St. Petersburg business ombudsman Alexander Abrosimov is at risk of losing a multimillion-dollar family business and falling into the hands of law enforcement officers.
In November 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office demanded that Commercial Center, Transport, and Forest JSC return the berths at Severnaya Verf, which belong to the family of the St. Petersburg business ombudsman Alexander Abrosimov, to state ownership.
Against the background of other enterprises of Severnaya Verf, the company has higher privileges, since it is the sole owner of the berths, and not their tenant like others.
The Abrosimov family could not have obtained this property in the most honest way.
“Gifts from the authorities are not gifts”
KTsTL is a supplier for Severnaya Verf. Money chasing between the Abrosimov family?
After the berths became the property of Abrosimov, he registered all the assets he inherited on the Cypriot accounts MALAINE LIMITED, LAMBDON SERVICES LIMITED, PENGAWN HOLDINGS LIMITED. What scope for tax and other manipulations with public funds and assets!
According to Abrosimov
That is, while the Government is fighting against the use of offshore companies by Russian businesses, the St. Petersburg Ombudsman is actively using the benefits of Cypriot accounts, and has been withdrawing millions offshore for years. For the Abrosimov family, work and life outside of Russia seem to be a common thing, as evidenced by the fact that their ill-wishers attribute to them that they have American citizenship.
Since 2014, among the founders of the KTCL are the daughter of the Ombudsman, General Director Yulia (345 shares) and her deputy Daria Abrosimov (90 shares), as well as Leverage LLC, owned by Alexander Abrosimov himself, according to SPARK.
However, these are far from the only defendants in the case. Among the defendants in the lawsuit are both relatives and close relatives of the Ombudsman, one such legal entity is Little Happiness LLC (407 shares), where again the shares of the business ombudsman were transferred to the management of Anna (60%) and Yulia (40%) Abrosimovs.
This business scheme extends to five more companies, each of which is managed by Leverage and has shares in the Ombudsman through Little Happiness or his daughter Anna.
We do not abandon our own “by Abrosimov”
The image of the commissioner for the protection of the rights of entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg has long been tarnished, even without all the manipulations with Severnaya Verf. Several St. Petersburg companies filed a lawsuit directly against the business ombudsman, accusing him of extortion and tax evasion.
“According to entrepreneurs, the business ombudsman not only does not do his job but also interferes with businesses, deliberately delaying the consideration of their appeals. As a result, firms go bankrupt, and their assets go to third parties,” writes Runyus24.
According to one of the merchants, in 2015 a false claim was filed against his company for non-payment of funds from a subcontractor for supposedly performed work. While the proceedings were going on, the court imposed interim measures, and the bailiffs seized all the company’s movable property, including the property of third parties.
As a result, contracts with GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR General TRADE & CONTRACTING WLL were lost and an investment project in the country of Kuwait and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was disrupted. To get out of the situation, the businessman turned to Alexander Abrosimov, but the organization “cut off the oxygen and led to bankruptcy.”
The comments of the commissioner himself on this issue were what the common people call “has strayed” – as Alexander Abrosimov explained, according to the law, he cannot participate in any procedural form in criminal or civil proceedings, and even more so appeal against the decisions taken. That’s right, but the Commissioner’s job is to draw attention to the problem and involve the relevant departments. And it seems that Mr. Abrosimov knows how to do it, only he doesn’t always want to.
The publication “Petersburgskaya Gazeta”, pointing to “general passivity” as a defender of the interests of entrepreneurs, writes about his active patronage of the Stroykomlekt company of his son-in-law, Mr. Shamarin. The firm received lucrative government contracts in the Northwestern Federal District, perhaps thanks to Mr. Abrosimov.
She was recently declared bankrupt. At the same time, the office seriously owed the state and creditors – not fulfilling the contract for 1.5 billion rubles. Did the money settle in the offshores of Abrosimov?
Now at Severnaya Verf, they can “launder” state money in huge quantities with the participation of Abrosimov and the head of the USC Alexei Rakhmanov. For almost six years, they still have not built a boathouse for Severnaya Verf – as Rakhmanov said: “We already have a second contractor going bankrupt through no fault of ours.” Or maybe they simply withdraw money through Metrostroy and Otechestvennye Sistemy i Tekhnologii LLC?
Judge for yourself – the owner of the latter, Ost-Finance, until 2019 and 2020, when a contract was signed with his “daughter”, was sitting at zero in terms of financial indicators. It was as if he was especially “pumped up” with money so that he could receive a state order. And by 2021, this money was no longer in the company.
Cover from above
Mr. Abrosimov was appointed in March 2019 for a second term to the post of commissioner – the candidacy was put forward by Governor Alexander Beglov himself. Speaker of the Legislative Assembly Vyacheslav Makarov then noted that Abrosimov had established himself “as a serious and thoughtful person.”
Against the background of everything that we know about him, Makarov’s words look either like a complete misunderstanding of what Abrosimov is really doing, or pandering to his interests. Isn’t it for the sake of your personality too? The same question is brewing for Governor Beglov.
Abrosimov’s talent is hard to refute. Raising the successors of the family business, skillfully working on foreign financial accounts, and entering government ranks is not easy task. True, today we see how the KCTL ship carries to the bottom other enterprises associated with the family of Alexander Abrosimov. Will the commissioner and his team be able to get away “dry from the water”?