The chief cashier of Russia, Vladimir Shcherbakov, hanged himself. "Main beneficiary" of the Russian reform of cash registers put on the worldwide wanted list Shcherbakov hanged himself
The original of this material© IA "RBC", 30.03.2017
"Beneficiary" of the cash reform put on the international wanted list
Natalia DemchenkoBusinessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, whom State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoy called the beneficiary of the monopoly manufacturer of fiscal drives for cash registers, has been put on the international wanted list. Relevant information is posted on the Interpol website. The publication Republic drew attention to this, to which an Interpol representative confirmed that Shcherbakov was wanted.
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 and as part of an organized group, according to an Interpol orientation.
The fact that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of affiliated companies that produce fiscal drives was announced in early March at a meeting in the State Duma by Deputy Andrei Lugovoy. He was indignant at the fact that the production of fiscal drives, with which all cash registers should be equipped by July 1, 2017, is monopolized and Atlas-Kart JSC, Rik LLC and Besant CJSC earn money on it, moreover, due to shortcomings in By law, entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices at a price ten times higher than the cost.
Other market participants, according to Lugovoy, cannot get their samples certified at the 8th center of the FSB: the technical requirements for the fiscal drive, which should be published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service, are in fact incomplete - “something is missing, something not said,” explained Lugovoy. “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. [...]
New chips will enrich German Gref, Alisher Usmanov, Grigory Berezkin, Leonid Reiman
The original of this material© Republic.ru, 30.03.2017, Illustrations: via Republic.ru
Cash fraternity
Dmitry FilonovBy July, a complete replacement of all cash registers should be completed in Russia - businesses will have to re-equip more than two million cash desks. The entire volume of the emerging market is at least 20 billion rubles. Already involved in the cash business Alisher Usmanov, German Gref and Grigory Berezkin. But little-known businessmen with close ties to the FSB claim the bulk of this pie. And the monopoly chip maker that will track all cash transactions in the country has been closely linked to the mysterious entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov, who, as Republic has found out, is wanted by Interpol. The businessman is suspected of illegal withdrawal of 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, Andrey Cheglakov, manufacturer of the Dendy set-top box, as well as friends Boris Gryzlov and Nikolai Patrushev.
Invaders of new niches
In July 2012, the Federal Tax Service announced an open competition for a project to improve the system of control over cash payments. In fact, the department wanted to improve the current system of accounting for data from cash desks. Four companies took part in the tender with an initial price of 1.5 million rubles, but the winner's offer was difficult to beat. The Atlas-Kart company agreed to develop proposals for only 1 ruble. The contract was concluded in September, and less than three months later, the Federal Tax Service approved the finished draft reform.It was not in vain that Atlas-Kart undertook the development of the project for a ruble: the structures associated with it became the only suppliers of fiscal drives provided for by the reform - coin-sized devices that store and encrypt receipt data. According to various estimates, there are now about two million cash desks in Russia. Each of them must be equipped with a fiscal drive, the cost of which ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 rubles. This means that we can talk about the market volume of 12-16 billion rubles a year.
This is not the first time that Atlas-Kart owners are smiling at such luck - after the previous cash register reform, the Besant company associated with them turned out to be a monopolist. The predecessor of fiscal drives was EKLZ (“protected electronic control tape”) - the same drive, but without an Internet connection and with limited memory. Entrepreneurs were obliged to install ECLZ in the mid-2000s, it had to be changed once a year (the new fiscal drive has the same service life). As Kommersant wrote, the introduction of ECLZ was lobbied by the FSB under the slogan of combating black cash. The production of equipment was also licensed by the FSB - and Besant received the only license, which after that quickly doubled prices, forcing disgruntled entrepreneurs to lash out at the then-president Dmitry Medvedev's website with complaints.
How much did Besant earn? According to Republic estimates, the only manufacturer of EKLZ (and its successor with the same name) earned 26.5 billion rubles from 2004 to 2009 alone. But 90% of the cost of the finished EKLZ unit (5274 rubles) was the electronic module. His Besant bought from two Russian intermediaries, and those from Singapore's Smartronic Projects PTE LTD. In 2009, the Kores company 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 participated in most of the schemes of the owners of Bezant and Atlas-Kart in various roles.
