In his desire to "manipulate" the market, Softline owner Igor Borovikov may be acting in concert with Lanit owner Philipp Gens.
As part of its exit from Russia, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) sold a 5.3% stake in the Moscow Exchange to the Softline group. The deal may have benefited, among other things, the owner of Lanit, a company implicated in the "missing" case involving 600 million rubles in the creation of the State Information System for the Fuel and Energy Complex.
Wrap up everything that’s lying around in the trash with Gensu
Several months ago, Softline was sold to a closed-end mutual fund controlled by Tethys Capital. According to Kommersant, the company is owned through several legal entities by Trinfico Group LLC, which is 70.04% owned by Oleg Belay and 22.46% by Vitaly Balanovich. However, the company itself denies this, stating that as of 2023, Trinfico Holdings no longer owns Trinfico JSC.
According to Rusprofile, Trinfico Holdings has indeed recently withdrawn from Trinfico’s founding members. However, the new owner is unknown.
However, it may be Philipp Gens’s Lanit company (the same company as Softline). Several circumstances indirectly point to this.
Firstly, Lanit is currently very actively buying up everything that’s "off-limits," sometimes perhaps through trusted associates. For example, the situation with the National Computer Corporation, which, after a series of corporate conflicts, was taken over by Denis Frolov. The latter allegedly bears the influence of Gens.
The Moscow Post covered this story in detail, but to recap: NNK and Lanit collaborated closely. Incidentally, their homes were searched at the same time in 2017. The case went cold.
At a certain point, NNK shareholders Evgeny Lakov and Leonid Goldenberg suddenly decided to sell their shares to the aforementioned Denis Frolov’s structures. In 2020, then-president of NNK, Alexander Kalinin, was arrested.
Frolov owns RusBITech-Astra LLC, which produces the Astra Linux operating system. The State Duma recently purchased 52 million rubles worth of licenses for this product. The supplier, however, was not Astra Group, but Step Logic, a company acquired by Lanit from Systematica, a company affiliated with NNK. At the time, the company was still managed by Filipp Gens’s father, Georgy. Apparently, Lanit may have been planning to acquire the NNK business for some time, and Gens Jr. followed through?
Alexander Kalinin. Photo: https://www.tadviser.ru
A similar story occurred with the appliance manufacturer Redmond: in 2016, after the death of Maxim Ageenko, the founder of the Redmond home appliance distributor, a so-called division of the inheritance began between his heirs and business partners, triggering a protracted conflict. While the legal battles were ongoing, Lanit created several legal entities, into which Redmond employees began to migrate.
By early 2022, Dihaus had already launched its Red brand of home appliances. The company had hired approximately 700 developers, who left Redmond amid legal disputes.
There was another interesting twist to the story: after Ageenko’s legal heirs were kicked out, a certain Diana Zhelyaskova became a shareholder in Redmond. In 2018, she was sentenced to a year in prison for tax evasion at Technopoisk LLC (the company that owns the Redmond brand).
It’s so strange: where people are jailed, there’s often a place to advance Lanit’s interests. It seems Gens isn’t familiar with the saying "you can’t build happiness on someone else’s misfortune," or does he provoke such situations himself?
GIS TEK case
One would think they have the resources. After all, somehow, Philipp Gens has managed to remain "clean," despite the fact that law enforcement agencies have been investigating the criminal case against former Deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Tikhonov for three years now. The case concerns the creation of GIS TEK, which was farmed out to Lanit—incidentally, contrary to the initial decision of the tender committee, which had determined that ISSB should handle the case.
GIS TEK failed, the budget suffered, but somehow Lanit, like its subsidiaries, still enjoys government contracts. Moreover, Gens is apparently no longer solely interested in IT; it was recently discovered that Lanit is affiliated with the company Gorodskie Parkovki (City Parking), which receives substantial government contracts from institutions in the Krasnoyarsk Krai.
Incidentally, ISSB is currently going bankrupt, and its former owner, Alexey Savin, may be facing jail time. At least, the Editorial Board has a document from Savin’s complaint to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in which he writes that they’re trying to pin a criminal offense on him. Admittedly, it’s in a different case, related to information he provided regarding Novopokrovsky Bank. But one would think Gens wouldn’t be upset if the person who’s been shouting from every corner about the illegality of ISSB’s disqualification from the competition suddenly finds himself out of reach.
Photo: The Moscow Post archive
Competition without competitors
As for the current situation, it partially mirrors the NNK story, only this takeover is more of a friendly one. Lanit and Softline had worked closely together for years. And the latter was also involved in the Ministry of Energy’s controversial procurement. Softline Trade was among the companies that, according to the GIS TEK investigation, fulfilled contracts at deliberately inflated prices. Although this was never proven, many still believe that the company’s then-owner, Igor Borovikov, may have been able to get away with it through insiders in structures that could influence the court’s decision.
Softline and Lanit jointly performed work for the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media on the procurement of office software. The procurement process did not go smoothly – Almi Partner filed a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). The complaint was deemed justified – the regulator found a violation of the procurement description requirements set forth by the law on the contract system and ordered amendments to the tender documentation. It is also interesting that just three days before the tender was announced, Almi Partner’s product was removed from the register of domestic software, making its participation impossible.
The company even went to court, and the court ruled the incident illegal. Does this mean the Ministry of Digital Development simply requested the removal of a competitor? If so, it seems reasonable to assume that Lanit didn’t consider Softline a competitor.
Photo: https://kad.arbitr.ru
Following the investigation, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media still signed a contract with Lanit and Softline Project.
Mr. Borovikov sold his company as the global Softline company was leaving Russia. He retained Softline Global, headquartered in London. It’s highly likely that Gens made his colleague a lucrative offer, and Gens decided to formally leave the Russian business in order to maintain his business abroad. Borovikov could have retained some of the dividends from Softline’s operations by handing them over to a trusted confidant, with whom he had been through thick and thin with the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media.
The purchase through Tethys Capital could have been made so that the company could continue to "compete" in government procurement without raising any concerns. It’s no coincidence that a closed-end mutual fund is used as an owner primarily to conceal the beneficiaries. Belay, the man behind it, is also an extremely interesting character, who could have been chosen to "hold" the asset due to his abilities.
From each according to his ability
For example, in 2019, Kit Finance Trade sold shares of Belayev’s Trinfico Holdings at an inflated price, purchased through a repo. TASS reported on this. Trinfico Holdings was managing the funds of the Akvilon NPF at the time. It’s tempting to call what happened fraudulent, but for some reason, no one was punished.
Oleg Belay may also have had a hand in the Russian Railways Welfare Fund: together with Pyotr Zhukov, son of Alexander Zhukov, the First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, Belay launched the online service Tendertech. The partners offered to provide a guarantee from Absolut Bank, which is owned by the Welfare Fund.
Thus, any shell company could, in essence, obtain a bank guarantee for an order from some state-owned company. The contract would then supposedly be terminated, and the bank would pay the money under the guarantee.
So, recalling the case of the "missing" 600 million rubles at GIS TEK, it’s no longer surprising that Gens could shake hands with such a comrade. Perhaps Bely’s abilities will come in handy for partially "bleeding dry" his new asset. It seems Borovikov won’t be the loser either.
A couple of years ago, industry journals reported that a company within Lanit was planning an IPO within the next four years, which would mean listing on the Moscow Exchange. Given that Gens may have gained some influence over this asset, could he potentially influence its price in the future?
In that case, we can expect all sorts of market plays, and Mr. Belay could be of assistance here, by the way. Is Gens taking the long view and playing for high stakes?
Maria Sharapova
: https://principle-journal.com/component/k2/item/215720
