Commander of the Vostok (East) special battalion Sulim Yamadayev reportedly said he was there to see that the law was followed.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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Battalion Storms Meat Plant
// Defense Ministry involved in St. Petersburg property dispute
An armed attempt was made on Friday to take over the Samson meat processing plant in St. Petersburg. The prosecutor of the Moskovsky District of St. Petersburg opened a criminal case yesterday and turned the investigation over to the criminal investigation unit (Russian abbreviation ROVD). The actions of the so far unidentified armed group are being classified as robbery. Victims say that those actions bore little resemblance to a robbery and were more like a special operation. There are plans to build a large housing project on the territory of the meat processing plant.
The incident began peaceful when representatives of the Salolin Co., which owns the 54 hectares of land the plant is located on, arrived in the plant's administrative building at 13 Moscow Highway at around 1:00 p.m. There are approximately 150 buildings on the land that belong to OOO Samson-K, a subsidiary of Moscow Industrial Bank. The Salolin representatives spoke behind closed doors with general director of Samson-K Khamzat Arsamakov, a distant relative of Moscow Industrial Bank president Abubakar Arsamakov.
According to Abubakar Arsamakov, about an hour later, several Mercedes pulled up to the building and people armed with machineguns and pistols and wearing masks and camouflage clothing got out. They displaced the plant's security and occupied Khamzat Arsamakov's office. Police from the 68th precinct say that they were called and arrived to find a group of armed Chechens sitting at the general director's desk, one of whom showed the policemen documents identifying him as Sulim Yamadaev, commander of a Defense Ministry unit and a Hero of Russia. He is alleged to have said, “There is a conflict between two Chechen relatives here. They will settle it themselves. I am here so that everything will be legal.”
The policemen, who knew the Chechen commander of the East Special Battalion by reputation, left the plant. The visitors, according to plant employees, then searched the premises. One of those Samson representatives said that “Levon Kharazov [director of the Salolin subsidiary Commercial Real Estate Bureau] and his people went from office to office demanding the original certification of the rights of possession for the buildings, saying that he was going to go to a notary and have them rewritten in the name of Salolin.”
That did not happen, however. Khamzat Arsamakov explained that “I asked them to reschedule the conversation to Saturday morning because I felt unwell. Then I checked into the hospital.” Doctors found that he had a broken arm, concussion and multiple bruises. The organized crime division of the St. Petersburg police (UBOP) told Kommersant that Khamzat Arsamakov and his family are under guard. Nonetheless, he resigned his position as plant director yesterday out of fear for his life.
Abubakar Arsamakov, who was celebrating his 50th birthday on the day of the incident, said “I didn't believe at first that SulimYamadaev took part in the seizure. But when I found his picture on the Internet and showed it to people who work at the plant, they identified him.” Kommersant was unable to reach Yamadaev for comment yesterday. His representatives in Moscow say that they do not know where he is located, but that he has been in Chechnya since last week. “He is leading a special operation in Vedeno District,” they said. At the East base, they said that Yamadaev is in Moscow but that they too were unable to reach him.
OOO Samson-K is the legal successor to OAO Samson, one of the largest meat processors in Russia until it was declared bankrupt in 2000. The land under meat processing plant was transferred to OAO Salolin during the bankruptcy. In 2003, Salolin filed suit in the St. Petersburg arbitration court demanding that the buildings, which had been bought by the Moscow Industrial Bank, be torn down. Samson-K won that suit in August of this year. Salolin then filed a second suit, in which it won a judgment for 8 million rubles. The conflict began, however, after Salolin sold the property, Abubakar Arsamakov says.
In August, Kharazov, head of OOO Commercial Real Estate Bureau, announced that 1.3 million sq. m. of living space, 200,000 sq. m. of trading space and 180,000 sq. m. of offices would be build on 246.2 sq. ha. of the land of the meat plant and the surrounding state farms. More than $1 billion would be invested in it. That project has not begun, however, due to the indeterminate ownership of the land of the meat plant.
Kharazov told Kommersant yesterday that he and his company have no relation to the incident. “On Friday,” he said, “Khamzat Arsamakov called me and asked me to come to the plant immediately. We have been in a suit with Samson-K for the last three years. They have not paid us rent for the use of the land and owe more than 200 million rubles. I arrived there alone at about 5:00 and left an hour later. No one beat Arsamakov in my presence. There really were many guards there, but I don't know who they were. Maybe they were Samson people. I am not acquainted with Yamadaev. Therefore, I cannot say if he was there or not. Nor can I say why Arsamakov is calling Yamadaev and me attackers.”
Nikolay Sergeev
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 19, 2006
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