The Ministry of Industry and Trade filed a lawsuit against the parent company X5 Retail Group, launching a forced redomiciliation procedure. There is a remarkable point in all this. As the VChK-OGPU telegram channel found out, a week ago Raisa Telmanovna Polyakova, who is the wife of the deputy chief of the GRU information operations troops command, Major General Alexander Gennadievich Starunsky, was appointed to the position of managing director of the Perekrestok retail chain.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade is trying to squeeze out Corporate Center X 5 LLC from X5 Retail Group N.V, registered in the Netherlands, with the help of people associated with the owners of the former business of the popular fast food chain KFC. The key figure in the scheme may be Raisa Polyakova, appointed last week as managing director of the Perekrestok retail chain.
Perekrestok is managed by X5 Group (formerly X5 Retail Group).
In 2022, the revenue of Corporate Center X 5 LLC amounted to 37 billion rubles, profit – 3.7 billion rubles.
At the end of March, the Ministry of Industry and Trade filed an application with the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region to suspend the corporate rights of X5 Retail Group N.V in relation to its Russian subsidiary. At the same time, Raisa Polyakova became managing director of the Perekrestok network, which, according to the X5 Group, is associated with plans to transform the network. Prior to her new appointment, Polyakova led the business development of the Pyaterochka chain, also part of the X5 Group. Previously, she was the General Director of KFC in Russia and the CIS.
The business of the KFC chain that left Russia was sold to the new owner of the Smart Service company in mid-April last year. It acquired 100% of Unirest LLC, which was one of the Russian legal entities of the KFC corporation. The shares of Smart Service and its founders, entrepreneurs from Udmurtia Konstantin Kotov and Andrey Oskolkov, are under the encumbrance of VTB, which indicates state control of the former KFC business.
The director of Unirest since May 2022 is Tatyana Shamanskaya, who previously owned, together with Raisa Polyakova, Prostor Holdings LLC, which was liquidated in March 2023 - just before the change of ownership of KFC. Shamanskaya is most likely a protege of Polyakova, who headed Unirest LLC from 2019 to 2022.
Raisa Polyakova, as the general director of the network, naturally knew everything about its financial secrets. Now the wife of a GRU general has acquired Perekrestok, and before that she developed Pyaterochka, owned by the X5 Group. Soon, Corporate Center X 5 LLC may change shareholders, whose shares will be under the encumbrance of one of the state banks.
On April 5, the Moscow Exchange suspended trading in X5 Group (FIVE) GDRs. The process of transferring Corporate Center X 5 LLC to the Russian Federation may take 4-5 months after the court decision. There is little doubt that it will be in favor of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The department is headed by Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, a long-time business partner of Rostec head Sergei Chemezov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin.
Raisa Polyakova’s husband, Major General Alexander Starunsky, has been a member of the scientific council under the Security Council of the Russian Federation since 2021. Starunsky, together with other members of the scientific council, is assessing internal and external threats to the security of the Russian Federation. One can only guess about the real activities of the general’s wife, Raisa Polyakova, who has been working in companies with foreign investment for a long time.
In Russia, its leadership is implementing a simple scheme. In March, LLC Corporate Center X 5 was recognized as an economically significant organization (ESO). In relation to such, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Energy can file claims in arbitration to suspend the rights of foreign shareholders, which was done in relation to Corporate Center X 5 LLC. Now any large private company can get on the EZO list and, through dummy founders, end up as collateral with the state bank, which will then transfer the asset to the right hands.
Yaroslav Mukhtarov
Source: www.rucriminal.info