The suicide of billionaire Dmitry Bosov, the Russian plan to lift quarantine and the revolution at Samsung

Forbes list member Dmitry Bosov committed suicide. In recent years, all his businesses have experienced problems.

Former co-owner of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant, founder of the Alltek group and Forbes list member Dmitry Bosov shot himself in his house near Moscow. In the past two years, almost all the projects that the businessman was involved in faced with various problems - from lawsuits to criminal cases.

• 52-year-old Dmitry Bosov committed suicide on the night of May 5-6, shooting himself with a Glock 19 gen 4 award pistol, received, according to Kommersant, from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Abkhazia . On the morning of May 6, Bosov's body was discovered by his wife in the fitness room of a businessman's house in the village of Usovo on Rublyovka. According to Kommersant, investigators did not find a suicide note.
• Dmitry Bosov graduated with honors from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 1991, was engaged in wholesale trade, and in the second half of the 1990s became the manager of the Moscow office of the Trans World Group of the brothers Lev and Mikhail Cherny, which actually controlled most of the large Russian metallurgical plants. In 1997, Bosov became the owner of a 20% stake in Russia's largest Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant, but in 2000, together with the Cherny brothers, he sold his stake in KrAZ to Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich (later the plant became the main asset of Oleg Deripaska's UC Rusal).
• After leaving TWG and selling KrAZ, Bosov founded the Alltek group, was engaged in the metallurgical and oil business. In recent years, Alltek's largest asset has been the Sibanthracite coal company with a revenue of 162 billion rubles (the latest data is for 2018). In April 2020, Forbes magazine for the first time Bosov as a dollar billionaire with a fortune of $1.1 billion (86th recognized on the Russian list). Sibanthracite is the general sponsor of the Night Hockey League, in which Vladimir Putin periodically plays.
• back in 2008 One of the important stories in which Bosov played a role in recent years is the purchase of the Vedomosti newspaper by media manager Demyan Kudryavtsev, whom Bosov called his friend . In 2018, Kudryavtsev confirmed to the founder of The Bell, Elizaveta Osetinskaya, that Bosov lent him money to cover Vedomosti’s losses, but it was less than a million dollars, and the money was returned to Bosov.

In the last year, almost all of Bosov's businesses have run into problems.

• In the spring of 2019, the FSB opened a criminal case against the management of the Arctic Mining Company, a subsidiary of Vostokugol, which Bosov owned jointly with Alexander Isaev, a partner and member of the board of directors of Sibanthracite. The company was suspected of illegal coal mining. The project on Taimyr worth 6 billion rubles was supposed to provide a third of the load on the Northern Sea Route. Officials pointed to the delay in the implementation of the project. In February 2020, Vostokugol put the project up for sale . The company actually jeopardized the fulfillment of the task of loading the NSR cargo traffic of 80 million tons, "overestimating its strength," Kommersant's sources said.
• In April 2020, Sibanthracite announced the resignation of Alexander Isaev from all positions in both companies. The reason for the dismissal, the company announced "blatant abuse and theft in the areas of work entrusted to him and the dissemination of false information about our activities."
• At the end of April 2020, was frozen the largest infrastructure project that was going to be implemented by Bosov's Alltek - the second stage of the Severomuysky tunnel at BAM, worth 60 billion rubles. Alltech was going to build it on a concession basis. The new tunnel was supposed to increase the throughput of BAM, primarily for coal, and Alltek was to receive priority access to coal exports via the main line. The representative of Sibanthracite explained the suspension of the project by the coronavirus epidemic.
• In early May, as Forbes found out , Francis Rachoppi, the former CEO of the American legal marijuana company Genius Fund Group, personally sued Bosov. He claimed that Bosov invested about $160 million in this market and demanded more than $1 million from the billionaire for violations of labor laws upon dismissal.

The Bell expresses its condolences to friends and family of Dmitry Bosov.

BELL CLUB

Venture in crisis

Crises always open up opportunities. Just not for everyone. When China lifted the lockdown, its venture capital market exploded: investors rushed to invest in biotech and online education. What markets, technologies and startups will take off in the West and in Russia?

Our guests:

• Nikolai Davydov, Gagarin Capital
• Andrey Romanenko, Run Capital and AddVenture
• Igor Ryabenky, AltaIR Capital

The meeting was moderated by Irina Malkova, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Bell. Time: May 12 at 19:00. Registration is here .

MONEY

Disappointed in TON

Over the past week, Pavel Durov’s team has written three letters to TON blockchain investors at once – and with each new message, the mood of the addressees worsened. American investors no longer have a choice - they can only claim a return of 72% of their investments right now. Investors from outside the United States, in addition to the same option, were offered an alternative on May 4 - to wait another year and receive 110% of investments in money or Gram tokens. But two days later, Telegram had to abandon the option with tokens. Some investors, following the results of this correspondence, have already concluded that Durov's team abandoned plans to launch blockchain and cryptocurrency.