The FAS investigation showed that Besant and related companies (Atlas-Kart was among them even then) were abusing their dominant position, and the FAS ordered the monopolist to conclude a contract with Kores. But by that time, Besant was not alone on the market: a month after the start of the investigation in 2009, another manufacturer began producing ECLZ - the St. Petersburg company Scientific Instruments.
The leaders of "Scientific Instruments" were also not strangers in the FSB. The board of directors of the company was (and still is) headed by retired KGB colonel Valery Sokolov, whom the Fontanka publication calls a good friend of the former head of the FSB, Nikolai Patrushev. Sokolov's wife Irina in August 2008 headed the public reception of Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, and at the same time was an assistant to the speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov. According to Kommersant, Sokolova advised Scientific Instruments on legal issues, and on behalf of Gryzlov, "supervised the legal subtleties" of preparing a bill on the protection of cash registers. In conversations with Novaya Gazeta, St. Petersburg businessmen called Sokolova the developer of the ECLZ law, and they 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 connections, remained a nominal player, having managed to win back only 2% of the market by the middle of 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 had time to skim off all the cream, ”said the source of the Republic, who is familiar with the activities of Atlas-Kart and its affiliated structures.
Based on the results of the investigation, the Federal Antimonopoly Service admitted that “Scientific Instruments” and “Bezant” are owned by different groups of people. But in fact, there was still a connection between the beneficiaries of Besant and Scientific Instruments.
Mysterious owners
Many companies around Bezant were associated with people from the Russian holding company Steepler, once a major system integrator and manufacturer of the popular Dendy set-top box in the 90s. Republic has already written in detail about these connections, they are also shown in the diagram published by Forbes. But there is another interested party.The name "Atlas-kart" is consonant with the Federal State Unitary Enterprise STC "Atlas" - the main developer of special communications and information security since Soviet times. FSUE was under the jurisdiction of the FSB, and in 2008 it was transferred to the Ministry of Communications. But Atlas-Kart is a private company. Who does she belong to?
Deputy Andrei Lugovoy, stating in early March that Besant, Atlas-Kart and the related company Rick - the owner of the same FSB license for the production of fiscal drives - are unfairly enriched by selling devices, called entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov the beneficiary of the scheme .
A person with such a name and surname for a long time was a co-owner of 60% of Atlas-Kart through the Omega-Holding company. The remaining 40% of Atlas-Karta is owned by Service Plus, an offshore company registered at the same address as Steepler. Andrey Cheglakov, the founder of Steepler, told Forbes that Service Plus is the company of "his friend." When asked by Republic about Shcherbakov, Cheglakov answered only 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 registers at the Federal Agency for Industry (Rosprom). In the council, Shcherbakov represented the Ministry of Information and Communications, which was then headed by Leonid Reiman. The namesake of Shcherbakov was mentioned in the press in 1997 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 interlocutors of the Republic, he is on the international wanted list at the request of Russian law enforcement agencies and has left the country. The Interpol website has a reference to Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was born on Sakhalin in 1959 and has Russian and Belgian citizenship. But he is wanted not because of the business with cash registers, but for "large-scale withdrawal of money from the country using illegal schemes." The representative of Interpol confirmed the relevance of the orientation to the Republic.
Apparently, it is about deed about the illegal withdrawal abroad through a small BVA bank, which Russian law enforcement agencies initiated in 2014. The co-owners of this bank were at least eight people associated with companies involved in the EKLZ scheme (including Cypriot nominal owners of Service Plus).
