He committed suicide in London. Beneficiary of cash reform: who is businessman Shcherbakov? Fiscal drives and their production

What is the businessman famous for and what is “cash reform”?

On July 5, it was known about the death of Vladimir Shcherbakov, a Russian businessman hiding in London from criminal prosecution in Russia. An entrepreneur believed to be closely associated with a major change in trade - "cash reform" - has died suddenly. About high-ranking acquaintances and business of Shcherbakov - in the material of Eduard Belozerov.

What is known about Shcherbakov?

The publication Republic reported Shcherbakov’s death with reference to a business partner and acquaintance of the businessman. According to the publication, the entrepreneur committed suicide. However, local police were not immediately able to confirm this version.

Business FM has learned that Shcherbakov committed suicide before his prosecution in Russia was dropped. Shcherbakov was on the international wanted list in the BVA-Bank case for the illegal withdrawal of more than 10 billion rubles from Russia. On July 3, the Ministry of Internal Affairs closed the case “for lack of evidence of a crime.”

Quite a bit is known about the personality of the businessman himself. According to available information, Shcherbakov was born on Sakhalin in 1959, and began his entrepreneurial activities there. He was involved in the oil business - Shcherbakov was on the board of directors of Rosneft-Nakhodkanefteprodukt, a company operating oil transshipment terminals. After that, Shcherbakov did business in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The businessman had two citizenships - Russian and Belgian.

In 1997, Shcherbakov was mentioned in media publications as the head of the marketing department of the software developer and retail equipment supplier Intellect-Service. In 2008, Shcherbakov’s full namesake was a member of the advisory and expert council on cash register equipment at the Federal Agency for Industry, where he represented the Ministry of Information and Communications. Shcherbakov also owned quite a large number of different companies related to cash register equipment, and part of the now liquidated BVA-Bank.

"Cash reform"

The “cash reform” bill was formally initiated by the Russian government in January 2016. This document introduced a significant change in the work of almost all businesses working with cash register equipment. By July 1, 2017, all organizations were required to purchase new online cash registers or update old cash registers—there are about 1.2 million such devices throughout the country. The official goal of the innovation is to make the retail trade more transparent, reduce opportunities for tax evasion and reduce paperwork.

State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoy said in March 2017 that Shcherbakov is the beneficiary of a scheme to enrich himself from the sale of fiscal drives - chips necessary for working in new online cash registers. According to the deputy, RIC LLC is connected with Shcherbakov. The company was a monopolist in the market for manufacturers of fiscal drives for cash registers. Other companies were unable to obtain certificates from the 8th FSB center.

For a drive that needs to be changed once a year, entrepreneurs had to pay about 6-8 thousand rubles at a cost of less than 1 thousand rubles.

After Lugovoi’s statements, the Federal Tax Service included two more companies in the list of device manufacturers - LLC Scientific and Technical Center Izmeritel and LLC Pragmatic. The first company was founded by Shtrikh-Group LLC and is associated with the fiscal data operator Yarus, the second was founded by a private individual. This was done due to a shortage of storage devices.

In addition to RIC, Atlas-Kart CJSC and Bezant CJSC, which also previously worked with the Federal Tax Service, are associated with Shcherbakov. It is known from the Republic investigation that in 2012 Atlas-Kart developed the concept of reforming cash registers for 1 ruble, and Besant made the previous version of the information storage device - EKLZ (“electronic control tape secure”). The company purchased these devices through intermediaries from the Singaporean company Smartronic Projects PTE LTD.

Due to its monopoly position in the market, from 2004 to 2009, Besant earned 26.5 billion rubles. Besant and Atlas-Kart are linked together through JSC Scientific and Technical Center Spetsproekt, which is owned by Omega-Holding. The co-owner of this structure, which also established RIK LLC, was Shcherbakov - now it is owned by Oksana Oreshina. She was also a beneficiary of BVA-Bank.

Shcherbakov was also associated with one of the distributors of fiscal drives - the FDO-METTEM company. Shcherbakov owned the Morion company, which was a shareholder of FDO-METTEM - first personally, and then through affiliates. This company owned a plant for the production of tachographs, which in 2013 the Ministry of Transport obliged legal entities to install on all cars. These devices, which record various vehicle indicators, must have special cryptographic protection. The already well-known Atlas-Kart acted as a monopoly supplier of cryptographic protection products. FAS accused the Ministry of Transport of deliberately tailoring the terms of reference to this company.

Shcherbakov himself had indirect connections with ex-Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov. The thread leads to the St. Petersburg company Scientific Instruments, which became the second manufacturer of EKLZ after the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service to oblige the monopoly company Besant to purchase drives from another supplier.

