Elena Baturina, wife of Moscow’s mayor, not only hid her involvement in the Transvaal Park project from the public, but also apparently from her husband.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Oil Companies Surface in the Aquapark
// Relatives of Moscow’s Mayor Financed the Change of Ownership of Transvaal Park
The government commission is expected to announce the preliminary results of the investigation into the collapse of Transvaal Park’s roof today and name the parties responsible for the tragedy. Yesterday, lawyer Igor Trunov, who is representing the interests of several victims, stated that he was still unable to file suit against the aquapark’s owners, because no one knew who owned it. Kommersant correspondents have examined the registration documents and information on transactions involving Transvaal Park assets made in the last few months. Their conclusion is that at the time of the tragedy a company called TerraOil had complete control of the aquapark’s business and two private individuals—Elena Baturina, wife of Moscow’s mayor, and her brother Viktor Baturin—had financed the purchase transaction.
The Missing Owners
The tragedy at Transvaal Park, which opened in fall 2002, happened on February 15, 2004. As a result of the partial collapse of the building’s roof, 28 people died and more than 100 visitors at the leisure center were injured.
The question of who actually owned the aquapark arose immediately after the disaster. We recall that at the end of 2003, European Technologies and Service (ETS), which owned the complex at the time, announced it was selling the park to an “interested investor.” Vladimir Mulev, general manager of ETS, did not disclose any information on the buyer, but according to unofficial information reported in the media, ZAO TerraOil, a small company selling motor oil, had bought the aquapark. After the aquapark’s roof collapsed, a number of Moscow developers told Kommersant and other media that Transvaal’s buyers were representing the interests of structures affiliated with ZAO Inteko. After this information was published, Inteko’s president, Elena Baturina, issued an official announcement stating that that ZAO Inteko and its shareholders did not own the aquapark.
At hearings on a suit for material and moral damage filed by several victims of Transvaal Park held on Wednesday in the Cheremushkinsky District Court, ZAO TerraOil’s general manager, Mikhail Ponomarev, stated that his company had “no relation whatsoever to the aquapark in Yasenovo and had never participated in its share capital.” The court was unable to determine the owner on the basis of documents presented by lawyer Igor Trunov (Kommersant wrote about this on March 4).
Purchase Scheme
Kommersant has obtained extracts from the state register of corporations containing information on six companies that owned and managed Transvaal Park. According to these documents, the aquapark’s corporate management structure was as follows: the owner and operator of the building itself was ZAO European Technologies and Service (founder – Vladimir Mulev), and four limited liability companies (OOO) ran the commercial activities at the aquapark—Transvaal Wellness (pool, bath, and sauna maintenance), Transvaal Controlling (managed the shares of the other OOO companies), Transvaal Catering (food service at the aquapark), and Tranvaal Payment (the actual payment center). The aquapark’s business manager, Roman Malinovsky, and Vladimir Mulev’s wife, Svetlana Muleva, were partners in all four of these companies.
According to information from the Moscow office of the Ministry of Taxation, a change of co-owners of all four companies that managed Transvaal Park took place on December 3 and 4, 2003. ZAO TerraOil became sole owner of 100% of the shares of ETS and 100% of the stakes in OOO Transvaal Catering and Transvaal Controlling. Transvaal Controlling in turn became the owner of 100% of the stakes in OOO Transvaal Payment and Transvaal Wellness. Sergei Arsentev, who now calls himself general manager of Transvaal Park, became head of ETS on December 3.
Judging from its constituent documents, two private individuals, Nikolai Ponomarev and Sariya Nasibulina, founded ZAO TerraOil in 1996 with charter capital of 8000 rubles. Along with TerraOil, they founded six more companies involved in selling petroleum products. Furthermore, TerraOil, together with OAO Mosneft and OAO Mostransnefteprodukt, founded the noncommercial partnership Association of Independent Oil and Petroleum Product Suppliers (Assotsiatsiya nezavisimykh postavshchikov nefti i nefteproduktov). In turn, TerraOil’s current general manager, Mikhail Ponomarev (the son of company founder Nikolai Ponomarev), heads the Mega Oil association of fuel companies.
Kommersant has learned that on November 26, 2003, TerraOil transferred nearly 119 million rubles to Vladimir Mulev’s personal account “as per a contract of purchase of ZAO European Technologies and Service securities with suspensive conditions.” Furthermore, TerraOil transferred funds in two installments (1 million and 6 million rubles) to OOO Transvaal Controlling for stakes in the other OOO companies owned by Transvaal Controlling. TerraOil accumulated the money for these transactions between November 18 and 26, 2003, under a loan agreement with two companies, Archel Select Ltd. (120 million rubles) and OOO Neftesnab (7 million rubles). Thus, TerraOil completed the purchase transaction for the aquapark at the end of November.