The largest shareholder of the bank (and, according to investigators, the leader of the criminal group) was Vladimir Shcherbakov. In addition to him, the chairman of the board of the bank, Konstantin Sergutin, and Alexander Domrachev, a native of Steepler, were under investigation, whom investigators considered the owner of intermediary companies involved in fraudulent schemes (now both are under travel ban). 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 were used to supply electronic modules for ECLZ. 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 Boris Gryzlov's acquaintances from Scientific Instruments. In 2002, Shcherbakov's Omega-Holding owned 41% of CJSC Research Institute of Physics of Fullerenes and New Materials of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Another 10% was owned by Scientific Instruments, whose board of directors is headed by Valery Sokolov. And 31% belonged to the infamous Viktor Petrik, who, together with Gryzlov, was a co-author of a patent for a filter for cleaning 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 worked 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 drives is also connected with Shcherbakov's structures - the company FDO-METTEM, a joint venture of the "daughter" 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 by persons affiliated with him. FDO-METTEM has a plant in Tatarstan that produces tachographs - devices that record the speed and other parameters of cars, as well as the mode of work of drivers. Since 2013, the Ministry of Transport has adopted an order obliging all cars owned by legal entities to be equipped with tachographs with cryptographic protection. The only supplier of cryptoprotection tools was the same Atlas-Kart. The FAS claimed that the technical requirements of the order of the Ministry of Transport were written specifically for the development of Atlas-Kart.
Companies with history
The investigation against Bezant 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 ECLZ - cryptographic chips. The fact is that the chips from Zelenograd did not immediately get to the Tenzor plant in Dubna, where their final assembly took place. Angstrem produced chips and sold them to the Singaporean 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 ECLZ was partially assembled. Then the devices were again moved to Russia with the help of Alexander Domrachev's companies - Unitek and Technotransservice Engineering. And only then did they get to the final assembly at the Tensor in Dubna. The Singaporean company had the exclusive right to buy the chips, and FAS didn't like that.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 start of the introduction of ECLZ belonged to Sergei Veremeev, a partner of the banker Sergei Pugachev in Mezhprombank. But when the FAS launched an investigation, the enterprise was already controlled by 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 civil service, became the official owner of Angstrem. Representatives of the FAS claimed that Angstrem was also connected with Besant through an opaque scheme, but they did not provide evidence in court, citing the intricacies of the scheme.
In the early 1990s, Reiman was in St. Petersburg responsible for the creation of joint ventures with foreigners and the privatization of city communications companies. The shares in the joint venture and privatized companies were then consolidated in the Telecominvest holding. The holding, for example, owned the North-West GSM mobile operator, 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 investigated the corruption case against Reimann.
Leonid Reiman, through his representative, told the Republic that he had no enterprises that would deal with cash registers. Be that as it may, the "St. Petersburg signalers" were well acquainted with the cash market. St. Petersburg SKB Iskra, which has been developing cash registers since Soviet times, has 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 desks was mail (FSUE Russian Post, subordinate to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. - Republic). Reiman, who was directly involved in this, of course, was familiar with the problem, ”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 desks: “In fact, we were developing the predecessor of ECLZ. But we were told that we need to implement protection. And as it was offered RIC, the Russian smart card, which was issued by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Atlas. And then Iskra didn't start doing it, we just gave away what we had. “Besant”, which was part of this department, took over this work.”
License owner
The name of the only licensed manufacturer of fiscal drives, RIK, coincides with the name of the chip developed by FSUE Atlas, which Yaroshevskaya speaks of. And one of the co-owners of RIC is associated with the company "RTK-Leasing", 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 Komtrin company, which is associated with Grigory Berezkin, the owner of the ESN group. True, Berezkin himself told the Republic that Litvinov had already resigned from Komtrin.
Even less is known about Elena Ionova. Previously, she was the owner of the RVO Group software manufacturer, data on which Republic could not be found in open sources. A former employee of the company says that RBO Group developed data storage software about four years ago, but the project fell apart.
The co-owners of RVO Group were associated with the company RTK-Leasing, which in one of the investigations of the German police appeared as an asset of Leonid Reiman. German law enforcers claimed 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 funds from Rostelecom and Svyazinvest's subsidiaries, 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, the RVO Group began a mess with the owners, for some time 98% of the RVO belonged to the Data Storage Center company, which, in addition to Kaplunov and Margolin, was also co-owned by Cheglakov from Steepler.