The head of “Scientific Instruments” is called retired KGB colonel Valery Sokolov, an acquaintance of the former head of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev and the husband of the assistant to the State Duma speaker Gryzlov. In 2002, Shcherbakov’s Omega Holding owned 41% of CJSC Research Institute of Physics of Fullerenes and New Materials of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Another 10% of the institute belonged to Sokolov’s Scientific Instruments, 31% to Viktor Petrik. The latter is known for having, together with Gryzlov, patented a filter for purifying radiation-contaminated water. In addition, in 2007-2008, Sokolov owned a quarter of Omega Holding.

In addition, Shcherbakov was associated with Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, since it was he who oversaw the cash reform in the government. Shcherbakov’s name appeared in documents and news regarding the purchase of buildings around the Skolkovo center, which were purchased for Shuvalov’s wife.

Through RIC LLC and one of its ultimate owners, Elena Ionova, Shcherbakov could also interact with the former Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman. Ionova owned a software manufacturer, RVO Group. The co-owners of this company were associated with the RTK-Leasing company, an asset of Reiman, according to an investigation by the German police. German law enforcement officers studied the activities of this company in connection with the purchase of equipment for Rostelecom and the state telecommunications holding Svyazinvest, and money laundering through offshore transfers.

Criminal prosecution of Shcherbakov

On November 26, 2014, the Central Bank revoked the license of BVA-Bank due to questionable transactions related to the withdrawal of funds abroad in large volumes. Shcherbakov was considered the main beneficiary - he owned about 30% of the bank. Also on the list of co-owners are at least eight people associated with the Besant company and related structures.

In February 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case against the deputy former head of BVA-Bank and head of OJSC NTC Spetsproekt Konstantin Sergutin, entrepreneur Alexander Domrachev and Shcherbakov himself as the organizer of a criminal group. They were accused of transferring large sums of money in foreign currency to foreign accounts, bypassing legal procedures.

According to investigators, for a small percentage of transactions, Domrachev, through a network of companies, entered into contracts for the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Goznak for the supply of imported components for the production of excise stamps for alcohol products and imported them from Asia back to Russia at an inflated cost. Gosznak received products at the regular price. Money from contracts was allegedly withdrawn from the enterprise with the help of companies previously associated with the supply of EKLZ drives - OJSC Technotransservice Engineering, CJSC TTS-Progress, etc. The already mentioned Singaporean company Smartronic Projects was also involved - it also appeared as a shareholder of BVA -Bank and supplier of ECLZ devices.

However, the management of Gosznak had no complaints against the suppliers, and the accused Domrachev and Sergutin insisted on their innocence. Shcherbakov had already fled to London by that time and was put on the international wanted list. After an investigation, law enforcement agencies recognized the transactions as actually completed and dropped charges against the suspects.

Remote orientation to Shcherbakova

The future of cash reform

It is not only manufacturers of fiscal storage devices that have business interests in “cash reform”. Special operators will process information from the cash register to the Federal Tax Service. At the moment, there are five structures of this type: “First OFD” of the new owner of RBC Grigory Berezkin, “Peter-service Spetstekhnologii”, part of Alisher Usmanov’s USM Holdings, “Yarus” (“Shtrikh-M”), “Evotor-OFD” of the co-founder Qiwi of Andrey Romanenko and Sberbank of German Gref, as well as Taxcom of Nikolai Tsarev and Levon Amdilyan. This market segment has an approximate turnover of 6 billion rubles per year.

The market for new cash registers is also under the control of a small group of companies - Shtrikh-M, Atol, KKS Group of Companies and Pilot Group of Companies. The cost of the new cash register is estimated at 20-30 thousand rubles. It is possible to remodel some cash registers, but it is quite expensive. Some of the devices, in principle, do not require Internet connection procedures, so their owners had to purchase a new online cash register before July 1. RBC experts estimate the total market for cash register equipment in the range from 24 billion to 45 billion rubles.

Igor Shuvalov’s colleague on cash control reform died in London.

Businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was called the “beneficiary” of cash reform, died in London. Republic reports this with reference to the entrepreneur’s former business partner and his acquaintance. According to the latter, Vladimir Shcherbakov committed suicide.

As the publication recalls, State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi stated that Mr. Shcherbakov is affiliated with RIC LLC. This company had a monopoly on the market for a new type of cash register equipment that can transmit data to the Federal Tax Service (FTS) online. All entrepreneurs are required to switch to such cash registers from July 1. However, in March, the Federal Tax Service included two more new players in the register of cash register manufacturers - Scientific and Technical Center Izmeritel LLC and Pragmatic LLC. Thus, RIC LLC lost its monopoly.

The businessman was on the international wanted list for more than two years in connection with the BVA-Bank case (deprived of its license in the fall of 2014) for the illegal withdrawal of more than 10 billion rubles from Russia. This week, Kommersant learned that the investigation department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs decided to drop the case “for lack of corpus delicti.”