Two months later, two private individuals, Elena Baturina and her brother, Viktor Baturin, transferred 38.7 million and 44.6 million rubles, respectively to TerraOil’s account in Vozrozhdenie Bank from their personal accounts in the Russian Land Bank (Russky zemelny bank) as per a “securities purchase contract with suspensive conditions of January 15, 2004.” Hence, the Baturin family’s combined contribution to TerraOil’s capital was 83 million rubles. The day after receiving these funds, TerraOil’s general manager, Mikhail Ponomarev, began repaying the debt to Archel Select Ltd.
Elena Baturina is out of the country, and Viktor Baturin declined to comment on their deal with TerraOil; however, a Kommersant source in a company affiliated with the Inteko group thought that Inteko shareholders had merely borrowed the funds for the purchase of Transvaal Park from Mega Oil, which has close ties with the Moscow government. Kommersant’s source believes that “Mr. Ponomarev simply asked for help and credit to buy the park, which he did.” He also added that “part of the money owing to Archel Select Ltd. (70 million rubles – Kommersant) has already been repaid, but part of the debt is still unpaid.” The source maintains that the money that Elena and Viktor Baturin transferred to TerraOil was in the form of open-ended redemption bills. That is, de jure, Inteko is not actually a shareholder of any of the companies that managed Transvaal Park; however, in February, its shareholders were the largest creditors of TerraOil, which owned the aquapark’s infrastructure.
Mikhail Ponomarev confirmed to Kommersant that “borrowed funds were used to buy the aquapark’s shares”; but he claimed that “the Baturins’ funds have no connection whatsoever with this transaction.” According to Mr. Ponomarev, “these were simple account entries,” although he refused to disclose their substance, alluding to a “commercial secret.” He also refused to answer questions relating to his affiliation with ZAO Inteko and Transvaal Payment’s current general manager, Yury Fedulov, who along with Elena and Viktor Baturin is a member of the board of OAO Krion (Inteko owns 33.3% of the company’s shares).
An Old Crack
The government commission is expected to announce the preliminary results of the investigation into the collapse of Transvaal Park’s roof today. Most of the blame will probably be laid on the park’s designers. However, a high-ranking official of the State Construction Administration (Gosstroi) told Kommersant that a special commission of the Moscow Architecture Committee discovered a crack in one of the aquapark’s columns back in June 2003. The officials who uncovered the defect demanded that Vladimir Mulev carry out repairs to the facility. However, Sberbank of Russia refused to lend Mulev the funds to make the repairs and demanded repayment of debt under previously granted credit (Sberbank had invested about $18 million in the aquapark in the form of credits). Immediately afterwards, representatives of companies affiliated with ZAO Inteko appeared at ETS and proposed that Mulev sell the leisure center. Interestingly enough, employees of companies belonging to the Inteko group held a corporate New Year’s party at Transvaal Park. There is no official confirmation of this version, and all concerned parties are now denying information that the aquapark was sold with an already existing defect.
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| Letter of February 16, 2004 (ref. ¹01-17/110) from E.N. Baturina, president of ZAO Inteko requesting Kommersant to issue a retraction of the information on the existence of contractual relations between said company and Transvaal Park. Kommersant is publishing letter ¹01-17/110, but has not issued any retraction. |
&Text of the letter:
To: Mr. A.V. Vasilev
Editor-in-Chief of
Kommersant newspaper
Dear Andrei Vitalevich!
In connection with the publication in your newspaper of February 16, 2004, concerning the disaster at the Moscow aquapark, ZAO INTEKO officially declares that:
All conjectures that INTEKO is among the co-owners of Transvaal and that Transvaal did business on behalf of and on the instructions of Baturina are not only an out-and-out lie, but against the background of the tragedy that occurred, are also blasphemous.
Neither INTEKO nor INTEKO’s shareholders have ever been founders or co-owners of Transvaal Park, nor have there ever been any contractual relations between ZAO INTEKO and Transvaal Park.
We request that you publish a retraction; otherwise, I will be forced to take legal action.
E.N. Baturina, President
ZAO INTEKO
Kommersant will be following the development of events.
Renat Gizatulin, Andrei Salnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 05, 2004
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