The dancer is not for Rosneft

Photo: Administration of the President of the Russian Federation

The dancer is not for Rosneft

At this point there was an investigation into the purchase of a stake in Pirelli for the structure created by Rosneft. The court ordered us to remove it. We do not agree with this decision. We publish documents

Luxembourg case

Refutation

By the decision of the Ostankino District Court dated August 20, 2021, information disseminated by Roman Yuryevich Shleinov on February 8, 2021 about the involvement of Aya Sergeevna Belova in the transaction to acquire shares in the Pirelli company does not correspond to reality. Belova Aya Sergeevna did not have and does not have anything to do with the transaction to acquire Pirelli shares. Belova Aya Sergeevna ceased to be a participant in Long-Term Investments LLC until the creation of the Luxembourg company Long Term Investments Luxembourg.

Refutation

By the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court dated July 14, 2021, the information disseminated in the material published on February 8, 2021 on the Internet page https://istories.media/investigations/2021/02/08/tantsovshchitsa-dlya-rosnefti/ under the heading “Dancer for Rosneft: “Dancer for Rosneft. Who received the share in the Italian tire giant Pirelli purchased for the oil company and what does choreography have to do with it”; “In 2014, state-controlled Rosneft bought a stake in the Italian tire giant Pirelli”; Rosneft acquired 13% of Pirelli for almost 553 million euros “at the expense of pension funds and financial institutions”; “Pirelli shares were bought for Rosneft.

You can read more about the trial with Rosneft here .

The publication of “Important Stories” talked about a deal in 2014, when, with the participation of Rosneft, a stake in the Italian tire giant Pirelli was purchased . Then, for the pension fund established by Rosneft, 13% of Pirelli was purchased for almost 553 million euros. The cooperation agreement with Pirelli was signed by the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, in the presence of President Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, the Luxembourg company that bought a stake in Pirelli was owned by a Moscow company created in early 2014 by Muscovite Aya Belova, who turned out to be a modern dance teacher. For large international transactions involving state-controlled Rosneft, firms registered by choreographers have not previously been used. The state-owned company never explained who exactly organized the deal and who made money from it.

Adventures of Italians with Rosneft

Aya Belova was not even 28 years old at the time of the creation of the Moscow company. Before the publication of the investigation, Belova and Rosneft did not answer questions from Important Stories for a long time about whether there was a misunderstanding or a registry error. We called Belova more than once. Hearing our questions, she asked to call back, and then stopped picking up the phone. She also did not respond to SMS and voice messages. After the publication of the investigation, Rosneft and the dance teacher decided to go to court.

Rosneft insisted that neither itself nor for it bought a stake in Pirelli. Rosneft representatives called reports from Russian state news agencies about such a purchase untrue. As well as the statement from the official Pirelli report, which directly states that the share was bought by a “Rosneft-controlled” Luxembourg company (Long Term Investments Luxembourg).

An official document from Pirelli, which states that the Luxembourg company Long Term Investments Luxembourg, which received a stake in Pirelli, was controlled by Rosneft

All this surprised the Italians. After all, even the head of Pirelli, Marco Tronchetti Provera, according to TASS, said that “the presence of Rosneft in the share capital of Pirelli does not violate the terms of Western sanctions.” But the judge of the Moscow Arbitration Court, Maxim Vedernikov, decided that the management of Pirelli and TASS were mistaken: Rosneft did not buy any share in Pirelli. The court decision said that the data in Pirelli’s official reports are “contradictory”, and documents that say that Rosneft controlled the Luxembourg company that bought the stake in Pirelli “do not confirm the fact of the reliability of the information.”

After such a decision by the Russian court, Pirelli was forced to justify itself to Italian journalists. In one of the most famous newspapers in Italy - La Stampa - Pirelli representatives stated that they “confirm the correctness of what is reported in the official documents” of the company, and do not comment on the rest. “Why did Rosneft need to refute information that had been disseminated unhindered for seven years?” - journalists from the Italian investigative project Investigative Reporting Project Italy (IRPI) were surprised .

We have seen a lot of absurdity in Russian courts. But for the first time we are faced with the fact that the official reports of Pirelli - one of the most recognizable companies in the world - can simply be called “contradictory”. And the information from its documents is unreliable, on the grounds that Rosneft did not publish such information on its website. All this is in the decision of the Moscow arbitration.

“The court's findings regarding the unreliability of information in the official Pirelli report effectively indicate that journalists cannot use public sources in their work. Now it turns out that a reliable and authoritative source will cease to be considered such simply by the will of a Russian state-owned company, and one word from her is enough for a court decision,” Svetlana Kuzevanova, a lawyer at the Center for the Protection of Media Rights, who represented our interests in court, shares her impression of the trial.

Modern court dances

Following Rosneft, dance teacher Aya Belova went to court. In the Ostankino District Court, her representative demanded that the publication be completely removed on the grounds that Belova was not involved in the transaction to purchase a stake in Pirelli.

