The beneficiary of the cash reform has been put on the wanted list. The "main beneficiary" of the Russian reform of cash registers has been put on the worldwide wanted list. From control tape to drives

Entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov, whom State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi named as the beneficiary of a monopoly manufacturer of fiscal accumulators for cash registers, put on the international wanted list. The relevant information is posted on the Interpol website. The publication Republic drew attention to this, to which the Interpol representative confirmed that Shcherbakov was on the wanted list.

Russian law enforcement agencies put Shcherbakov on the international wanted list due to suspicions of a large-scale withdrawal of funds abroad using forged documents as part of an organized group, according to the Interpol statement.

The fact that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of a number of affiliated companies that are engaged in the production of fiscal accumulators was announced in early March during a meeting in the State Duma, deputy Andrei Lugovoi. Lugovoi was outraged by the fact that the production of fiscal drives, which must be equipped with all cash registers by July 1, 2017, is monopolized and JSC Atlas-Kart, LLC Rik and CJSC Besant earn money on it, and due to shortcomings in According to legislation, entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices at a price ten times higher than the cost.

Other market participants, according to Lugovoi, cannot pass certification of their samples of fiscal accumulators in the 8th center of the FSB: technical requirements to the device, which should be published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service, are in fact incomplete - "something is missing, something is not said," Lugovoi explained. “Someone artificially at the government level, at the level of law enforcement agencies is doing everything to prevent new fiscal accumulators from appearing on the market,” the deputy said.

CJSC Atlas-Kart and Besant are linked through the company JSC STC Spetsproekt, which is owned by Omega-Holding, the founder of LLC RIK, follows from the SPARK-Interfax database. Vladimir Alekseevich Shcherbakov, in turn, is listed as a co-owner of Omega-Holding LLC.

In the mid-2000s, during the previous reform of cash registers, Besant also had a monopoly on the production of the predecessor of fiscal storage devices, "electronic control tape protected" (EKLZ), the Republic found out. EKLZ was the same storage device, but without an Internet connection and with limited memory. It had to be changed once a year (the new fiscal drive has the same service life). According to the newspaper Kommersant, the FSB lobbied for the introduction of EKLZ under the slogan of fighting black cash. The production of equipment was also licensed by the FSB, and Besant received the only license, which then quickly raised prices by almost half.

The publication Republic suggested that the orientation towards Shcherbakov by Interpol was obtained due to the case initiated in 2014 on the illegal withdrawal of funds abroad through a small BVA-bank. Then they tried to withdraw about 10 billion rubles abroad. Republic found out that the co-owners of BVA-Bank were the full namesake of at least eight people associated with both the Besant company and its affiliated structures. The same group of companies is also associated with the manufacturer of new fiscal storage devices.

Cash reform

The law, which obliges companies and private entrepreneurs to switch to cash registers that can online transmit information about each sale to the Federal Tax Service (FTS), was signed in July 2016. In the first year, installing or replacing cash registers with “smart” devices was voluntary. From February 1, 2017, the tax authorities stopped registering cash registers that do not meet the new requirements, and the business will have to completely switch to online cash registers from July 1.

In addition, companies will have to connect cash registers to computers with softwarewhich allows you to send electronic checks to customers.

Original of this material
© IA "RBK", 03/30/2017

The "beneficiary" of the cash reform was put on the international wanted list

Natalia Demchenko

The businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, whom State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi called the beneficiary of the monopoly manufacturer of fiscal drives for cash registers, has been put on the international wanted list. The relevant information is posted on the Interpol website. The publication Republic drew attention to this, to which the Interpol representative confirmed that Shcherbakov was on the wanted list.

Russian law enforcement agencies put Shcherbakov on the international wanted list because of suspicions of a large-scale withdrawal of funds abroad using forged documents and as part of an organized group, according to the Interpol statement.

The fact that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of affiliated companies that are engaged in the production of fiscal accumulators was announced at a meeting in the State Duma in early March by Deputy Andrei Lugovoi. He was outraged by the fact that the production of fiscal drives, which must be equipped with all cash registers by July 1, 2017, is monopolized and JSC Atlas-Card, LLC Rik and CJSC Besant earn money on it, and due to shortcomings in According to legislation, entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices at a price ten times higher than the cost.

Other market participants, according to Lugovoi, cannot pass certification of their samples in the 8th center of the FSB: the technical requirements for the fiscal accumulator, which should be published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service, are in fact incomplete - “something is missing, something not said, ”Lugovoi explained. “Someone artificially at the government level, at the level of law enforcement agencies is doing everything so that new fiscal accumulators do not appear on the market,” the deputy said. [...]

