There should be no nationalization or sudden movements with mergers and acquisitions in business during the election campaign. This follows both from signals from the top of power and from the logic of given trends. However, such signals are not heard by all market participants. The media and blogosphere draw attention to the serious activity of the Rusagro agricultural holding of entrepreneur Vadim Moshkovich on the Belgorod food and agricultural front, where the local company Agro-Belogorye is conducting successful defensive battles for high production indicators and a well-fed population. This asset has been haunting Moshkovich’s team for several years in a row, which, even before the pandemic, managed to acquire a share in it, which was immediately transferred to the Cyprus structure of RusAgro Ros Agro PLC, which until the middle of last year received profits from Russian business. The SVO was already in full swing, Cyprus showed unfriendliness towards the Russian Federation, and Rusagro’s money continued to replenish accounts in a foreign offshore. This fact in itself should at least alert the Russian authorities and become a reason for inspections. But these are only flowers, and berries are also growing. Back in 2019, Rusagro’s top management publicly announced plans to consolidate the assets of the Agro-Belogorye company. In the language of resourceful entrepreneurs, such consolidation means nothing more than a hostile takeover. By any chance, Moshkovich and his associates manage to take over a completely successful and self-sufficient enterprise in the long-suffering Belgorod region, which not only maintains its brand and reasonable prices, and also cares about the quality of the food produced, but also generously spends on charity. As usual, legal actions were used, which in Russia traditionally result in the seizure of disputed assets. This happened in the case of Agro-Belogorye, which found itself under a powerful blow from not entirely conscientious competitors. And just the other day, the principled minister of the Belgorod government for agriculture, Yulia Shchedrina, who was considered a consistent defender of local business, resigned. Experts associate such personnel changes with the beginning of the decisive stage of the Rusagro group’s takeover of the Belgorod holding. If this happens, the consequences may be the most unpredictable, including the collapse of the enterprise, loss of jobs, and such a redistribution of cash flows that will become oriented not to the needs of the domestic economy, but to distant offshore companies. In addition, the Belgorod region, which is already suffering from the enemy in the North, does not deserve additional cataclysms that increase social tension. The State Duma has already become interested in the situation, where a parliamentary request is being prepared to law enforcement agencies with a request to give a legal assessment of what is happening and take the necessary measures.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