Meanwhile, Important Stories never reported the dance teacher's involvement in the deal itself. We said that the Moscow company created by Belova in January 2014 (Long-Term Investments LLC) was then involved in the scheme - that is, it became the sole owner of the Luxembourg company Long Term Investments Luxembourg, which bought a stake in Pirelli in May 2014. We wondered why a Moscow company was needed, initially registered by a dance teacher, who formed the chain of companies in such a strange way, and who became the owner of the share in Pirelli, purchased with the participation of Rosneft. We did not allege that the dance teacher was the beneficiary of an international transaction worth more than half a billion euros.

Belova's representative told the court that she simply established a company and sold it for 100 thousand rubles - even before the transaction and before the registration of the Luxembourg company. The tax inspectorate, in response to a court request, reported that Belova left the founders of the Long-Term Investments company in April 2014.

Meanwhile, the SPARK Interfax database, with reference to the Federal Tax Service, showed other information: an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, received and published by SPARK in May 2014, still named Belova as the founder of Long-Term Investments.

Such data was published by SPARK Interfax, which receives information under contracts with government agencies and from open sources. The court did not explain why these data in 2021 “do not correspond to reality” and did not find out why they were provided by SPARK

Documents that we officially received from the government agency - the Main Interregional Center for the Processing and Dissemination of Statistical Information of Rosstat (GMC Rosstat) - also show that in May 2014 the individual was still a participant in Long-Term Investments with a share of 0.06%. There were never any other individuals, except Belova, among the founders of this company (according to SPARK Interfax). After the dance teacher, only legal entities - Russian and foreign companies - became the owners of the company (the company is now being liquidated).

A document from the state GMC Rosstat, which shows that an individual was the founder of the Long-Term Investments company in May 2014 with a share of 0.06%. The court did not explain why the Rosstat State Medical Center data “does not correspond to reality”

The court considered the tax response in 2021 to be the only correct one. And the SPARK link to the data of the Federal Tax Service for 2014 and the information we received from the State Medical Center of Rosstat are unreliable. The judge did not explain this in any way and did not begin to understand why there were contradictions in the documents of government agencies about exactly when the owners of the company changed. The court fully satisfied Belova's claim, reducing only the amount of compensation. The dance teacher demanded to pay her more than a million rubles to reimburse the costs of a lawyer and a notary. The court decided that more than 80 thousand rubles would be enough.

This is what Aya Belova’s profile looked like in SPARK Interfax. The court did not explain why it was necessary to consider the information about 0.06% in the Long-Term Investments company “untrue.”

Not strangers

The court was not interested in who headed Aya Belova’s Moscow company (“Long-Term Investments”), which, according to her representative, the dance teacher registered and sold before the deal. Even when Belova was the sole owner of the company, its first general director was Alexey Yashin, who worked in the structures of the Region Group. This group managed the pension fund established by Rosneft. The next general director of the company was the former head of the Rosneft Business Process Development and Optimization Department, Vyacheslav Sheloputov, who also managed to work at Region. It was Sheloputov who later headed the Luxembourg company Long Term Investments Luxembourg, which bought a stake in Pirelli.

The general director of the Long-Term Investments company, a registered dance teacher, was Vyacheslav Sheloputov, a native of Rosneft.

“Important Stories” found out that the father of the dance teacher, Sergei Belov, in 2011–2016, could have had business interactions with people from the Region group: the owner of this group, Sergei Sudarikov, as well as people from Region, Valery Mikhailov and Pavel Vashchenko. According to Forbes and RBC , Valery Mikhailov is an acquaintance of FSB General Oleg Feoktistov. The general worked as vice president for security at Rosneft, and before that he was first deputy head of the FSB’s Internal Security Directorate.

Valery Mikhailov's full namesake also lent General Feoktistov two million dollars in cash, which in 2016, the head of Rosneft Igor Sechin presented to the then Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev along with a basket of homemade sausage. After this, the minister was arrested by the FSB on suspicion of taking a bribe and sentenced to eight years in a maximum security colony. A statement addressed to the director of the FSB that Ulyukaev demanded a bribe was written by Sechin himself.

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In 2017, the owner of Region, Sergei Sudarikov, became the beneficiary of a Luxembourg company with a stake in Pirelli. After the publication of “Important Stories,” Sudarikov “with a slight grin” told Forbes that Belova, not only a dance teacher, but also a “certified lawyer,” did not participate in the deal with Pirelli. And that the pension fund established by Rosneft earned good money from the deal - more than 50% per annum.

He did not say how much Sudarikov himself earned. In May 2021, Forbes noted that the ultimate beneficiary of the share in Pirelli is unknown, but Sudarikov’s structures are still making money from it: “The stake in Pirelli under the repo transaction was held by Sova Capital, part of the Region consortium, which Sudarikov owns together with billionaire Roman Avdeev.”

On October 29, 2021, Rosneft, through the Moscow Arbitration Court, achieved the removal of this material from the Forbes website.

We apologize to the Dozhd TV channel and our other colleagues, who were forced to delete and refute the information from “Important Stories” by decision of the Moscow courts. Our investigation is based on documents provided by government agencies, official company reports and publicly disclosed data. We do not consider court decisions that ignore this data legal and fair.