In 2012, the RVO changed its owner again. The same Atlas-Kart became the sole shareholder of the company. But in March 2015, the asset was transferred to a private person - Andrey 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 from RVO Group are not reflected in the Spark database. Ionova was the owner of the company for a little over a year; in December 2016, her share was transferred to another individual.
The number of related companies in the case of both ECLZ and fiscal accumulators goes to dozens. 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 opening new companies, and claims may arise, ”says one of Republic’s interlocutors. According to him, this trail of companies is both a strength and a weakness of the system: yes, traces remain, but there is not one person who could be removed to take over the business.
In the near future, RIK, like Besant once, may have a competitor in the fiscal storage market. On March 10, Shtrikh-M, one of the largest manufacturers of cash registers, began accepting applications for their supply. 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 the article was submitted, only "RIK" was in the register. “We decided to help RIK, since it may not have time to produce the required number of drives,” a Shtrikh-M representative told the Republic. At the same time, he noted that the drives of their production will be primarily supplied for their own cash registers.
Representatives of RIK told Republic that they had referred questions to the company's CEO, but had not provided answers by the time the article was published.
last mile
There is another segment in the market of new online cash registers, which is being mastered by more transparent and large companies. After the seller installs a new cash register with a fiscal drive, the check data will be transferred online to the Federal Tax Service. At this stage, another link enters the chain - the operator of fiscal data. Nikolay Zhmurenko, director of OFD.ru, a large operator, explains that the entrepreneur will have 30 days to transfer data from his cash register to the operator - in fact, connect it to the Internet, and the operator will have one day to transfer data to the Federal Tax Service. This segment of the market, based on the number of cash desks in the country, can be estimated at 6 billion rubles a year. But operators say that there is actually less money.
The OFD.ru operator is owned by another structure that was previously associated with Leonid Reiman - Peter-Service. Together with other assets of Telecominvest, the asset went to billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Initially, the company developed billing systems, and then took up 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 received licenses for such activities - Energy Systems and Communications (EX), Evotor OFD, Yarus and Taxcom. Who owns them? It is interesting that all companies that will collect information about the movement of cash in Russia have offshore companies in one form or another among their shareholders. For example, the owner of EKS is the Cypriot Ospina Company, although the ultimate beneficiary, according to the Republic, is Grigory Berezkin, the owner of the ESN group. The representative of the businessman confirmed to Republic that EX is one of the projects of his group. In 2016 Forbes magazine appreciated Berezkin's fortune is $700 million. According to the UST representative, 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 is Evotor OFD, a subsidiary of Evotor, 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 trading." The company is also engaged in the production of smart cash registers for small businesses.
Sberbank owns 40% in Evotor, another 30% belongs to the manufacturer of cash registers Atol. The co-founder of the Qiwi payment system headed the new Sberbank project Andrey Romanenko, he owns the rest of Evotor OFD with his father and partners. Interestingly, the parent Evotor is not the only owner of the operator - it owns only 70% of the company, and the remaining 30% belongs to Singapore's AVT Innovation PTE.
The fourth operator, Yarus, also owns offshore companies - Cypriot Kylachi Holdings Limited (67%) and Singaporean Flexwell International Pte (33%). The manufacturer of cash registers Shtrikh-M calls itself the ultimate owner of the operator.
The fifth operator, Taxcom, has existed since 2000. The company specializes in the implementation of electronic document management systems, and among its clients are the Office of the President, the apparatus of the State Duma, 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 whom owns 25%: Olga Khazova, Nikolai Tsarev, Levon Amdilyan (through the Digitest company) and Cypriot Virgton Management Limited (through the Belton subsidiary). The offshore company, according to the Cypriot registry, is owned by 1C Limited.
Taxcom co-owner 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 license. Tsarev has also been involved in information technology since the 90s. Together with 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.