New chips will enrich German Gref, Alisher Usmanov, Grigory Berezkin, Leonid Reiman

Original of this material
© Republic.ru, 03/30/2017, Illustrations: via Republic.ru

Cash fraternity

Dmitry Filonov

A complete replacement of all cash registers should be completed in Russia by July - the business will have to re-equip more than two million cash registers. The entire volume of the formed market is at least 20 billion rubles. IN cash business are already participating Alisher Usmanov, German Gref and Grigory Berezkin... But little-known businessmen with close ties to the FSB claim most of this pie. And the monopoly manufacturer of chips that will track all cash transactions in the country turned out to be closely connected with the mysterious entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov, whom, as the Republic found out, is wanted by Interpol. The businessman is suspected of illegally withdrawing money from the country. But that's not all. We figured out the complex schemes of the Russian cryptographic business in order to understand what the former minister has to do with it. Leonid Reiman, the manufacturer of the Dendy console Andrey Cheglakov, as well as friends Boris Gryzlov and Nikolay Patrushev.

Invaders of new niches

In July 2012, the Federal Tax Service announced open competition for a project to improve the control system for cash payments. In fact, the department wanted to improve the current system for recording data from cash registers. Four companies took part in the tender with an initial price of 1.5 million rubles, but the winner's offer was difficult to interrupt. Atlas-kart agreed to develop proposals for only 1 ruble. The contract was signed in September, and less than three months later, the Federal Tax Service approved the finished reform project.

It was not in vain that Atlas-Kart took up the development of the project for the ruble: the structures associated with it became the only suppliers of fiscal storage devices envisaged by the reform - coin-sized devices that store and encrypt data on checks. According to various estimates, there are now about two million ticket offices in Russia. Each of them must be equipped with a fiscal accumulator, the cost of which ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 rubles. This means that we can talk about a market volume of 12-16 billion rubles per year.

It is not the first time that such luck has smiled at the owners of Atlas-Kart - after the previous reform of the cash registers, the company Besant, connected with them, turned out to be a monopolist. The predecessor of fiscal drives was EKLZ ("electronic control tape protected") - the same drive, but without an Internet connection and with limited memory. Entrepreneurs were obliged to install EKLZ in the mid-2000s, it had to be changed once a year (the new fiscal accumulator has the same service life). As Kommersant wrote, the FSB lobbied for the introduction of EKLZ under the slogan of fighting black cash. The production of equipment was also licensed by the FSB - and the only license was received by Besant, which then quickly raised prices by almost half, forcing disgruntled businessmen to pounce on the website of then-President Dmitry Medvedev with complaints.

How much did Besant earn? According to Republic estimates, the only manufacturer of EKLZ (and its successor with the same name) only from 2004 to 2009 earned 26.5 billion rubles. But 90% of the cost of the finished EKLZ unit (5274 rubles) was an electronic module. Besant bought it from two Russian intermediaries, and those from Singapore's Smartronic Projects PTE LTD. In 2009, Kores offered Besant to supply the same electronic modules for 2,000 rubles. Besant refused, and Kores complained to the FAS. The name Smartronic Projects is worth remembering. The beneficiaries of the Singaporean company are unknown, but it has participated in most of the Besant and Atlas Kart owner schemes in a variety of roles.

The FAS investigation showed that Besant and related companies (Atlas-Kart was among them already then) were abusing their dominant position, and the FAS obliged the monopolist to conclude a contract with Kores. But by that time "Besant" was already on the market more than one: a month after the start of the investigation in 2009, another manufacturer, the St. Petersburg company "Scientific Instruments", began to produce EKLZ.

The leaders of Scientific Instruments were also no strangers in the FSB. The company's board of directors was headed (and is still headed by) retired KGB colonel Valery Sokolov, whom the Fontanka newspaper calls a good friend of ex-FSB head Nikolai Patrushev. Sokolov's wife Irina in August 2008 headed the public reception office of Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, and at the same time was an assistant to the Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov. As Kommersant wrote, Sokolova advised Scientific Instruments on legal issues, and on behalf of Gryzlov "supervised the legal subtleties" of the preparation of the bill on the protection of cash registers. In conversations with Novaya Gazeta, St. Petersburg entrepreneurs called Sokolova the developer of the law on EKLZ, and promised to sue Gryzlov. Interestingly, Gryzlov himself worked for 20 years in the structures of the St. Petersburg plant "Electronmash", which has been producing cash registers since Soviet times, and in the early 1990s became one of the first to produce cash registers according to the Western model.

