Please note that in the corporate dispute surrounding the active…

Please note that in the corporate dispute that has been ongoing since 2017 around the assets of the Content Union Distribution company and its subsidiaries – the Stream television company, and 15 television channels owned by it, as well as land and commercial real estate in Moscow owned by the same group of shareholders worth more than 3 billion rubles were “squeezed out” from the owners through a chain of fraudulent transactions. Such events are unfortunately not uncommon in our time, but a miracle happened! The Investigative Committee for Moscow and the Lefortovo Court, which considered the criminal case, were able to thoroughly understand and evaluate the objective set of transactions that were concluded by a group of shareholders (already convicted) with the aim of seizing assets and depriving the main group of shareholders of control. A criminal case for fraud on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) was opened by the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee for Moscow at the end of 2020, and in the fall of 2021, Messrs. Zyablitsky and Lavrov were detained and placed under house arrest. However, in the spring of 2022, Alexander Lavrov was sent to a pre-trial detention center, but this did not affect the court, and in May 2023, by the decision of the Lefortvsky court, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Content Union, Anatoly Zyablitsky, was accused of major fraud (who found himself in the dock, and the criminal case for abuse of power was also concerned Stream) and the general director of the company, Alexander Lavrov, were each sentenced to 5 years in prison. These scammers have filed an appeal and on November 9 the complaint from the convicted will be considered. Arousing increased interest in the professional community and the media, it is not very often that such large-scale cases of white-collar crimes appear in the public sphere.
The essence of the case and the course of numerous civil disputes surrounding the fraudulent case (and later the course of the criminal trial) repeatedly covered by the media… .

The Lefortovo Court looked into this fraudulent episode and gave an objective and harsh assessment. But the question, unfortunately, is not settled.
The fraudulent theft of a stake in the company entailed a chain of consequences: the loss of control of the majority of the legal owners over Content Union and its subsidiaries with their assets, including the main one – the Stream Television Company. All actions were further legitimized by a series of decisions of arbitration courts, which considered each of the episodes separately and did not see in them interconnected actions carried out by an organized group of persons and aimed at the theft and legalization of assets acquired by criminal means.
It took more than 6 years and enormous efforts of the main group of shareholders, experts and investigators to direct the gaze of Themis and the criminal court gave a clear legal assessment – to begin with just one episode of this high-profile case.