The London police were unable to confirm the death of Vladimir Shcherbakov. A Scotland Yard spokesman explained to Republic that he could not verify information about the incident without indicating the exact address. The London Metropolitan Police Department has also asked for more information.

Republic special correspondent Dmitry Filonov said in an interview with Business FM radio that Mr. Shcherbakov committed suicide before the criminal case was closed.

Non-public activities
What is known about businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov

A businessman who was called a beneficiary of cash reform has died in London. The name of Vladimir Shcherbakov has been repeatedly associated by the media with the company RIC, which until recently was a monopolist in the online cash register market. This summer they became mandatory for Russian retail. In addition, Shcherbakov was involved in a high-profile case involving the withdrawal of billions of rubles from Russia. According to the Republic, the man committed suicide. What events preceded the death of the businessman?

Vladimir Shcherbakov left behind himself very little information in both the local and British media. And this despite the fact that the businessman is a defendant in a high-profile criminal case and a widely discussed Russian reform.

In 2015, the police detained the former co-owner of the little-known BVA Bank, Vladimir Shcherbakov, and his companions. They were suspected of organizing a major scam: allegedly, since 2011, businessmen had illegally transferred about 10 billion rubles abroad. for a percentage of each transaction. The scheme was as follows: they purchased raw materials in Singapore for the production of Russian banknotes. The goods went first to the European Union and then to Russia. The customer, Goznak, bought the raw materials at a price that was several times higher. Ironically, the management of the government agency did not complain about the cost. Two defendants in the case were placed under house arrest, and the main suspect, Shcherbakov, managed to escape to London.

What follows is an interesting chronology of events. On March 30, 2017, Shcherbakov was put on the wanted list in Russia and arrested in absentia. On July 1, the law on online cash registers came into effect - the transition to cash registers that are permanently connected to the Federal Tax Service. The only manufacturer of fiscal drives, a key part in them, was the RIC company. The structure was associated with Shcherbakov. On July 3, the case regarding the withdrawal of funds was closed “for lack of evidence of a crime.”

The businessman might not have known about this, says State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoi, who observed the businessman’s activities for some time. “A few days ago someone told me that he supposedly died. I don't know any details. I read that for some reason the criminal case was dropped. A few months ago I looked into this issue quite deeply. It seemed strange to me that the criminal case was suddenly closed, although there were eight arrests. And suddenly, somehow it stopped,” Lugovoi noted.

It is not yet known under what exact circumstances Shcherbakov died. If this is really a suicide, the British police will be even more reluctant to disclose information, and local journalists know little about the businessman, noted Kommersant FM’s own correspondent in London, Andrei Ostalsky: “The British press wrote quite a lot about the amazing suicide of Boris Berezovsky. Another death of Perepilichny - he was running, suddenly fell and died. And it seems that the remains of some extremely exotic plant poison were found in it. They remember, of course, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. And all this is built into a rather ominous chain in the eyes of the average British consumer of information. I think British journalists will also dig up this story. She will immediately take her place in the same chain. Shcherbakov was still unknown. He was endlessly confused with the one and only Shcherbakov, who is more or less known in Britain.”

We are talking about the former Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR and head of the board of directors of the Avtotor company Vladimir Shcherbakov, the full namesake of the deceased businessman. At the end of 2015, information appeared in the British press that Shcherbakov wanted to buy and then demolish the former home of The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. But the journalists had to apologize - this Shcherbakov did not intend to buy the historical building, but he did not have time.

The Russian Embassy in the UK is checking information about the death of businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov. So far they have stated that they have not received any reports of the death of a Russian citizen.

03/30/2017, Thu, 17:29, Moscow time, Text: Valeria Shmyrova

Interpol has put Vladimir Shcherbakov, the beneficiary of Russia's only supplier of fiscal storage devices for cash registers, on the wanted list. By July 1, 2017, all 2 million cash registers in Russia should be equipped with such drives. Their only supplier is linked to the monopoly of the previous cash reform that took place in the mid-2000s.

Interpol is looking for Shcherbakov

Interpol has put on the wanted list Russian businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, who, according to deputy Andrei Lugovoy, is the beneficiary of the Rick company. The Rick company has a monopoly on the production of fiscal drives for cash registers. By July 1, 2017, every cash register in Russia should be equipped with such a drive, Republic recalls. Through these chips, cash registers will transmit sales data to the tax service over the Internet.

The Interpol website contains a link to Shcherbakov, who was asked to be put on the wanted list by Russian law enforcement agencies. Shcherbakov is accused of illegally withdrawing large sums from Russia using forged documents. We are talking about organized crime, since the withdrawal of funds was carried out by the group of which he was a member.

The withdrawal of funds was carried out through BVA Bank, which became the subject of an investigation by Russian law enforcement agencies in 2014. The money was withdrawn under Goznak contracts by inflating prices for raw materials. In addition to Shcherbakov, the accused are the owner of intermediary companies, