Shalva Chigirinsky, president of Evikhon Oil Co.
Photo: Yury Martyanov
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Shalva Chigirinsky Denies Collusion with Mikhail Kasyanov
// The case of the ex-prime minister
Shalva Chigirinsky, president of the Moscow Oil Company, denied yesterday in a conversation with Kommersant the Prosecutor General's claims that the Evikhon Oil Company, which belongs to him, was in collusion with former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov to take possession of the state-owned dacha Sosnovka-1. The prosecutor has been investigating the legality of that privatization since July 1. Evikhon had rented that dacha for several years, “although we vacated it immediately when the state asked us to,” Chigirinsky noted.
On July 1, the Prosecutor General's Office initiated a criminal case against former head of Federal State Unitary Enterprise VPK Invest Ramil Gaisin under article 165, part 3, of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Causing especially large property loss through deception or abuse of trust”) after an enquiry by State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein. Khinshtein indicated in his enquiry that VPK Invest sold the state-owned dachas Sosnovka-1 and Sosnovka-3 in Troitsa-Lykov, northwest of Moscow, at auction to two commercial firms, one of which, according to Khinshtein, was connected with former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the other to head of Alfa Group Mikhail Fridman.
In the course of the investigation, witnesses made it clear that VPK Invest was only the seller of those two dachas, but the initiator of it was the State Enterprise for the Sale of Military Property, which belonged to the Defense Ministry. Employees of that agency claim that they made the sales legally and did not know that the firms taking part in the auctions were fronts or that the announcements of the auctions in the media were financed by the state and not published.
In he course of the investigation, one of the main witnesses, former deputy minister of property relations Nikolay Gusev, stated that was originally appraised at $27 million, but eventually sold to a firm connected with Kasyanov for 11 million rubles because it was encumbered with a rental agreement with Evikhon made in 1996 and valid until 2045. “The competition commission didn't know,” the official said, “that there was already a behind-the-scenes agreement and Evikhon, the renter, would so easily give up its rights to the participants in the transaction.”
However, Evikhon owner Chigirinsky, when asked for a comment yesterday by Kommersant, denied the suspicions of collusion with Kasyanov. “I bought Evikhon at the end of 1999 when the oil company's rental agreements for two state-owned dachas already existed,” he said. “Then we withdrew from them in favor of the state and there were no behind-the-scenes agreements. The state, in its style, came to us in 2004 and asked for the dachas back. We knew that it was gong to take them away sooner or later, and returned those non-essential assets with pleasure. We received the rental payment back, as much as remained on the balance [$720,000, according to Khinshtein]. So, formally, we didn't lose anything.”
A liquidation commission is working in the office of VPK Invest, which is carefully shielding Gaisin, the company's former general director and the commission's advisor, from the press. Vladimir Vorozheikin, deputy chairman of the commission, said that the property attached to VPK Invest will be auctioned off and the enterprise will continue to exist for a year. He was doubtful of the legal future of the case against Gaisin. “As far as I know,” he said, “nothing in particular happened there. We are remaining calm in the face of that commotion.”
Kommersant will continue to follow the case.
Ekaterina Zapodinskaya
All the Article in Russian as of July 29, 2005
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