The new competitor, despite such strong ties, remained a nominal player, having managed to win only 2% of the market by mid-2010. But was he going to fight for the market seriously? “Cryptography is a highly specialized topic, there are not many competitors. The people behind these companies [Atlas-Kart and Besant] skillfully lobbied their interests in various departments and became monopolists. When competitors appeared, they already managed to skim all the cream off, "says the Republic's interlocutor, who is familiar with the activities of Atlas-Kart and its affiliated structures.

Based on the results of the investigation, the FAS admitted that Scientific Instruments and Besant were owned by different groups of people. But in fact, there was a connection between the beneficiaries of Besant and Scientific Instruments.

Mysterious owners

Many companies around Besant were associated with the natives of the Russian holding Steepler - once a large system integrator and manufacturer of the popular Dendy set-top box in the 90s. Republic has already written about these connections in detail; they are also shown in the diagram that Forbes published. But there is another stakeholder.

The name "Atlas-kart" is consonant with the FSUE STC "Atlas" - the main developer of special communications and information protection means since Soviet times. FSUE was under the jurisdiction of the FSB, and in 2008 it was transferred to the subordination of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. But Atlas-Kart is a private company. Who does it belong to?

Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, declaring in early March that Besant, Atlas-Kart and the Rick company associated with them - the owner of the same FSB license for the production of fiscal drives - are unfairly enriching themselves on the sale of devices, called the beneficiary of the scheme of the entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov ...

A person with that name and surname for a long time was a co-owner of 60% of Atlas-cards through the Omega-holding company. The remaining 40% of Atlas-Card is owned by Service-Plus, an offshore company registered at the same address as Steepler. Steepler founder Andrey Cheglakov told Forbes that Service-Plus is the company of his friend. When asked by the Republic about Shcherbakov, Cheglakov only replied that "I haven't communicated with anyone from this circle for a long time."

Very little is known about Vladimir Shcherbakov; there are almost no mentions of him on the Internet. It is only known that in 2008 his full namesake was a member of the advisory and expert council on cash register equipment at Federal agency by industry (Rosprom). In the council, Shcherbakov represented the Ministry of Information and Communications, which was then headed by Leonid Reiman. The namesake of Shcherbakova in 1997 was mentioned in the press as the head of the marketing department of the software developer and supplier of equipment for trade "Intellect-Service".

It was not possible to contact Vladimir Shcherbakov during the preparation of the article: according to one of the Republic's interlocutors, he is on the international wanted list at the request of Russian law enforcement agencies and has left the country. The Interpol website has an orientation towards Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was born on Sakhalin in 1959 and has Russian and Belgian citizenship. But they are looking for him not because of the business with cash registers, but for "a large-scale withdrawal of money from the country using illegal schemes." An Interpol spokesman confirmed the relevance of the orientation to Republic

Apparently, we are talking about business on the illegal withdrawal abroad through a small BVA-bank, which the Russian law enforcement agencies initiated in 2014. This bank was co-owned by at least eight people associated with companies involved in the EKLZ scheme (including the Cypriot nominees of Service Plus).

The largest shareholder of the bank (and, according to the investigation, the head of the criminal group) was Vladimir Shcherbakov. In addition to him, the bank's chairman, Konstantin Sergutin, and Alexander Domrachev, a native of Steepler, who were considered by the investigators to be the owner of intermediary companies involved in fraudulent schemes (now both are under recognizance not to leave), were under investigation. As stated in the case file, the funds were withdrawn at the expense of Goznak's contracts - Andrei Cheglakov worked there for a long time. Interestingly, companies with the same names were used to withdraw funds as for the supply of electronic modules for EKLZ. Another shareholder of BVA Bank was the same Singaporean company Smartronic Projects, from which chips for drives were purchased.

Shcherbakov also has indirect connections with the acquaintances of Boris Gryzlov from Scientific Instruments. In 2002, Shcherbakov's Omega-holding owned 41% of the Scientific Research Institute of Physics of Fullerenes and New Materials of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Another 10% belonged to Scientific Instruments, whose board of directors is headed by Valery Sokolov. And 31% belonged to the notorious Viktor Petrik, who, together with Gryzlov, co-authored a patent for a filter for purifying radiation-contaminated water. Then this development was recognized as pseudoscientific.

From 2007 to 2009, the owner of 25% of Omega-holding was not only Shcherbakov, but also the full namesake of Sokolov from Scientific Instruments. It turns out that Sokolov's wife was working on the EKLZ reform, and he himself could have been a co-owner or head of both companies that made money on this reform.

