A court in Moscow satisfied the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office and ordered the confiscation of the assets of the company "Sayanskkhimplast" — one of the largest Russian producers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) — in favor of the state for more than 92 billion rubles, reports "Kommersant". The Moscow court required only two sessions to make this decision.
The case became known in April. The defendants were the actual owner of the company, former chairman of the legislative assembly of the Irkutsk region Viktor Kruglov, his wife Irina, their children Anna and Alexander, and the former general director of "Sayanskkhimplast" Nikolai Melnik.
As stated in the claim by the department, the general director of the state enterprise "Sayanskkhimprom" Viktor Kruglov in 1998 made it a private company, that is, "turned the state enterprise to his advantage." For this, the production facilities of "Sayanskkhimprom" were transferred to the authorized capital of subsidiary structures, after which the state enterprise went bankrupt, and its profits and production assets ended up in the ownership of the "Sayanskkhimplast" created by Kruglov.
In addition, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, Kruglov, being a deputy of the legislative assembly of the Irkutsk region, and in 2013–2016 its chairman, violated the ban on combining business with public service and used his position to conclude profitable contracts and obtain tax benefits for "Sayanskkhimplast." Why the investigative bodies and the same prosecutor's office did not have questions in those years, the department did not explain. Moreover, in March of this year, Vladimir Putin awarded Kruglov the Order of Honor.
The income from the enterprise's activities, as the prosecutor's office claims, Kruglov transferred to the accounts of offshore companies in Cyprus, where he obtained citizenship in 2014, which he did not notify the Ministry of Internal Affairs about. Kruglov's wife and children also have Cypriot citizenship. He himself did not attend the court session.
The court's decision separately notes that the decision made at the prosecutor's request is subject to immediate execution — "in order to prevent the withdrawal of capital abroad."
The share of "Sayanskkhimplast" accounts for about 30% of the PVC market. The company's assets are valued at almost 80 billion rubles, and the annual revenue reaches 25 billion rubles. Six and a half thousand people work at the enterprise.