Kirill Pisarev "hooked" on sail

Former co-founder of PIK Group, co-owner (at least in the recent past) of the development group Wainbridge and a number of other assets in Russia and abroad, Kirill Pisarev, got into another scandal.

According to Russian and French media, a criminal case has been opened on money laundering and tax evasion related to the businessman.

It seems to be related to the major overseas Wainbridge project on the French Cote d'Azur. In 2021, Pisarev's company undertook the reconstruction of the La voile d'Or hotel ("Golden Sail") in the city of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, but only the work, for some reason, did not begin. And Kirill Pisarev himself allegedly stopped taking telephone phones altogether.

Pisarev earned his fixed capital in Russia, including through projects for which money could be allocated from the budget. Could Pisarev launder something in France? And what can Pisarev's ambiguous partners, like the "authoritative" Primorsky businessman Dmitry Glotov or banker Yuri Zhukov, have to do with the situation?

The Moscow Post correspondent understood the situation.

In 2022, Mr. Pisarev suddenly resigned from the ownership of Wainbridge. At the same time, on the company's website, he is still listed as the founder, shareholder and chairman of the board of directors of the structure. So it seems that he remains the real owner, transferring the asset to the likely "denominations."

Photo: wainbridge.ru

Many then thought that, leaving the company, Kirill Pisarev wants to avoid Western sanctions. But he is not under them! Therefore, it is logical to assume that even then the French financial prosecutor's office could make inquiries about Mr. Pisarev and his activities, which could cause the withdrawal from the shareholders.

Initially, the owners of shares in Wainbridge Development LLC (the main legal entity of the group in the Russian Federation) were Pisarev himself (65%), Wainbridge president Michael Belton (25%) and former co-owner of Absolut Bank Mikhail Serdtsev (10%). Then the co-owners of the LLC were the financial director of Wainbridge Andrei Bezverkhiy and two more top managers of the company - Alexander Lemyagov and Alexander Lukashin, i.e. the people of Pisarev and Belton.

According to the Western edition of nicematin.com, Pisarev's foreign property was also not frozen.

Allegedly, in only one France, he owns assets and real estate in Paris, Courchevel, Saint-Barthélemy. And next to the very ill-fated "Hotel de la Parus d'Or" are two luxurious estates on Dominique-Durandi Avenue, which may also belong to him.

Interestingly, Wainbridge International, in response to rumors about a criminal money laundering case, reported that they themselves are victims - allegedly, French departments are investigating the actions of former counterparties of the group, who could be suspected of violating "anti-money laundering" legislation.

Tell me who your partners are

Almost throughout his business career, Yuri Zhukov, another co-founder of PIK Group, was next to Kirill Pisarev. They left the company together. And together they must remain the beneficiaries of the Housing Finance Bank, which was created just to finance mortgage loans to PIK customers.

But during the crisis of 2008-2009, the bank sharply reduced the volume of mortgage lending - from 8.1 billion rubles to a miserable 1.2 billion rubles. As you know, after the start of the SVO and a new round of Western sanctions, Russian credit institutions stopped publishing their financial statistics in the public domain.

And in vain, because then it would be clear what is happening now with the Housing Finance Bank, which in just a month, from January to February 2022, lost 54% of net profit and 4.4% of net assets. It seems that Pisarev felt an imminent change, and together with Zhukov he could simply withdraw part of the bank's assets to the West.

Photo: https://www.banki.ru/banks/ratings/?BANK_ID=619&IS_SHOW_GROUP=0&IS_SHOW_LIABILITIES=0&date1=2022-02-01&date2=2022-01-01

But even then, having "its" bank, PIK, under the leadership of Pisarev and Zhukov, was actively credited to banks with state participation. Moreover, where the money went is not entirely clear.

As Vek wrote, in 2008 Zhukov and Pisarev took $262 million from VEB, pledging a 12.5% stake in PIK under a loan. Later, Nomos-Bank bought out PIK's debt from VEB, and 12.5% stakes in Zhukov and Pisarev remained in storage at the state bank.

When the loan period at VEB expired, the bank started talking about restructuring: to which Pisarev agreed, but Zhukov did not. Unexpectedly, the court found the pledge agreement for Yuri Zhukov's shares not concluded and lifted the encumbrance. How did this even become possible? And is it not worth looking for this money on the Cote d'Azur?

However, the same Zhukov in Russia has many assets that are not related to development, so the funds could settle there. For example, he is a co-owner of the National Non-Rock Company (NNC JSC), which claims to be the largest mining enterprise in Europe and Russia - Pavlovskgranit OJSC, located in Pavlovsk, Voronezh Region.

The largest owner of Pavlovskgranit until the end of 2009 was Sergey Poymanov. The company was credited to Sberbank and was unable to service debts. As a result, Poymanov lost his property. The businessman tried to challenge this in Russian courts, but to no avail.

He later assigned the rights of claim to PPF Management, the lawsuit says. At the same time, Poymanov claimed that the defendants in the lawsuit entered into a criminal conspiracy with the aim of raiding Pavlovskgranit. As a result, in the United States, Sberbank and Gref filed a lawsuit for $750 million about the "raider seizure" of the enterprise, Forbes wrote about this. At the same time, the owner of the NOC Yuri Zhukov turned out to be the co-defendant in the lawsuit.