One of the distributors selling fiscal storage devices is also associated with Shcherbakov's structures - FDO-METTEM, a joint venture subsidiary of the German concern Continental and several russian entrepreneurs... Among the shareholders of FDO-METTEM there is also the Morion company, which until 2008 was owned by Vladimir Shcherbakov, and then - persons affiliated with him. FDO-METTEM has a plant in Tatarstan that produces tachographs - devices that record the speed and other parameters of vehicles, as well as the working regime of drivers. Since 2013, the Ministry of Transport has adopted an order obliging to equip all cars belonging to the company with tachographs with cryptographic means. legal entities. The only supplier the same "Atlas-Kart" became the means of crypto protection. The FAS argued that the technical requirements of the order of the Ministry of Transport were written specifically for the development of Atlas-maps.

Companies with a history

The investigation against "Besant" was not the only one that the FAS conducted in connection with the production of EKLZ. Then the department did not like the work of the Zelenograd plant "Angstrem", which produced the "heart" of EKLZ - cryptographic chips. The fact is that the chips from Zelenograd did not immediately reach the Tensor plant in Dubna, where their final assembly took place. Angstrem produced chips and sold them to Singapore's Smartronic Projects - in 2008 this contract brought a third of the plant's revenue, about 460 million rubles. The Singaporeans transferred the chips to China to the Flash Electronics plant, where the partial assembly of the EKLZ took place. Then the devices were moved to Russia again with the help of Alexander Domrachev's companies - Unitech and Technotransservice Engineering. And only then did we get to the final assembly at the Tensor in Dubna. The Singaporean company had the exclusive right to purchase the chips, and FAS did not like this.

The largest co-owners of Tenzor at that time were the co-founders of Steepler - Cheglakov and Andrey Andreev (about 18% each). "Angstrem" at the time of the beginning of the introduction of EKLZ belonged to Sergei Veremeev, a partner of banker Sergei Pugachev in Mezhprombank. But when the FAS launched an investigation, the enterprise was already under the control of the group. "Petersburg signalmen", which has always been associated with Leonid Reiman, who served as Minister of Communications of the Russian Federation in 2004-2008. In 2011, Reiman, who retired from the civil service, became the official owner of Angstrem... FAS representatives argued that Angstrem was also connected with Besant through an opaque scheme, but they did not provide evidence in court, citing the complexity of the scheme.

In the early 1990s, Reiman in St. Petersburg was responsible for creating joint ventures with foreigners and the privatization of urban communication companies. The shares in the joint venture and privatized companies were then consolidated in the Telecominvest holding. Holding, for example, owned cellular operator North-West GSM, on the basis of which Megafon grew. The shareholders were offshore companies, but Reiman was considered the real Russian co-owner of Telecominvest. The Moscow office of Telecominvest was headed by the ex-wife of Vladimir Putin, Lyudmila. At the end of the 2000s, the German authorities were investigating a corruption case against Reiman.

Leonid Reiman, through his representative, conveyed to the Republic that he did not have enterprises that would deal with cash registers. Be that as it may, the "St. Petersburg signalmen" were well acquainted with the cash market. St. Petersburg SKB Iskra, which has been developing cash register equipment since Soviet times, worked closely with many large companies in the field of telecommunications. Together with the state-owned Svyazinvest, the design bureau carried out the automation of enterprises in 50 regions of the country. “The most powerful industry that used cash registers was the post office (FSUE Russian Post, subordinate to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. - Republic). Reiman, who was directly related to this, of course, was familiar with the problems, ”Marina Yaroshevskaya, co-owner and general director of Iskra, told Republic correspondents. According to her, in the early 2000s, Iskra itself worked on additional protection for cash registers: “In fact, we were developing the predecessor of the EKLZ. But we were told that we need to implement protection. And as it was offered RIK, the Russian intellectual card, which was issued by the FSUE "Atlas". And then Iskra did not start doing this, we just gave away what we had. Besant, which was part of this department, took over this work. "

License holder

The name of the only licensed manufacturer of fiscal drives, RIK, coincides with the name of the chip developed by Atlas, which Yaroshevskaya speaks of. And one of the RIC co-owners is associated with the RTK-Leasing company, the beneficiary of which was considered Leonid Reiman.

The ultimate owners of RIK are two individuals, Elena Ionova and Sergey Litvinov. The latter, according to SPARK, also heads the Comtrin company, which is associated with the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin. True, Berezkin himself told Republic that Litvinov had already resigned from Comtrin.

Even less is known about Elena Ionova. Previously, she was the owner of the software manufacturer RVO Group, data on which in the Republic's open sources could not be found. Former employee company says that RVO Group was developing software for data storage about four years ago, but the project fell apart.

The co-owners of RVO Group were associated with RTK-Leasing, which in one of the German police investigations appeared as an asset of Leonid Reiman. German law enforcement officials argued that Reiman, as minister, forced the state-owned Rostelecom and Svyazinvest to use the services of RTK-Leasing. The German police assumed that RTK-Leasing was intended to make a profit by withdrawing money from Rostelecom and subsidiaries of Svyazinvest, including through inflated leasing rates.