The services of all fiscal data operators cost almost the same - about 3,000 rubles a year. Why is that? Director of OFD.ru Nikolai 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 in order to pay off on time, and the rest began to focus on this amount. You put more - there will be no customers. Less is 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 it possible that new fiscal data operators will emerge? For example, "Yandex" wanted to be such an operator, he even registered the company "Yandex.OFD" for this. However, in the register of licensed companies published on the website of the Federal Tax Service, there is no Yandex subsidiary. “Five operators are enough to cover the whole country, and at the same time they will earn. If there are seven, then everyone will go to zero. If there is more, then everyone will work at a loss,” Zhmurenko believes. 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.
Igor Shuvalov's colleague on the cash register reform died in London.
Businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was called the "beneficiary" of the cash reform, died in London. It is reported by Republic with reference to the former business partner of the entrepreneur and his acquaintance. According to the latter, Vladimir Shcherbakov committed suicide.
As the publication recalls, State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi stated that Mr. Shcherbakov is affiliated with RIK LLC. This company had a monopoly in the market for a new type of cash equipment that can transmit data to the Federal Tax Service (FTS) online. From July 1, all entrepreneurs are required to switch to such cash desks. However, in March, the Federal Tax Service included two more new players in the register of cash register manufacturers - NTC Izmeritel LLC and Pragmatik LLC. Thus, LLC RIK lost its monopoly.
The businessman was on the international wanted list for more than two years in the case of BVA-Bank (losing his license in the fall of 2014) about the illegal withdrawal of more than 10 billion rubles from Russia. This week, Kommersant learned that the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to drop the case "for lack of corpus delicti."
The London police could not confirm the death of Vladimir Shcherbakov. A spokesman for Scotland Yard told Republic that he could not verify the details of the incident without providing the exact address. The London City Police Department also asked for more information.
Republic special correspondent Dmitry Filonov said in an interview with the Business FM radio station that Mr. Shcherbakov committed suicide before the closing of the criminal case.
Non-public activity
What is known about businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov
The businessman, who was called the beneficiary of the cash reform, died in London. The name of Vladimir Shcherbakov has been repeatedly associated with the RIK company, which until recently was a monopolist in the online cash register market. This summer they became mandatory for Russian retail. In addition, Shcherbakov was a defendant in a high-profile case of the withdrawal of billions of rubles from Russia. According to Republic, the man committed suicide. What events preceded the death of a businessman?
Vladimir Shcherbakov left behind very little information in both the local and British media. And this despite the fact that the businessman is a defendant in a high-profile criminal case and a widely discussed Russian reform.
In 2015, the police detained the former co-owner of the little-known BVA Bank Vladimir Shcherbakov and his associates. They were suspected of organizing a major scam: allegedly since 2011, businessmen have illegally transferred about 10 billion rubles abroad. for a percentage of each transaction. The scheme was as follows: they bought raw materials in Singapore for the manufacture of Russian banknotes. The goods first came to the European Union, and then to Russia. The customer, Goznak, bought raw materials at several times higher prices. Ironically, the leadership of the state structure did not complain about the cost. Two defendants in the case were placed under house arrest, and the main suspect, Shcherbakov, managed to escape to London.
What follows is an interesting chronology of events. On March 30, 2017, Shcherbakov was put on the wanted list in Russia and arrested in absentia. On July 1, the law on online cash registers came into force - the transition to cash registers permanently connected to the Federal Tax Service. The only manufacturer of fiscal drives, a key part in them, was the RIK company. The structure was associated with Shcherbakov. On July 3, the withdrawal case was closed "due to the lack of corpus delicti".
The businessman might not have known about this, says State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi, who has been watching the businessman's activities for some time. “A few days ago, someone told me that he allegedly died. I don't know any details. I read that for some reason the criminal case was dismissed. A few months ago, I delved deeply into this issue. It seemed strange to me that the criminal case was suddenly closed, although there were eight arrests. And suddenly, somehow, it stopped,” said Lugovoi.
