UPD: Vadim Moshkovich and former holding director Maxim Basov have been charged with fraud and abuse of power. According to an 'Interfax' source, the amount of embezzlement the defendants are accused of is about 1 billion rubles.
In Moscow, the founder of the 'Rusagro' holding and former senator from the Belgorod region, Vadim Moshkovich, has been detained. Searches are being conducted in the agricultural holding's offices in Moscow and Belgorod in connection with an embezzlement case, in which several people have already been detained, reported the news agency 'Interfax'.
The '112' Telegram channel, associated with law enforcement, claims that along with Moshkovich, 'Rusagro' CEO Timur Lipatov has been detained. Preliminary data suggests they are being interrogated in connection with a case of large-scale fraud and illegal land seizure.
According to 'VChK-OGPU'*, investigative actions are being conducted by FSB officers as part of a criminal case on fraud, initiated "in connection with the relations between 'Rusagro' and Moshkovich with 'Solpro' Group and its owner Vladislav Burov".
The holding's shares have already fallen by more than 20%.
Vadim Moshkovich founded 'Rusagro' in 2003, and it is now one of the largest agro-industrial holdings. The company ranks 1-2 in Russia for sugar production, 2nd for meat production, and is among the top 5 largest landowners with 700 thousand hectares of land.
Until 2014, Moshkovich represented the Belgorod region in the Federation Council. In 2022, he was sanctioned by the European Union and other Western countries, and Cyprus revoked his citizenship. In 2023, Forbes estimated Moshkovich's fortune at $2.3 billion.
In 2024, the Ministry of Justice reported considering a request from State Duma deputies to recognize Moshkovich as a "foreign agent". The formal reason for the businessman's check was the registration of the 'Rusagro' management group company Ros Agro PLC in Cyprus.
As sources in the agricultural market told 'Novaya Gazeta Europe'**, Moshkovich's business had long been a target for seizure. "Moshkovich was first forced to redomicile his business to Russia and now it's being bluntly taken away. Apparently, he didn't want to give it up willingly, so now he'll give it up unwillingly," said one of the sources.
The attack on the 'Rusagro' agricultural holding may be orchestrated by the Patrushev family, which is acquiring large assets in the food sector and agriculture, writes the publication.
Last year, Moshkovich initiated the redomiciliation process — re-registering the business from Cyprus to Russia. Last year, the government included 'Rusagro' in the list of economically significant organizations. If a company is included in such a list, a Russian court can exclude its foreign shareholders from the list of enterprise owners. Moreover, starting from 2023, foreign ownership has become one of the main grounds on which the Prosecutor General's Office can confiscate a company in favor of the state.
'Rusagro', with a revenue of almost 280 billion rubles in 2023, became one of the largest producers of oils and fats, as well as important export goods — meat, grain, sugar beets, and oilseeds. At the same time, Russia remains their largest supplier to the global market because food is not subject to sanctions imposed after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The "attack" on Moshkovich is yet another confirmation that the state is now striving to seize large agricultural assets and then concentrate them in the hands of one of the quasi-state operators, such as Rosselkhozbank, said anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov to 'Novaya-Europe'. The bank was headed in the 2010s by the current Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev, son of Nikolai Patrushev, who is close to Putin, and now this structure receives those agricultural enterprises and food companies that were taken from private owners, for example, the pasta concern 'Makfa', as well as the 'Ariant' group, which includes Russia's largest winery and the largest vineyard owner 'Kuban-Vino'.
There is another hypothesis in the market: the Patrushev family would like to enter the global grain trading market — highly profitable, opaque, and tightly divided among a few players. At the same time, Moshkovich planned to acquire his own trader and had already begun taking the first steps. Especially after 2022, the largest global grain traders — Viterra, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus — left Russia.
* Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent".
** Recognized in Russia as a "foreign agent" and "undesirable" organization.