One of the former shareholders of RVO Group, Pavel Kaplunov, was at the beginning of the 2000s the holder of a small stake in RTK-Leasing, and the other, Mikhail Margolin, was a member of the board of RTK-Leasing. In 2011, RVO Group started a leapfrog with the owners, for some time 98% of RVO belonged to the Data Storage Center company, which, in addition to Kaplunov and Margolin, was co-owned by Cheglakov from Steepler.

In 2012, RVO changed its owner again. The only shareholder of the company was that very Atlas-Kart. But in March 2015, the asset was transferred to a private person - Andrei Golub, and in November he transferred 60% to Elena Ionova, the owner of half of RIK. In the same year, interesting changes took place with the RVO. In 2014, the company's revenue amounted to a modest 3.5 million rubles, and in 2015 it jumped to 1.7 billion. Any government orders of RVO Group are not reflected in the Spark database. Ionova stayed the owner of the company for a little over a year, in December 2016, her share was transferred to another individual.

In the case of both EKLZ and fiscal accumulators, the account of companies related to each other goes to tens. Many have not changed since the middle or even the beginning of the 2000s. Why? “I think there are two factors. The first is laziness. Second, too many interests converged. You start to open new companies, and complaints may arise, "says one of Republic's interlocutors. According to him, this trail of companies contains both the strong and the weak side of the system: yes, there are traces, but there is no one person, removing whom, it would be possible to intercept the business.

In the near future, RIK, like Besant once did, may have a competitor in the fiscal storage market. On March 10, one of the largest manufacturers cash equipment "Shtrikh-M". Representatives of the company expect that from day to day they must obtain a license from the FSB and get into the register of manufacturers. But at the time of submitting the article, only "RIK" was in the register. “We decided to help RIK, as it may not have time to produce the required number of drives,” a representative of Shtrikh-M told the Republic. At the same time, he noted that the drives of their production will primarily be supplied for their own cash registers.

RIK representatives told the Republic that they passed the questions to CEO companies, but by the time the article was published, no responses had been provided.

Last mile

There is another segment in the market for new online checkouts that is being mastered by more transparent and large companies... After the seller installs a new cash register with a fiscal drive, the data on the check will be transmitted online to the Federal Tax Service. At this stage, one more link enters the chain - the operator of fiscal data. Nikolai Zhmurenko, director of a large operator OFD.ru, explains that an entrepreneur will have 30 days to transfer data from his cash register to the operator - in fact, to connect it to the Internet, and the operator will have one day to transfer data to the Federal Tax Service. Based on the number of cash registers in the country, this market segment can be estimated at 6 billion rubles a year. But the operators say that the money is actually less.

The OFD.ru operator is owned by another structure that was previously associated with Leonid Reiman - Peter-Service. Along with other assets of Telecominvest, the asset went to billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Initially, the company developed billing systems, and then turned to fiscal data. In 2016, Usmanov and his partners invested 500 million rubles in the company.

OFD.ru is not the only operator of fiscal data. Four more companies - Energy Systems and Communications (EKS), Evotor OFD, Yarus and Taxcom - received licenses for such activities. Who owns them? It is interesting that all companies that will collect information on cash flows in Russia have offshore companies among their shareholders in one form or another. For example, the owner of EKS is the Cypriot Ospina Company, although the ultimate beneficiary, according to the Republic, is the owner of the ESN group Grigory Berezkin. The businessman's spokesman confirmed to Republic that EKS is one of his group's projects. In 2016 Forbes magazine appreciated Berezkin's fortune is $ 700 million. According to a representative of the ESN, Energy Systems and Communications used to develop a platform for electricity meters, and the principles of the system functioning there are similar to fiscal data.

Another operator, Evotor OFD, is a subsidiary of Evotor, the creation of which was initiated by Sberbank. “At first I did not like this name,” said the head of Sberbank, German Gref, at the presentation of the project. - And then they explained to me that Evotor is an application for a very ambitious goal. This is an evolution in trade. " The company also manufactures smart cash registers for small businesses.

Sberbank owns 40% in Evotor, another 30% belongs to the manufacturer of cash registers Atol. Headed new project Sberbank co-founder of the Qiwi payment system Andrey Romanenko, he and his father and partners own the rest of Evotor OFD. Interestingly, the parent Evotor is not the only owner of the operator - he owns only 70% of the company, and the remaining 30% belongs to the Singapore-based AVT Innovation PTE.

The fourth operator, Yarus, also owns offshore companies - Cyprus Kylachi Holdings Limited (67%) and Singapore's Flexwell International Pte (33%). The ultimate owner of the operator is the manufacturer of cash registers "Shtrikh-M".