Under what circumstances Shcherbakov died is not yet known. If this is indeed a suicide, the British police will be even more reluctant to disclose information, and local journalists know little about the businessman, Andrey Ostalsky, Kommersant FM's London correspondent, noted: “The British press wrote quite a lot about the amazing suicide of Boris Berezovsky. Another death of Perepilichny - he ran, suddenly fell and died. And it seems that the remains of some extremely exotic plant poison were found in it. They remember, of course, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. And all this is built in the eyes of an ordinary British consumer of information in a rather ominous chain. I think this story will also be unearthed by British journalists. She will immediately take a place in the same chain. Shcherbakov has not been known until now. He was endlessly confused with the one and only Shcherbakov, who is more or less known in Britain.
We are talking about the former Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR and the head of the board of directors of the Avtotor company Vladimir Shcherbakov, the full namesake of the deceased businessman. In the British press at the end of 2015, information appeared that Shcherbakov wanted to buy and then demolish the former house of The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. But the journalists had to apologize - this Shcherbakov was not going to buy a historical building, but he did not have time.
The Russian Embassy in the UK is checking information about the death of businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov. So far, they have stated that they have not received any reports of the death of a Russian citizen.
What is the businessman famous for and what is the “cash reform”?
On July 5, it is known about the death of Vladimir Shcherbakov, a Russian businessman who was hiding in London from criminal prosecution in Russia. An entrepreneur believed to be closely associated with a massive change in trade - the "cash reform" - died suddenly. About high-ranking acquaintances and Shcherbakov's business - in the material of Eduard Belozerov.
What is known about Shcherbakov?
Shcherbakov's death was reported by the Republic publication, citing a business partner and businessman friend. According to the publication, the businessman committed suicide. However, the local police immediately failed to confirm this version.
Business FM learned that Shcherbakov committed suicide before the case on his criminal prosecution in Russia was dropped. Shcherbakov was on the international wanted list in the BVA-Bank case on the illegal withdrawal of more than 10 billion rubles from Russia. On July 3, the Ministry of Internal Affairs closed the case "for lack of corpus delicti".
Little is known about the personality of the businessman himself. According to available information, Shcherbakov was born on Sakhalin in 1959, where he began his entrepreneurial activity. He was involved in the oil business - Shcherbakov was on the board of directors of Rosneft-Nakhodkanefteprodukt, an operator of oil transshipment terminals. After that, Shcherbakov did business in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The businessman had two citizenships - Russian and Belgian.
In 1997, Shcherbakov was mentioned in media publications as the head of the marketing department of the software developer and retail equipment supplier Intellect-Service. In 2008, the full namesake of Shcherbakov was a member of the advisory and expert council on cash registers at the Federal Agency for Industry, where he represented the Ministry of Information and Communications. Shcherbakov also owned a fairly large number of different companies associated with cash equipment, and part of the now liquidated BVA-Bank.
"Cash Reform"
The bill on the “cash reform” was formally initiated by the Russian government in January 2016. This document introduced a significant change in the work of almost all businesses working with cash registers. By July 1, 2017, all organizations had to purchase new online cash registers or upgrade old cash registers - there are about 1.2 million such devices across the country. The official goal of the innovation is to make the retail industry more transparent, reduce opportunities for tax evasion and reduce paperwork.
State Duma deputy Andrey Lugovoy in March 2017 said that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of a scheme to enrich himself by selling fiscal drives - chips needed to work in new online cash registers. According to the deputy, RIK LLC is connected with Shcherbakov. The company was a monopolist in the market of manufacturers of fiscal drives for cash registers. Other companies were unable to obtain certificates from the 8th center of the FSB.
For a drive that needs to be changed once a year, entrepreneurs had to pay about 6-8 thousand rubles at a cost of less than 1 thousand rubles.
After Lugovoy's statements, the Federal Tax Service included two more companies in the list of device manufacturers - NTC Izmeritel LLC and Pragmatik LLC. The first company was founded by Shtrikh-Group LLC and is associated with the fiscal data operator Yarus, the second was founded by a private individual. This was done due to a shortage of storage devices.
In addition to RIK, CJSC Atlas-Kart and CJSC Besant, who also previously worked with the Federal Tax Service, are associated with Shcherbakov. It is known from the investigation of the Republic that in 2012 Atlas-Kart developed the concept of reforming cash registers for 1 ruble, and Besant made the previous version of the information storage device - EKLZ (“electronic control tape protected”). The company purchased these devices through intermediaries from the Singaporean company Smartronic Projects PTE LTD.
