Roman Abramovich’s Omsk offspring
Billionaire Roman Abramovich has been owed to the Omsk region. This is where his capitals, as well as close relations with the Russian authorities, started. He and his relatives reaps the harvest sowed then and there.
By Eduard Belozerov
History of the Sibneft
Few people know that Roman Abramovich, a billionaire, Chukotka governor and owner of the English soccer club Chelsea started his business from a questionable purchase of the Sibneft in the Omsk region.
The Sibneft oil company was established in August 1995 by a decree of President Boris Yeltsin. The company’s principal industrial base were Noyabrskneftegaz oil deposits and one of the country’s largest Omsk refinery.
The circumstances of the Sibneft birth look suspicious. The details emerged in 2011 in a course of the lawsuit in London between Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich.
In particular, it emerged that the Noyabrskheftegaz director Victor Gorodilov had agreed to merge the enterprise with the Omsk refinery, while the director of the refinery Ivan Litskevich did not want to do business with the tycoons. The latter died in strange circumstances - his driver told the detectives that Litskevich had drowned in Irtysh river. The official forensic expertise concluded that Litskevich had died from a heart attack.
Immediately, the company was loans-for-shares auctioned. In December 1995, the Sibneft’s 51% was sold for $100.3 mln to the Oil Financial Company ZAO belonging to Abramovich. In the London court, berezovsky admitted that the auction’s conditions had been trimmed so to favorite that company. Thanks to his connections, Abramovich received funds for that purchase from the founder of the Stolichny Savings bank Alexander Smolensky.
To bar the potential competitors, the Menatep owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky deliberately drove the price of its own bid up, while the bid of the Samara metallurgical company (Sameco) underwritten by the Incombank, was withdrawn - formally, due to errors in the Sameco’s bid and its 182-million debt to the Social insurance foundation.
Abramovich claimed that Berezovsky’s business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili had helped to sort the thing out with the third participant of the auction - without his involvement, the Sibneft’s price would be over $217 mln.
Abramovich had been acquainted with the Omsk governor Leonid Polezhayev. The governor’s junior son Alexei worked in the Moscow office of the Swiss oil trade Runicom SA. That company managed assets of Abramovich, including the Sibneft. The governor’s nephew Konstantin Potapov in mid-1990s became a vice-president of the Sibneft JSV. In 2005, he left that position to become the president of the Avangard ice hockey club.
The Sibneft was “deprivatized” following unsuccessful attempts to merge it with the Yukos and arrest of Khodorkovsky. The authorities decided to concentrate all oil and gas assets within the state-run Gazprom and Rosneft.
The Sibneft was given to the Gazprom, re-registered in St-Petersburg and was renamed the Gazpromneft in 2006. Still, Abramovich and his relatives had taken roots in Omsk.
Property of Abramovich’s relatives
Omsk residents Natalia Dernovaya (maiden name Abramovich) and her son Arkady Borisenko manages many companies in development, property, consulting and other businesses. Dernovaya is Roman Abtamovich’s cousin. Dernovoi has been his uncle’s business partner, the owner of four companies in Omsk and the founder of seven other firms.
Natalia Dernovaya has been the director of six companies and controls 11 firms as their founder. Her husband Alexander has been the director of the Stroilmaterialy-99 company.
Their daughter Anna has been a co-founder of the Urania Ltd along with her mother. Anna has also been a director of Omsk medical clinic with branches in Moscow, St-Petersburg, Chelyabinsk, Kolomna and in Spain.
The director of the Sibirski Dom service center Sergei Dolmatov admitted that when he had been its deputy director in 2007, the company was the only one involved in the federal program of resettlement of the Chukotka peninsula residents to the Omsk region. Roman Abramovich was Chukotka governor at that time. Dolmatov also admitted his company had cooperated with the Stroimaterialy-99.
The Sibirsky Dom had ordered construction of hotels in Omsk and Noyabrsk as well as of the Arena Omsk, home stadium of the Abramovich-owned Avangard hockey club.
Problems of Dernovoi family
Most of the Dernovoi’s companies have been registered in the 7-storey residential building in 62 Kuibysheva street. In November 2011, its residents sued the owners for the unauthorised reconstruction of the building’s attic which had left them with no heat during Siberian harsh winters. The court did not upheld their case, though.
The attic had initially belonged to Abramovich’s nephew Arkady Borisenko. He later handed over the attic in question to a nephew of the Omsk governor’s chief of staff Vitaly Radul. Radul immediately placed the floor on sale for 3.7 mln rubles ($66,000).
In 2012, the Stroimaterialy-99 was fined 9.33 mln rubles ($155,000) for unjust enrichment. The federal property agency Rosimushchestvo asked the court to reimburse 13 mln rubles from the company for illegal construction works.
In September 2016, criminal cases were opened against Arkady Borisenko and Alexander Khomenko for tax evasion of 3 mln rubles and 5 mln rubles respectively. In April 2017, Borisenko paid off the tax debt. His criminal case had been closed and he got away with 200,000-ruble fine. Khomenko’s case has still been investigated.
Resting on his laurels
The Arena Omsk was given - as announced, for free - to the Avangard non-commercial partnership in 2012 with facilitation of the governor. The media later found out that in reality, two companies had paid 850 mln rubles as a charity contribution to the Avangard account. The club subsequently transferred the money to the Latis Ltd.
The Latis (founded and owned by four Cypriot companies) has been registered at the same address with the Abramovich’s Millhouse Estate Ltd.
The Sibneft shareholders also received 69 hectares of land in 49-year rent. The land had been transferred to Natalia Dernovaya. The development of that land has been conducted by the Trest-4 Ltd which has no connection to the tycoon.
The Lais made an attempt to evict the OBI hypermarket in 2013 from the adjacent land plot but had failed. The OBI was opened in 2009 by Batalia Dernovaya, Leonid Polezhayev and the oligarch’s uncle Abram Abramovich.
The hotel Berezovaya-2 previously owned by the Latis, has been rented by the Sibirsky Dom since October 2013.