The fifth operator, Taxcom, has existed since 2000. The company specializes in the implementation of systems electronic document management, and among her clients are the Presidential Administration, the State Duma apparatus, the Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Central Bank, Sberbank, Russian Post. Together with the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Tax Service, Taxcom even carried out several pilot projects to introduce secure electronic document management systems in the regions. The company has four owners, each of which owns 25%: Olga Khazova, Nikolay Tsarev, Levon Amdilyan (through Digitest) and Cypriot Virgton Management Limited (through subsidiary Belton). The offshore company, according to the Cyprus registry, is owned by 1C Limited.

Co-owner of Taxcom Levon Amdilyan has been known in the IT market since the early 1990s. He was the founder of the International Computer Club (ICC) company, in which his good friend worked under the leadership of Amdilyan Mikhail Mishustin... Now Mishustin heads the Federal Tax Service - this department is responsible for the reform of cash registers. Another shareholder, Nikolai Tsarev, became a co-owner of Taxcom in January 2017, after the company received an operator's license. Tsarev is also engaged information technology since the 90s. Together with the venture investor Alexander Galitsky, he is a co-owner of Elvis + Group, a developer of information security solutions. Galitsky is a member of the public council of the Federal Tax Service.

Services of all operators of fiscal data cost almost the same - about 3000 rubles per year. Why is that? Director of OFD.ru Nikolay Zhmurenko says that infrastructure costs for all operators and expectations about the return on investment are about the same. “The first operator calculated how much the services should cost to pay off on time, and the rest began to focus on this amount. If you put more, there will be no customers. Less - to work at a loss, ”says Zhmurenko. At the same time, according to him, OFD.ru plans to develop additional services and make money on them.

Is the emergence of new operators of fiscal data possible? For example, Yandex wanted to be such an operator, he even registered the Yandex.OFD company for this. However, there is no Yandex subsidiary in the register of licensed companies published on the FTS website. “Five operators are enough to cover the whole country, and they will earn money. If there are seven, then everyone will go to zero. If there is more, then everyone will work at a loss, ”Zhmurenko said. According to him, if the market is significant, then new players will come, old ones may leave - this was the case in other newly formed markets.

Excerpt from the Republic investigation.

To bookmarks

The publication Republic published a material about entrepreneurs who make money on the law on the transition of merchants to new cash desks with the function of online data transfer to the tax service. It turned out that the monopoly on the production of special drives for cash registers belongs to an entrepreneur wanted by Interpol, and large companies and businessmen, including Sberbank, Alisher Usmanov and the former Minister of Communications, make money on data processing.

One manufacturer for two million cash registers

From 1 July 2017 russian business should switch to new cash registers, which will transmit information on sales to the Federal Tax Service (FTS) online. Such cash desks will have to be equipped with a special fiscal accumulator that will track all cash transactions. Now only the RIK company received a license from the FSB for their production. In early March 2017, State Duma Deputy Andrei Lugovoi said that businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov was behind RIK. He added that other companies affiliated with Shcherbakov, Atlas-Kart and Besant, also make money on the reforms of cash registers. "Some group of people at the expense of correct decisionsthat we have taken is enriched. The amount of enrichment is tens of billions of rubles, ”Lugovoi said. According to various estimates, there are now about two million ticket offices in Russia. According to Lugovoy, the queue for fiscal storage is scheduled for several months. The deputy noted that the cost of the drives is 700-800 rubles, but they are sold for six to eight thousand rubles. Thus, the volume of this market can be 12-16 billion rubles a year. Now Shcherbakov is wanted by Interpol at the request of the Russian authorities, writes Republic. Shcherbakov is suspected of withdrawing funds from Russia using forged documents as part of an organized group. According to the newspaper, we are talking about the withdrawal of funds through "BVA-Bank", initiated in 2014. Shcherbakov was the largest shareholder of the bank. He, according to the investigation, was the head of a criminal group.

Interpol's orientation towards Vladimir Shcherbakov

From control tape to drives

In the mid-2000s, Besant became a monopoly in the production of "secure electronic control tape" (EKLZ), becoming the only company licensed by the FSB to produce such tapes, writes Republic. EKLZ was the same storage device, but without an Internet connection and with limited memory. It had to be changed once a year; the new fiscal drive has the same service life. After receiving a license from the FSB "Besant" almost doubled prices for EKLZ, the newspaper reminds. According to the SPARK-Interfax database, RIK LLC until 2014 belonged to Omega-holding, of which Shcherbakov is listed as a co-owner. Now the co-owners of RIK on an equal footing are Sergey Litvinov through Zashchitainfo LLC and Elena Ionova. Atlas-Kart and Besant are linked through JSC STC Spetsproekt, which is owned by Omega-holding, the founder of RIK LLC.