Due to its monopoly position in the market, from 2004 to 2009 Besant earned 26.5 billion rubles. Besant and Atlas-Kart are linked together through JSC NTC Spetsproekt, owned by Omega-Holding. The co-owner of this structure, which also established RIK LLC, was Shcherbakov - now it is owned by Oksana Oreshina. She was also the beneficiary of BVA-Bank.
Shcherbakov was also associated with one of the distributors of fiscal drives - the FDO-METTEM company. Shcherbakov owned the Morion company, which was a shareholder of FDO-METTEM - first personally, and then through affiliates. This company owned a plant for the production of tachographs, which in 2013 the Ministry of Transport obliged legal entities to put on all cars. These devices, which record various indicators of cars, must have special cryptoprotection. The already well-known Atlas-Kart acted as the exclusive supplier of cryptoprotection tools. The Federal Antimonopoly Service accused the Ministry of Transport of intentionally adjusting the terms of reference for this company.
Shcherbakov himself had indirect connections with the ex-Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov. The thread leads to the St. Petersburg company "Scientific Instruments", which became the second manufacturer of ECLZ after the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service to oblige the monopoly firm "Bezant" to purchase drives from another supplier.
The head of Scientific Instruments is a retired KGB colonel Valery Sokolov, an acquaintance of the ex-head of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev and the husband of an assistant to the speaker of the State Duma Gryzlov. In 2002, Shcherbakov's Omega-Holding owned 41% of CJSC Research Institute of Physics of Fullerenes and New Materials of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Another 10% of the institute belonged to Sokolov's Scientific Instruments, 31% to Viktor Petrik. The latter is known for the fact that, together with Gryzlov, he patented a filter for the purification of radiation-contaminated water. In addition, in 2007-2008, Sokolov owned a quarter of Omega Holding.
In addition, Shcherbakov was associated with Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, since it was he who oversaw the cash reform in the government. Shcherbakov's name flashed in documents and news regarding the purchase of buildings around the Skolkovo center, which were purchased for Shuvalov's wife.
Through RIK LLC and one of its ultimate owners, Elena Ionova, Shcherbakov was also able to interact with former Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman. Ionova owned a software manufacturer, RVO Group. The co-owners of this company were associated with RTK-Leasing, Reiman's asset, according to an investigation by the German police. German law enforcers studied the activities of this company in connection with the purchase of equipment for Rostelecom and the state telecommunications holding Svyazinvest, and money laundering through offshore transfers.
Criminal prosecution of Shcherbakov
On November 26, 2014, the Central Bank revoked the license from BVA-Bank due to dubious operations related to the withdrawal of funds abroad in large volumes. Shcherbakov was considered the main beneficiary - he owned about 30% of the bank. Also on the list of co-owners are at least eight people associated with the Besant company and related structures.
In February 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs initiated a criminal case against Konstantin Sergutin, deputy former head of BVA-Bank and head of OAO NTC Spetsproject, entrepreneur Alexander Domrachev, and Shcherbakov himself as the organizer of a criminal group. They were accused of transferring large sums of money in foreign currency to foreign accounts, bypassing legal procedures.
According to investigators, for a small percentage of transactions, Domrachev, through a network of firms, entered into contracts for the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Goznak for the supply of imported components for the production of excise stamps for alcoholic products and imported them from Asia back to Russia at an inflated cost. Gosznak received products at the regular price. Money from contracts with the enterprise was allegedly withdrawn with the help of companies previously associated with the supply of EKLZ drives - Technotransservice Engineering OJSC, TTS-Progress CJSC, etc. The already mentioned Singaporean company Smartronic Projects was also involved there - it also appeared as a shareholder of BVA -Bank and supplier of ECLZ devices.
Nevertheless, the management of Gosznak had no claims against the suppliers, and the accused Domrachev and Sergutin insisted on their innocence. Shcherbakov had already fled to London by that time and was put on the international wanted list. After an investigation, law enforcement agencies recognized the transactions as actually committed and dropped the charges against the suspects.