$5 million food packages

An epidemic and quarantine is the time to invest in a startup that delivers groceries to your home. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and food manufacturer Bonduelle have invested $5 million in Russia's most deserving start-up for delivering weekly food packages, Elementaree. RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev estimated the potential of the Russian market for food packages at $1 billion. year "Yandex" refused to independently develop a similar service "Yandex.Chef".

DAILY CORONAVIRUS

How will quarantine be lifted in Russia

The number of new people infected with coronavirus per day for the fourth day in a row exceeds 10 thousand, and since the beginning of the pandemic - 165,929. Half of the new cases again occur in Moscow, the total number of infected in the capital exceeds 85 thousand. But the number of hospitalizations is not steadily growing, Sergei Sobyanin reassured today on the selector with Vladimir Putin (for several days now, the Moscow authorities have been explaining the increase in the number of cases in Moscow with intensive testing). At a meeting with Putin, each minister and head of each department spoke to the virtual president for a long time with a detailed report, but in the end, the government nevertheless touched on the plan for the gradual lifting of quarantine.

• How and when to exit quarantine will be decided by the governors. In Moscow, there will be no weakening of the self-isolation regime from May 12, but the entire industry and construction will work, said Sobyanin . This will allow 0.5 million people to return to work. It is premature to open the service sector now, and public institutions - cinemas, cafes, hairdressers, catering - should be the last to earn money.
• What and when Muscovites will be allowed is a big question. It is not yet excluded that from May 12, a mask regime will be introduced in Moscow. In this case, it will last at least two months.
• Rospotrebnadzor proposes to remove restrictions in each Russian region in three stages. On the first one, sports will be allowed, on the second - walks with families, on the third - almost everything, including parks and public events.
• There is still a lot of news in the world around the topic of coronavirus: Airbnb is cutting a quarter of its staff and does not expect a return to the pre-virus model even after the pandemic, Angela Merkel declared the first phase of the pandemic in Germany over, and a study of about 200 coronavirus mutations showed that it was widely distributed in the human population since the end of 2019, but found no more or less dangerous strains.

Other important news about coronavirus in Russia and in the world is in our daily digest .

EDUCATION

Online course from The Bell and Russian Norms!

49% of The Bell readers believe that the current crisis can provide new opportunities for business and career growth. , a professor at the Walter Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley But only those who can squeeze the most out of their potential will succeed, says Solomon Darwin . We are publishing his article on how to change your mindset to get out of the crisis stronger. From May 13 to 15, Professor Darwin will read Russian Norms! for The Bell readers and viewers. online course "Survive the crisis and become stronger." You can learn more about the program and register here .

INTERVIEW

“It can only be compared with some kind of world war”

Tigran Khudaverdyan headed Yandex less than a year ago, becoming the successor and sole subordinate of Arkady Volozh. This crisis is the first through which he will have to lead the largest Russian IT company, which, moreover, constantly attracts the attention of the state. What to do with the army of taxi drivers and couriers, how to manage the company in the format of Zoom conferences, what Volozh is doing and whether the Yandex authorities asked to monitor the self-isolation of citizens — Khudaverdyan said in an interview with The Bell .

THE BELL PARTNERS

Remote business

Exactly a month has passed since the moment when all Russian business was sent to the first non-working week. The time of total remoteness has dragged on: Vladimir Putin extended self-isolation for all May holidays, until May 11. For most companies and their employees, remote work has become a painful experience: three-quarters of businesses were not ready for the sudden transition to online, and for people, working from home resulted in constant stress and the risk of burnout. business management service, The Bell, together with the Bitrix24 figured out what companies and their employees had the most problems with and what to do to live remotely was not so excruciatingly painful.

PRACTICE

Coronavirus buries open spaces

The offices of Silicon Valley companies with their employee lounges and free lunches after the COVID-19 pandemic will never be the same again, states Bloomberg the obvious. The first and main victim will be open spaces, the decline in popularity of which was predicted before the coronavirus. Of course, offices that the tech giants have spent billions of dollars on will not be completely overhauled, but Google (it plans to return to the office schedule in June) and Facebook, for example, will carry out massive reshuffles that will allow employees to comply with social distancing requirements.

Samsung disowns family

A historic statement and a new milestone in the age-old debate over whether billionaires should bequeath business. The de facto leader and heir to the Samsung empire, Lee Jae-young, has announced that he will not hand over control of the company to his children or other relatives, as has been done since Samsung was founded by his grandfather in 1938. In addition, Lee promised to allow Samsung workers (the company has more than 300,000 employees) to form unions and negotiate collective agreements. Thus, Lee Jae-yong, who spent a year in prison in a bribery case that cost impeachment and 8 years in prison for former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, is trying to calm the scandals around the company.