According to Republic estimates, from 2004 to 2009, Besant earned 26.5 billion rubles from the production of EKLZ. In 2009, another company, Scientific Instruments, was engaged in the release of EKLZ, the board of directors of which is headed by Valery Sokolov. "Fontanka" calls him "a good friend" of the ex-head of the FSB and secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. Republic writes that in the near future RIK may also have a competitor in the fiscal storage market. On March 10, the manufacturer of cash registers "Shtrikh-M" began accepting applications for their supply. The company expects that from day to day they will receive a license from the FSB and enter the register of manufacturers of fiscal drives. “We decided to help RIK, as it may not have time to produce the required number of drives,” a representative of Shtrikh-M said in a conversation with Republic. State Duma Deputy Lugovoi previously pointed out that the technical requirements for fiscal storage devices, which should be published on the FTS website, are incomplete: "Something is missing, something is not said." “Someone artificially at the government level, at the level of law enforcement agencies is doing everything to prevent new fiscal accumulators from appearing on the market,” the deputy said. Representatives of RIK told the publication that they had passed the questions to the CEO of the company, but by the time the material was published, they had not provided answers.

Who will earn on data processing

More transparent and large companies associated with Alisher Usmanov, German Gref and Grigory Berezkin also participate in the cash business, Republic writes. The structures affiliated with them manage Fiscal Data Operators (FDOs), which are responsible for transferring data from sellers to the FTS. According to the calculations of the publication, the assessment of this market segment can reach 6 billion rubles a year.

At the moment, five companies have received the FDO licenses. The OFD.ru operator is owned by the Peter-Service Spetstechnologii company, which is associated with the former Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman. The company was part of the Telecominvest holding, of which Reiman was considered a co-owner, writes Republic. Later, "Peter-service Spetstechnologii", along with other assets of "Telecominvest", went to billionaire Alisher Usmanov. In 2016, Usmanov with his partners in OFD.ru 500 million rubles. Another operator, Evotor OFD, is a subsidiary of Evotor, which was Sberbank and the co-founder of Qiwi, Andrey Romanenko. The bank owns 40% of Evotor. The operator "Yarus" is owned by offshore companies - Cypriot Kylachi Holdings Limited (67%) and Singapore's Flexwell International Pte (33%). The ultimate owner of the company is the manufacturer of cash registers "Shtrikh-M". The fourth operator, Taxcom, has existed since 2000. The company specializes in the implementation of electronic document management systems, among its clients are the Presidential Administration, the State Duma apparatus, the Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Central Bank, Sberbank, and Russian Post. The company has four owners, each of whom owns 25%: Olga Khazova, Nikolay Tsarev, Levon Amdilyan (through Digitest) and Cypriot Virgton Management Limited (through subsidiary Belton). The offshore company, according to the Cyprus registry, is owned by 1C Limited. Republic calls Levon Amdilyan a former partner of the head of the Federal Tax Service Mikhail Mishustin. According to the newspaper, in the 1990s, Amdilyan founded the International Computer Club, where Mishustin began working as the head of a test laboratory. The fifth operator, Energy Systems and Communications (EKS), which operates under the First OFD brand, is owned by the Cyprus Ospina Company. The ultimate beneficiary of EKS is the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin, who also owns the smartphone manufacturer Jolla and is associated with the Open Mobile Platform company, which develops the Russian version of the Sailfish mobile OS. The businessman's spokesman confirmed to Republic that EKS is one of the projects of his group.

Interpol has put on the international wanted list the alleged beneficiary of the production of fiscal drives for cash registers, Vladimir Shcherbakov. The businessman is suspected of withdrawing funds abroad using fake documents

Photo: Interpol official website

The fact that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of the companies affiliated with each other, which are engaged, was announced in early March at a meeting in the State Duma by Deputy Andrei Lugovoi. He was outraged by the fact that the production of fiscal drives, which must be equipped with all cash registers by July 1, 2017, is monopolized and JSC Atlas-Card, LLC Rik and CJSC Besant earn money on it, and due to shortcomings in According to legislation, entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices at a price ten times higher than the cost.

Other market participants, according to Lugovoi, cannot pass certification of their samples in the 8th center of the FSB: the technical requirements for the fiscal accumulator, which should be published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service, are in fact incomplete - “something is missing, something not said, ”Lugovoi explained. “Someone artificially at the government level, at the level of law enforcement agencies is doing everything to prevent new fiscal accumulators from appearing on the market,” the deputy said.

