," Slobodin said .
• But in operational terms, his actions did little to help the company. During Slobodin's tenure, Beeline's lead over its competitors in the "big three" operators only increased .