Remote orientation to Shcherbakov
The future of cash reform
Business interests in the "cash reform" are not only manufacturers of fiscal drives. Special operators will process information from the cash desk to the Federal Tax Service. At the moment, there are five structures of this type: "First OFD" of the new owner of RBC Grigory Berezkin, "Peter-Service Spetstekhnologii", part of Alisher Usmanov's USM Holdings, "Yarus" ("Shtrih-M"), "Evotor-OFD" of the co-founder Qiwi Andrey Romanenko and Sberbank Herman Gref, as well as "Takskom" Nikolai Tsarev and Levon Amdilyan. This segment of the market has an approximate turnover of 6 billion rubles a year.
The market for new cash registers is also controlled by a small group of firms - Shtrikh-M, Atol, KKS Group of Companies and Pilot Group. The cost of the new cash desk is estimated at 20-30 thousand rubles. It is possible to redo some cash desks, but quite expensive. Some of the devices, in principle, do not involve the procedure for connecting to the Internet, so their owners had to have time to purchase a new online cash register before July 1. RBC experts estimate the total market for cash register equipment in the range from 24 billion to 45 billion rubles.
Russian businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was called the "beneficiary" of the cash reform in the Russian Federation, was found dead in London, reports. According to an acquaintance of Shcherbakov, the businessman committed suicide.
At the end of March 2017, it became known that Shcherbakov, at the request of Russia, was put on the wanted list through Interpol in connection with fraud during the reform, which provides for the installation of new cash registers that transmit information to the Federal Tax Service online.
Shcherbakov was called the beneficiary of the production of fiscal drives for these cash registers and was accused in the BVA-Bank case of illegally withdrawing more than 10 billion rubles from Russia using forged documents as part of an organized group. The investigation named Shcherbakov, who was the main owner of BVA-Bank, as the leader of this group.
The former top manager of BVA-Bank Konstantin Sergutin and businessman Alexander Domrachev were also involved in this case. They were placed under house arrest in February 2015, while Shcherbakov managed to escape. The bank was revoked its license in autumn 2014.
According to the investigation in this case, suppliers of foreign raw materials for FSUE Goznak inflated prices for raw materials, forging documents, and thus withdrawing money from the country. At the same time, the leaders of Goznak claimed that no damage had been done to the enterprise, while Sergutin and Domrachev denied all accusations. Now, after the case is closed, they can demand compensation for material and non-pecuniary damage for unlawful persecution and 16 months spent under house arrest, the publication noted.
Meanwhile, State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoy, who is associated in Britain with the poisoning in London of fugitive former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko with polonium-210, said that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of affiliated companies that are engaged in the production of fiscal drives on a monopoly basis, which forces entrepreneurs buy devices at a price 10 times more expensive than the cost price.
Cash reform
From February 1, 2017, the tax authorities stopped registering cash desks that do not meet the new requirements. Until July 1, all cash registers in Russia must be equipped with new fiscal drives. Now these are, in fact, computers with software that allows you to send electronic checks to the Federal Tax Service. It was reported that their supply was monopolized by Atlas-Kart JSC, RIK LLC and Besant CJSC, and entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices much more expensive than their cost.
According to Republic, the business will have to re-equip more than 2 million cash desks, and at least 20 billion rubles for the entire volume of the emerging market. According to the publication, billionaire Alisher Usmanov, the head of Sberbank German Gref and the new owner of RBC Grigory Berezkin are already involved in the cash business, but little-known businessmen with close ties to the FSB claim most of this pie.
Shcherbakov from London participated in several projects in Russia
At the same time, according to Republic sources, Shcherbakov, who left for London, was still involved in business in Russia, "so many ends were closed to him." The publication mentioned several projects of Shcherbakov: for example, he, together with a friend of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, was engaged in the production of mineral water, and the Atlas-Kart company, affiliated with Shcherbakov, introduced tachographs on commercial vehicles that track car data and participated in the production of new biometric passports.