The Republic publication suggested that Interpol received an orientation towards Shcherbakov due to the case initiated in 2014 on the illegal withdrawal of funds abroad through a small BVA bank. Then they tried to withdraw about 10 billion rubles abroad. Republic found out that the co-owners of BVA-Bank were the full namesake of at least eight people associated with both the Besant company and its affiliated structures. The same group of companies is also associated with the manufacturer of new fiscal storage devices.

Cash reform

The law, which obliges companies and private entrepreneurs to switch to cash registers that can online transmit information about each sale to the Federal Tax Service (FTS), was signed in July 2016. In the first year, the installation or replacement of cash registers with smart devices was voluntary. From February 1, 2017, the tax authorities stopped registering cash registers that do not meet the new requirements, and the business will have to completely switch to online cash registers from July 1.

Companies will also need to connect cash registers to computers with software that allows them to send electronic receipts to customers.

Interpol put Russian businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov on the wanted list in March this year, but a few months later his photo from the wanted base disappeared. And now the news has come that Vladimir Shcherbakov has disappeared in real life. According to one source information resource Republic (ex-Elephant), he died in London. According to another, he committed suicide. And no more details.

Bright case

True, the fact of death (or suicide) of Vladimir Shcherbakov has not yet been officially confirmed by the London authorities. But they didn’t refute either. The same authorities very slowly "swayed" with confessions after a KGB / FSB officer was in the hospital with signs of polonium poisoning Alexander Litvinenko... If the information from Republic's sources is confirmed, the encyclopedia of mysterious deaths in London will be replenished with another bright and memorable case.

Vladimir Shcherbakov gained fame after being a State Duma deputy Andrey Lugovoy (another person whose name is firmly associated with the other world of Foggy Albion) named him the beneficiary of the Russian cash reform. Cashier reform is a system of measures aimed at replacing all old cash registers in the country with new ones equipped with a special fiscal drive - an electronic chip that records monetary transactions and transmits data to the tax service. The whole operation takes place in real time and virtually eliminates the possibility of intervention by the owner of the device. Thus, we can say that a chip is implanted into the business of every entrepreneur, which monitors all his deeds. Every year (or three - depending on the legal form of the company) the chip must be changed.

Unsurprisingly, such a business could not pass by influential and highly motivated insiders.

Verified people

Therefore, when the Ministry of Finance prepared a bill on the implantation of tax chips into business processes, the "trusted people" were already ready to arrange the supply necessary equipment and materials. Vladimir Shcherbakov turned out to be a trusted representative of these people.

In the history of 2012, the name of Vladimir Shcherbakov was associated with the Atlas-Kart company, which undertook to develop the entire project for free. After that, structures close to this company (its name is associated with the special services, whose high-rise buildings are clearly visible on Vernadsky Prospekt in Moscow) were integrated into the system of suppliers of fiscal accumulators.

This was the second performance of Vladimir Shcherbakov on the market of fiscal devices replacing Big Brother. The premiere was the company "Besant", the supplier of EKLZ ("electronic control tape protected") - an analog version of control devices. ELKZ did not transmit, but simply accumulated information, but, according to the FSB, this was an important step towards the fight against black cash. And, as it turns out, the first one.

In addition to cash registers, Atlas structures were engaged in the implementation of devices that track vehicle data - tachographs, and in the production of new biometric passports.

In other words, this organization can be safely called the governor of the real "Big Brother". This is evidenced by the further history of Vladimir Shcherbakov himself.

Termination candidate

In 2014, the Central Bank revoked its license from BVA-Bank, through which funds were withdrawn under inflated import contracts. Through nominal shareholders, BVA-Bank was associated with the companies of Vladimir Shcherbakov. At the same time, a criminal case was opened on a rare russian practice article 193.1 of the Criminal Code (performing currency transactions to transfer funds to non-resident accounts using fake documents on an especially large scale by an organized group). As a rule, a case initiated under a rare article is a sure candidate for termination.

The accused in the case were appointed much later - in February 2015. The leader of the group was named Vladimir Shcherbakov, who by this time (surprise) found himself in London. And the members of his team are the accused chairman of the board of BVA-Bank Konstantin Sergutin and Alexander Domrachev (the head of a network of firms integrated into the BVA business) ended up under house arrest. Further investigation was in full accordance with such a bright beginning. Two years later - in March 2017 - Vladimir Shcherbakov was put on the international wanted list under the same article 193. But no one, naturally, betrayed him anywhere. And the other day - on July 3 - the case in Moscow was completely closed, for lack of corpus delicti.

Thus, according to the lawyer Dmitry Gololobov, Vladimir Shcherbakov was not only free (the card was immediately removed from the Interpol database), but also "acquired the right to demand compensation from Russia."