And then there is Mr. Pisarev's partner? According to the authors of the business.ru website, allegedly at the beginning of 2010, Yuri Zhukov proposed Poymanov to combine assets with NNC. Poymanov refused the transaction, and Sberbank transferred all rights to claim the debt to Sberbank Capital, which sold its shares in Pavlovskgranit under the hammer. Buyers were affiliated with NNK Zhukov and received a loan for the purchase of assets in Sberbank on preferential terms.

Again, the question is, where is the money? Maybe on the Cote d'Azur?

It is unlikely that they went to modernize the production of NNK Zhukov. In 2022, Pravda Ural Federal District wrote about an environmental disaster in the village of Novoburanovka, Chelyabinsk Region, which was literally covered with dust from the Biyankovsky Crushed Stone Plant (BSHZ), part of the Zhukov NNK. It turned out that aspiration plants failed at the enterprise. Apparently, it turned out to be too costly to serve them on time.

Yuri Zhukov and law enforcement officers. Photo: Dmitry Lebedev/Kommersant

At the same time, Yuri Zhukov himself was completely detained due to the situation with Pavlovskgranit - back in 2014, according to Poymanov. However, after the intervention of lawyers, the criminal case was closed.

"Business marriage" from Vladivostok

Other partners of Kirill Pisarev are also interesting. Especially - the seaside "authoritative" businessman Dmitry Glotov, with whose company "Range-Development" Pisarevsky Wainbridge in 2020 decided to engage in the integrated development of territories in Vladivostok.

At the same time, Glotov himself was repeatedly tried to connect with crime. According to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, in the turbulent 90s, Dmitry Glotov headed the local organized crime group Winnie the Pooh. And in his comrades-in-arms he had not anyone, but the future mayor of Vladivostok Vladimir Nikolaev.

In 2007, Glotov was prosecuted under the articles "arbitrariness" and "threat of murder." The businessman made a brawl in the penalty car park and threatened her boss with murder. At the same time, he managed to be in the Czech Republic, was put on the international wanted list. Kommersant also writes about this.

In the same place, in the Czech Republic, he was detained - he turned out to be a victim of a robbery, filed a police report, where he had to stay. As a result, "negotiations" continued for two years, as a result of which Mr. Glotov managed to reconcile with the head of the parking lot.

The businessman was released from criminal liability and returned to the country. Unlike his possible patron Vladimir Nikolaev, who in 1997 was sentenced to 4 years 6 months in prison conditionally for abuse of office.

At the same time, it seems that Glotov could work well with the new mayor of Vladivostok, Oleg Gumenyuk. According to the authors of the Telegram channel "Rupor Primorye," allegedly enlisting the support of Mayor Gumenyuk allegedly initiated the launch of the renovation procedure in several microdistricts of the city. And this, in fact, is a redistribution of the entire construction sector of Vladivostok.

Dmitry Glotov. Photo: https://erzrf.ru/news/fond-zashchity-dolshchikov-bankrotit-krupnogo-primorskogo-zastroyshchika

Its essence can boil down to the following: using the mechanism of zones of integrated sustainable development of territories (KURT), it may intend to force the owners of expensive land plots to sell them at a fixed value, the size of which can be up to 15-20 times less than the market estimate. It's like a real scam.

People and local businesses, of course, scored in a raid. They wrote an appeal to the city authorities, in which they indicated that their lands could go for nothing to the federal developer. And it was in view, just, of Kirill Pisarev, who, together with a native of the stormy 90s, Glotov, "climbed" into the integrated development of the territories of Vladivostok.

Offshore "party" on Ostrozhenka

However, Pisarev went further - he "dragged" Glotov from Vladivostok to Moscow, where they went into a major project to complete the gorgeous Golden Mile residential complex on Ostozhenka. To do this, they created the Ostrozhenka Invest company. And the third, but not superfluous in the project was the Acons Group of the Yekaterinburg developer Ivan Kuznetsov.

The latter previously worked with the well-known businessman Nikolai Kretov in the Urals. In 2016, he was found guilty of deliberate bankruptcy of the Battleship Group of Companies.

The creditors of the company, the main of which is Alfa-Bank, filed a corresponding statement with law enforcement agencies. Retribution overtook Kretov 8 years after the start of his plans to hide his assets from creditors and partners, Life.ru writes about this. True, the verdict was subsequently canceled, the case was sent for a new trial. But questions to Kretov remained.

At the same time, the entire Ostrozhenka Invest project was an ambiguous financial structure. In 2023, all three partners abruptly left it - both Pisarev and Glotov (he was present through the SZ "Project-4 Range") and Kuznetsov.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

And the shares of the enterprise were transferred to the already mentioned top manager of Wainbridge Alexander Lukashin - 92.75% of the company became behind him. The remaining 7.25% went to the offshore company EVERGREEN DEVELOPMENT, IN from the island of Jersey, which can be covered by Kirill Pisarev.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

At the same time, all 92.75% of Alexander's shares were pledged to Bank Дом.РФ - i.e. the project was credited, in fact, with budget money. Where to look for them now - on the island of Jersey?

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

But through Ostrozhenka Invest, partners entered more than one project in Moscow. In November 2022, they gathered to build an elite residential complex opposite the museum-workshop of actress Lyudmila Gurchenko at the Patriarch's Ponds in the center of Moscow. Now all these projects are in question.

The future of Kirill Pisarev is also in question. At least in the countries of the West, where he seems to be very fond of storing the money earned in Russia.