The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as part of its exit from Russian business, sold 5.3% in the capital of the Moscow Exchange to the Softline group of companies. As the correspondent of The Moscow Post managed to find out, the deal could also be held in the interests of the owner of the Lanit company, which shone in the case of the "loss" of 600 million rubles at the creation of the GIS TEK.
All that "lies badly" wrap Gens
Softline was sold a few months ago to ZPIF, controlled by the Tetis Capital Foundation. According to Kommersant, several legal entities later the company belongs to Trinfico Group LLC, which owns 70.04% Oleg Belay and 22.46% Vitaly Balanovich. However, the company itself refutes this, stating that for 2023 Trinfico Holdings does not own Trinfico JSC.
According to Rusprofile, Trinfico Holdings has recently left the founders of Trinfico. But the new owner is not known.
Meanwhile, it may be Lanit (the profile is the same as Softline) Philip Gens. This is indirectly indicated by a number of circumstances.
Firstly, Lanit is now very actively engaged in buying up everything that "lies badly," and sometimes, possibly, through proxies. For example, the situation with the National Computer Corporation, which after a series of corporate conflicts went to Denis Frolov. Behind the latter, it seems to be the influence of Gens.
The Moscow Post covered this story in detail, but let's briefly explain: NNC and Lanit collaborated closely. By the way, their searches were similar at the same time in 2017. The case has faded.
At a certain moment, the shareholders of NNC Yevgeny Lakov and Leonid Goldenberg for no reason suddenly wanted to sell their shares to the structures of Denis Frolov mentioned by us, and in 2020 the then president of NNC Alexander Kalinin was detained.
Frolov owns RusBITech-Astra LLC, which produces Astra Linux. Recently, the State Duma purchased licenses for this product for 52 million rubles. At the same time, the supplier was not Astra Group of Companies, but Step Logzhik, which was bought by Lanit from the Systematics company, which belonged to the interests of NNC. Then the company was managed by the father of Philip Gens George. Apparently, to pick up the business "NNK" "Lanit" could have gathered for a long time and Gens Jr. brought the matter to the end?
Alexander Kalinin. Photo: https://www.tadviser.ru
A similar story was with the manufacturer of equipment "Redmond": in 2016, after the death of the founder of the distributor of household appliances "Redmond" Maxim Ageenko, the so-called division of the inheritance began between his heirs and business partners, which provoked a protracted conflict. While the court battles were going on, Lanit created several legal entities, into which employees of the Redmond company began to flow.
Already at the beginning of 2022, "Dihaus" presented its brand of household appliances Red. The company hired about 700 developers who left Redmond amid litigation.
There was another interesting nuance in history: a certain Diana Zhelyaskova entered the capital of Redmond after Ageenko's legal heirs were "thrown out" from there. In 2018, she was sentenced to a year in prison in the case of tax evasion of Technopoisk LLC (the company is the owner of the Redmond brand).
So strange: where people are imprisoned, there is often a place to promote the interests of Lanit. It seems that Gens is not familiar with the saying "you can't build happiness on someone else's misfortune" or does he himself provoke such situations?
GIS TEK case
We must think there is a resource. After all, in some incomprehensible way, Philip Gens still manages to remain "clean," despite the fact that the security forces have been dealing with the criminal case of former Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Tikhonov for three years. The case concerns the creation of "GIS TEK," which was given "at the mercy" of the company "Lanit" - by the way, contrary to the initial decision of the competition commission, when it determined that the company "ISSB" should take up the matter.
GIS TEK failed, the budget suffered, but for some reason Lanit is still "swimming" in state contacts, like its subsidiaries. Moreover, Gens, apparently, is not only interested in IT, recently it was possible to find out that Lanit is related to the City Parking company, which receives good government orders from institutions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
By the way, "ISSB" is now bankrupt, and its former owner Alexei Savin may try to plant. At least, at the disposal of the Editorial Office there is a complaint document from Savin to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he writes that they are trying to hang a criminal offense against him. True in another case related to the information provided to him about Novopokrovsky Bank. But, we must think, Gens also will not be upset if the one who at every corner "shouts" about the illegality of the removal of "ISSB" from the competition suddenly finds himself out of range.
Photo: Archive of The Moscow Post
Competition without competitors
As for the current situation, it partially repeats the history of the NOC, only this takeover is rather friendly. Lanit and Softline worked tightly for years. And the latter also did not pass by the scandalous purchase of the Ministry of Energy. Softline Trade was among the list of companies that, according to the investigation into the situation with GIS TEK, performed contracts at deliberately inflated prices. Although this has not been proven, many still believe that the then owner of the company, Igor Borovikov, could "defuse" through "his" people in structures that could influence the court's decision.
Softline and Lanit together performed work for the Ministry of Digital Engineering for the purchase of office software. The purchase was not particularly smooth - Almi Partner complained to the FAS. And it was recognized as justified - the regulator saw a violation of the requirements for the description of the procurement object imposed by the law on the contract system, and ordered to change the tender documentation. It is also interesting that literally three days before the tender was announced, the Almi Partner product was excluded from the register of domestic software, which made its participation impossible.
The company even went to court, and he declared the incident illegal. Does this mean that the Ministry of Digital Industry simply asked to remove the competitor? If so, then there is a reasonable assumption that "Softline" "Lanit" did not consider a competitor.
Photo: https://kad.arbitr.ru
As a result of the proceedings, the Ministry of Digital Science still signed a contract with Lanit and with the Softline Project.
Mr Borovikov sold his firm amid the departure of global Softline from Russia. It is left with Softline Global, headquartered in London. It is very likely that Gens made a good offer to his colleague, and he decided, in order to maintain business abroad, to nominally leave Russian. In general, Borovikov could save part of the dividends from the activities of Softline, giving it to a trustee, with whom they, like fire and water, passed the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Digital Science.
The purchase through Tethys Capital could take place so that further, without causing complaints, it was possible to "compete" on public procurement. It is not for nothing that ZPIF as an owner is used primarily to hide beneficiaries. Belay, who was behind him, by the way, is also an extremely interesting character who could be chosen to "overexpose" the asset thanks to his abilities.
From each by ability
For example, here you can recall the story how Kit Finance Trade sold shares of Belayevskaya Trinfico Holdings bought in repo at an inflated price in 2019. TASS wrote about this. Trinfico Holdings then managed the funds of NPF Aquilon. I want to call what happened fraud, but for some reason no one was punished for it.
In addition, as Oleg Belay suggested to The Moscow Post, he could launch his hand into the Blagosostoyanie Russian Railways fund: together with the son of First Deputy State Duma of the Russian Federation Alexander Zhukov, Pyotr Zhukov, Belay launched the Tendertech Internet service. The partners offered to provide a guarantee to Absolut Bank, which belongs to the Blagosostoyanie fund.
Thus, any one-day company, in fact, could receive a bank guarantee by order from some state-owned company. Then the contract was allegedly broken and the bank paid money under the guarantee.
In general, we recall the case of the "loss" of 600 million at the GIS TEK and it becomes no longer strange that Gens could shake hands with such a comrade. It is possible that Belaya's abilities will be useful for partially "bleeding out" his new asset. It seems that Borovikov will not remain in the invoice either.
In industry magazines a couple of years ago, there was information that the company, which is part of Lanit, is going to go to IPO in the next 4 years, and therefore to the Moscow Exchange. Given that Gens may have had some influence on this asset, could it be that in the future he will be able to influence quotes?
In this case, you can wait for games in the market, and in this, by the way, Mr. Belay could help. Gens looks into the distant perspective and plays big?