The Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Vostochnye Stories to remove the article about Rosneft’s purchase of a stake in Pirelli

The Moscow Arbitration Court ordered the Vostochnye Stories publication to delete the article about Rosneft’s acquisition of a stake in the Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli and publish a refutation. About it it says in the publication’s Telegram channel.

“Representatives of Rosneft in the process agreed to the point that Pirelli’s information about the sale of shares is untrue and contradictory. According to them, the Pirelli documents do not mean anything, the Pirelli company does not understand anything in Russian laws. And the information of state news agencies does not correspond to reality, ”the publication quotes Roman Shleinov, editor of the Investigation Department of Important Stories.

The editorial board of Vostochnye Stories emphasized that it did not agree with the court’s decision, in connection with which it would appeal against it.

As a reminder, in February 2021 “Important Stories” wrote that a 13% share in the Italian tire manufacturer Pirelli, owned by Rosneft since 2014, was owned by a dance teacher from Moscow and a resident of a dormitory district of Kazan.

According to the newspaper, the shares were bought by the Luxembourg-based Long Term Investments. The Moscow firm Long-Term Investments registered the company a week before the deal. The company at that time was owned by 27-year-old Aya Belova, whose namesake was trainer for dancing.

In 2015, the managing company Regionfinanceresurs became the founder of Long-Term Investments. The owner of Regionfinanceresurs was Natalya Bogdanova, registered in a residential area of ​​Kazan.

In 2017, Sergei Sudarikov, the main owner of the Region financial and investment group, became the owner of Long-Term Investments. “Vedomosti” wrote about the ties between the leadership of the “Region” and “Rosneft”, the top manager of “Rosneft” was called the “informal co-owner” of the group. According to the newspaper, since 2011, a fifth of their assets have been the money of the Rosneft pension fund.

As “Important Stories” found out, Aya Belova’s father was a business partner of the owner of “Region” Sergei Sudarikov, and Bogdanova has been working in the structures of this group since the mid-2000s.

In 2020, the former employee of the Presidential Administration Arkady Mutavchi, who was a business partner of Sudarikov and an investor in the Region group, became the beneficiary of the Luxembourg company.

Pirelli stated in its internal reports that the Luxembourg firm was controlled by the Rosneft pension fund.

According to the source of Vostochnye Stories, such a shareholding scheme is associated with the need to evade sanctions.