As the correspondent of The Moscow Post reports, the company Mansfield Executive Ltd filed a lawsuit in the amount of 8 billion rubles against the company Dira Ventures S. A and Astar group Inc. Odious Russian businessmen Sergey Govyadin and Ildar Samiev are considered to be the owners of Mansfield. For a long time they were in a clinch with their former partner Albert Khudoyan. The current story seems to be similar.
"Mansfield and Astar are shareholders of another offshore company, Visenia Enterprises Company Limited. He received a $8 million loan from Dira secured by a 100% stake in the authorized capital of Aviacity LLC. The latter owned plots for the construction of the Prime Park residential complex in Moscow.
Govyadin and Samiev could have considered that the second shareholder of Vicenia, Astar, is affiliated with Dira, which issued the loan, while Astar and Dira are jointly affiliated with Albert Khudoyan. Mansfield allegedly did not agree to receive a loan and transfer a stake in Aviastar LLC as collateral, and now wants to recover its property. But could Govyadin and Samiev pretend for this property at all?
According to rumours, Govyadin and Samiev have long wanted to be the sole owners of the rights and plots for Prime Park and allegedly tried to "trick" Khudoyan. And, it seems, that they even managed to do so. Now Khudoyan is under a criminal case of fraud for 2 billion rubles, which the rumours call sounds too shaky.
After the beginning of the confrontation of Govyadin and Samiev against Khudoyan, the latter's Optima Development structure sold the Prime Park development project to Fridman’s A1 structures. This was written by Vedomosti. Apparently, Khudoyan, got tired of "fighting" with this couple of businessmen and decided to "throw" his asset under Prime Park to Fridman's structures. Let them deal with it all by themselves. That is, the development project and the land under it actually went out from under the nose of Samiev and Govyadin. Were they offended and decided to get something?
Did Khudoyan have a bad time?
Khudoyan was interested by law enforcement agencies in the summer of 2019 at the request of just the same offshore company Mansfield Executive Ltd. Khudoyan was accused of fraud with three land plots during the construction of an elite residential complex on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow.
Khudoyan's defense believes that the whole case against him sounds shaky, and the ultimate aim of the entrepreneur's detractors could be a raider seizure of his Optima Development business. According to another version, this may be a simple extortion that went too far.
Is Albert Khudoyan the casualty of a "corporate showdown" with Samiev and Govyadin?
The story of their "friendship" began in 2015, when Govyadin, along with his partner Ildar Samiev, who was at that time a State Duma Deputy from the Fair Russia, through the company Mansfield Executive Ltd, conceived to build a residential complex in Moscow - the same Prime Park. This was written by the newspaper Kommersant.
How Samiev, as a State Duma Deputy, could enter this business is a separate question, and for some reason it does not cause any complaints from law enforcement agencies. Although it should have been prohibited by law. However, now Samiev himself is under the sight of law enforcement, but more on this below. And the story with Khudoyan is even "cooler".
Albert Khudoyan became the third partner of Govyadin and Samiev on the project. He owned Aviacity LLC, which owned the rights to long-term lease of three land plots on which the construction was to take place.
Govyadin and Khudoyan bought half of the shares of the Cyprus offshore company Vesennaya, which owned Aviacity. However, according to Govyadin, Khudoyan allegedly violated the agreement and transferred the land lease rights to his new companies Prime Park and Leader LLC.
All this is extremely doubtful. According to Khudoyan's lawyer, Samiev, as a partner of Govyadin, received shares, but did not pay anything for them, although he had to invest in the construction of a residential complex. This was written by the Legal.Report publication.
As a result, as already mentioned, Khudoyan was first detained, and then under arrest. The entrepreneur was not released even on a solid bail of a billion rubles. Meanwhile, already during the investigation, strange things began to happen.
From the very beginning, Khudoyan linked his criminal case with former partners, in which he openly stated: all this is in order to take away $400 million from him. This was reported by Novaya Gazeta. But already during the case, another "oddity" occurred. In July 2017, Khudoyan himself filed an application, where he wrote that the casualty's representative immediately made it clear to him: after the confrontation, Khudoyan's status would be changed from a witness to an accused, and he would be detained and sent to a pre-trial detention centre.
And offered to "settle" the issue. For a multimillion-dollar reward... promising that in this case the criminal-legal pressure on me will end." This was also reported by Novaya Gazeta.
Later, in April 2020, those law enforcement officers who could extort a bribe from Khudoyan were themselves targeted by the security forces. This was written by Kommersant.
According to investigators, the Deputy chief of MIA "for selfish reasons" groundlessly removed the criminal case of the owner of the construction company Optima Development Albert Khudoyan, accused of fraud with three land plots on Prime Park, from the production of the main investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow.
If money and assets really were the aim of Samiev and Govyadin, can we assume that it was they who could offer to "solve the issue" through their people in law enforcement? If so, is the case against Khudoyan really worthless?
Sergey Govyadin and Ildar Samiev are not simple personalities. It is rumoured that Sergey Govyadin could have been familiar with some criminal authorities before, and Samiev's Deputy mandate was necessary for the latter to cover up a business close to him.
As we said, Samiev now has problems with law enforcement officers, he is in detention centre. And he was there even before the claim concerning Khudoyan.
Past achievements
In 2017, Samiev was arrested and charged with major fraud. According to RBC, we can talk about fraud with real estate worth about $850 thousand dollars. According to the investigation, the ex-Deputy has debts of tens of billions of rubles, and he simply did not intend to fulfill his obligations to Svyaz-Bank, to which he owes a significant part of this amount.
One of the episodes of this criminal case is the sale of an apartment in Knightsbridge Private Park to the Russian national football team forward Fyodor Smolov, which was secured by a Bank. That is, Govyadin’s partner himelf could be "involved", couldn’t he?
Sergey Govyadin is clearly not a simple person…
Govyadin is also an extremely odious person. Despite the lack of evidence that he belongs to the criminal world, the rumours are different. For example, detractors claim that Govyadin could have been involved in the loss of $25 million taken from Rosinterbank. Govyadin and Samiev, being long-time business partners, owned Univermag LLC, which owned a department store named Moscow in the Russian capital.
According to rumours, Moscow was previously owned by members of the Taganskaya OCG, and the institution itself had a lot of debts, which Univermag LLC of Govyadin and Samiev allegedly bought from Tagansky. It is curious, did they agree with them at all - did they know these gentlemen personally?
In 2013, Univermag LLC issued a $25 million loan from Rostinterbank. However, the debt was not returned at the appointed time. After that, Rosinterbank went to court, but soon the claim was withdrawn with the permission of the Bank's Chairman of the Board, Marina Krasnova.
After that, the Bank suddenly became interested to the Deposit Insurance Agency, which announced the assignment of claims for the amount of debt to an unknown Trade-MK LLC, registered just a couple of months before the end of the loan.
As a result, Trade-MK LLC did not receive the money, and the building from Univermag LLC, which was previously listed as a pledge from the Bank, magically disappeared from the register. This was written by journalists of Novaya Gazeta.
According to rumours, it was Govyadin and Samiev who could pull off the whole thing, taking advantage of their allegedly extensive connections in the offices of high Moscow bosses. Samiev could also have used his parliamentary resource.
In any case, he wouldn't be able to do that right now. Meanwhile, experts believe that the claim of Mansfield Executive Ltd ahainst Dira Ventures S.A and Astar Group Inc have enough chances to be satisfied. With such a background of likely applicants, this will not be surprising. We are sure that the opposite side will challenge this decision. This means that the confrontation of Govyadin and Samiev against Khudoyan will be continued.