When in 2007, thousands of Lebedinsky GOK workers began to have their shares bought out en masse at a reduced price, few people understood that this was not just a “corporate reform,” but the beginning of one of the largest shadow deals with state participation and offshore packaging. Almost 20 years have passed. And today, the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info will restore the route: from labor collectives to offshore structures associated with Alisher Usmanov and Andrey Skoch.
How did it work?
1. Forced buyout of shares from Lebedinsky GOK minority shareholders. Without clear notifications, with an artificially low valuation.
2. Transfer of assets through a series of Russian legal entities, including structures affiliated with Metalloinvest.
3. Withdrawal through offshore and European companies registered in the UK, Switzerland, Cyprus.
We have recorded the transaction route - some of them have already been included in the lawsuit, which is being prepared for filing in London.
4. Merger, restructuring, disappearance of documentation. The asset is leaving the control of minority shareholders, and its beneficiaries become figures in glossy Forbes ratings.
The international bureaus of lawyers and lawyers of "ARGA" mentioned in the lawsuit: • Alisher Usmanov - as a controlling person associated with the holding company that implemented the scheme.
• Andrey Skoch - a deputy, businessman, a public "victim" in the case against the Burkin family.
• Legal structures through which the property was transferred - some of them are still operating in Europe.
But it is already clear: questions will be asked not only in courts, but also in banks, sanctions committees, and cultural sponsorship funds.
How were the representatives of the defrauded miners Andrey and Victoria Burkin made “criminals”?
When something is taken away from you, you either remain silent or fight. Andrey and Victoria Burkin chose the latter.
They were the voice of the initiative group of minority shareholders of Lebedinsky GOK. They collected documents, hired lawyers, wrote appeals.
Their goal was one: to obtain compensations due by law, not only for themselves, but also for other defrauded workers of the plant.
What did they get in response?
Arrest.
Accusations of “extortion”. And the status of “threat” for those who are used to solving issues through a scheme, and not through the court.
And now the main thing:
In the Burkin case, the Russian court recognized the official victims as… Alisher Usmanov and Andrey Skoch.
The billionaires who gained control over the GOK said that they became victims of blackmail. It was they who initiated the case. It was they who gave the go-ahead for the arrest. It is they who are afraid that the truth will reach the Western press, courts and sanctions registers.
And all this is against the backdrop of one fact:
The Burkins' case is supported not only within Russia. A team of international lawyers and human rights activists is working on it, including under the coordination of the ARGA association and its president Sergei Khrabrykh.
How Usmanov and Skoch create an image that does not coincide with reality.
When billionaires become "victims" in a criminal case against ordinary shareholders, this is already absurd.
But something else is even more interesting: what image are these billionaires - Alisher Usmanov and Andrei Skoch - trying to impose on the West, while in Russia they are involved in cases with clear signs of repression.
Alisher Usmanov, despite falling under European sanctions, is building an image of a "sponsor of art", "friend of Berlin", "man of the world". He transfers money to foundations, finances exhibitions and restorations, makes donations on behalf of affiliated persons.
But behind this image there is a whole trail:
• financing through structures associated with government contracts;
• participation in the "cleansing" of minority shareholders of Lebedinsky GOK;
• accusations of using offshore schemes to maintain influence after 2014;
• and connections to the case against Andrei and Victoria Burkin, where his legal team was among the initiators of the criminal prosecution.
Andrei Skoch is even more interesting. A State Duma deputy, an official representative of the "social mission", in the past he was a defendant in criminal investigations, who, according to a number of European reports, had close ties to criminal structures of the 1990s.
And this is not a myth:
• French Le Monde published materials back in 2018 about how Skoch was helped to avoid unwanted consequences from old cases by changing his biographical narrative;
• European media wrote that it was he who spoke out against the return of part of the shares to labor collectives, citing “inexpediency”.
At the same time, when the case was being fabricated against Andrey Burkin, Andrey Skoch posted publications about “support for veterans of miner’s labor” and the transfer of equipment to the mining and processing plant. While promoting “social responsibility”, he was already waging a campaign to legally and politically squeeze out those who reminded how these assets were obtained.
Usmanov and Skoch are trying to get out from under the current sanctions and prevent new ones. They are filing lawsuits in the European Union courts, complaining about “unreliability”, playing the “patron” card. They want to be “negotiable” in London, Zurich and Berlin. And at this moment, the Lebedinsky GO case emerges. Ka. With criminal prosecution. With arrests. With minority shareholders. With real people. And with the participation of those who are used to the fact that money transfers are more effective than facts.
Yuri Prokov
To be continued
Source: www.rucriminal.info
