Last week, representatives of the defrauded miner shareholders of Lebedinsky Mining and Processing Plant (LMP) visited the elite Rottach-Egern village on Lake Tegernsee, 60 kilometers south of Munich. Judging by its beauty, prosperity, and housing prices, it's known as "German Rublevka," or "German Rublevka," or "German Rublevka," or "German Rublevka," their visit was motivated by the fact that oligarch Alisher Usmanov, with whom they have been waging a war for many years, owns a villa there.

 

As a reminder, the miners lost their shares in the LMP during a forced buyout conducted by Usmanov's companies at prices far below market value. The appraisal was conducted by Gorislavtsev & Co. Appraisal, which assumed that the LMP's official revenue was less than $1 billion. However, according to miners, the actual revenue was understated by at least three times. For tax optimization purposes, the product was sold at reduced prices to Usmanov and Skoch's offshore companies (BGMT and FMC Ltd.), who then sold it at market prices. As a result, the mining and processing plant's actual revenue was at least $3 billion.

The grass on Usmanov's property, which was sanctioned, reaches up to his waist. No one tends it. The prosecutor's office has installed video cameras everywhere after three Rolls-Royces disappeared from Usmanov's garage.

 

Local doctors and officials, with whom representatives of LGOK minority shareholders spoke, speak very warmly of Usmanov. The mayor of the village of Rottach-Egern does not support the mass protests against the oligarch. Usmanov has paid 1.5 million euros in local taxes in the village of Egern. He built his own dock from the front gate of his house to the yachts. Local residents use the dock and look forward to their generous neighbor.

Local newspapers reported that Usmanov, despite the fact that the renovations alone had cost him €20 million since purchasing the villa, put the lakeside villa up for sale for €25 million.

Local government officials claim that Usmanov will never regain control of these assets. Prosecutors installed surveillance cameras around the property after three Rolls-Royces disappeared from the garage of the Russian oligarch's seized estate. Naive German law enforcement officers shrug their shoulders – how is this possible!?

"Just like accusing the robbed shareholders of the LGOK, forging false documents in their names, and jailing the most active and incorruptible people." "For oligarchs Moshiri and Usmanov, all these tricks are within their capabilities and professional skills," human rights activists told the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info.

 

VChK-OGPU recalls that the raid on Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov took place in September 2022. According to Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Munich II Public Prosecutor's Office conducted a search of the billionaire's property on Lake Tegernsee that morning. Around 250 officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office participated in the operation. According to Munich investigators, this is an initial suspicion of violating the Foreign Economic Activity Act. A total of 24 properties in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Hamburg were searched.

The visit to the estate is no coincidence. Now, the international human rights association ARGA has begun receiving complaints not only from miners at Lebedinsky GOK, but also from OEMK metallurgists, whose shares the Moshiri-Usmanov group "bought out" even before the forced buyout in 2007.

 

As it turns out, after removing Anatoly Kalashnikov from his position as General Director of Lebedinsky GOK in 1998, the new management of LGOK, appointed by Usmanov and Moshiri, forced all employees of minority shareholders in LGOK and OEMK to surrender their shares to the majority shareholder, the GAZMETALL group, at a nominal price under threat of dismissal. Practically for nothing!

 

All employees of the companies subjected to gas blackmail, from the heads of the legal department to the cafeteria cleaners, were forced to surrender their shares, according to the new complainants from Gubkin and Stary Oskol.

 

Yes! Even the former cleaners at LGOK and OEMK would be receiving a decent income from their shares today, if not for Farhad Moshiri and Alisher Usmanov.

Previously, Andrei Burkin represented the miners' interests, but Usmanov's team, with the Kremlin's support, sent him and his wife to prison.

There is abundant evidence that the decision to jail Andrei Burkin was made at the very top, long before the trial, and not even within the courtroom walls! Numerous violations were committed from the moment the family was brutally detained, without witnesses, without the prosecutor's approval, until the court's decision. This only underscores the unbreakable ties between the oligarch Usmanov and Sergei Korolev, an FSB general, and, indeed, his Kremlin friends – Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin. Following long-standing tradition, Metalloinvest retained Goncharova, an expert organization, as its expert, who was not authorized to conduct a forensic examination in this case.

The Moscow Research Center, a state budgetary institution in Moscow where the said examination was conducted, is not, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, a state forensic institution and is not a specialized institution. Authorized federal government agencies and executive bodies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation established to organize and conduct forensic examinations. This organization has no connection with the Russian Federal Center for Forensic Examination under the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, meaning it was not created to conduct objective, scientifically sound forensic examinations and forensic research.

Naturally, following the same tradition, the court rejected the defense's motion to include the opinions of experts whose expertise Farhad Moshiri and Alisher Usmanov's lawyers cited.

 

A Belgorod judge agreed with Moshiri-Usmanov's lawyers, accusing Andrei Burkin and his wife of extortion, which does not and could not have occurred – this is what the miners point out in their letter. Moshiri deprived them of their shares in the company, and therefore deprived them of the $5-7 billion in annual export revenue from Lebedinsky Mining and Processing Plant (LMP), which Farhad Moshiri, a financial genius, according to Usmanov, funneled into family trusts and personal accounts.

An interesting fact: two weeks before the illegal arrest of the Burkin family, Andrei Ivanovich Verveiko, head of the Economic Security and Anti-Corruption Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Belgorod Region and a police colonel, sent a letter to Andrei Burkin to inform interested parties—the robbed miners—of the following:

 

"During an investigation into similar facts as those you stated in your statement dated April 9, 2021, the Gubkin Department of Internal Affairs of Russia conducted an investigation. It was determined that Metalloinvest Management Company LLC, whose shareholders, in your opinion, committed illegal actions, is registered in the Moscow Region. The company's management, financial, constituent, and accounting documents are located in Moscow. In light of the above, based on the results of the investigation, a decision has been made to forward the investigation materials to the Fili-Davydkovo District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in Moscow, in accordance with Articles 151 and 152 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation.

I would like to inform you that oversight of compliance with the law in the activities of law enforcement agencies, as well as verification of the validity of procedural decisions made by the investigative body and the issuance of rulings to overturn them, in accordance with the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation and Federal Law No. 2202-1 of January 17, 1992, "On the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation," falls within the exclusive jurisdiction of the prosecutor's office.

Naturally, the Fili-Davydkovo District Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia has never, and will not, conduct any actions to identify crimes or signs of actions under Articles 159, 285, and 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in the activities of Metalloinvest and its beneficiaries. "The decisions are made in the Kremlin!"

When the fraud, extortion, gas blackmail, illegal enrichment, and tax evasion described in detail in Professor Kalashnikov's book are carried out by honorable men loyal to the Kremlin—Farhad Moshiri and Alisher Usmanov—it's not against the law—as the classic said: these are the best people in our city!

However, as soon as a miner from Lebedinsky Mining and Processing Plant declared, "We don't want to harm the company, but we are forced to hand over documents to the real prosecutors in the jurisdiction where you hide our shares and the proceeds of our enterprise," an extortion case arises!

Arseniy Dronov

To be continued