The agricultural holding 'Rusagro' transferred a share in its largest regional asset — the company 'Agro-Belogorye' — to the trust management of the Belgorod region-owned JSC 'Corporation 'Development', announced the region's governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. The specific share in question is not specified. The deal occurred a few weeks after the arrest of the agricultural holding's founder Vadim Moshkovich, who is accused of large-scale fraud and abuse of power and was recently also suspected of giving a large bribe to an official. Moshkovich became the first Russian billionaire from the Forbes list to be arrested since the start of the war.
According to The Bell*, 'Agro-Belogorye' is one of the largest pork producers in the country, including 20 pig complexes, three feed mills, a meat processing plant, and a land bank. Forbes calculated that in 2024 the company's profit amounted to 9.61 billion rubles.
The transfer of the enterprise to the region looks like one of the options for deprivatization, said anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov to the 'Agency'*. 'The criminal cases (there are two) against Moshkovich are a prerequisite for the forced seizure of his assets,' said Shumanov. At the same time, the region may not be the final recipient of the asset, the expert believes. 'The transfer of such an asset to the regional level is quite an innovative decision by the authorities, and possibly a compromise. I dare to assume that the regional authorities are a transit owner of Moshkovich's asset,' said Shumanov.
On the charges against Moshkovich, who has been in detention since March 27, he faces up to 10 years. The reason for the case was a 2018 deal to purchase the bankrupt holding 'Sunny Products', and the applicant was the former owner of the company Vladislav Burov.
'Sunny Products' was previously associated with the current Speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin — he owned a share in the holding from 1999 to 2007. And the largest creditor of the holding was Rosselkhozbank, whose board is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Patrushev.
* Recognized in Russia as 'foreign agents'.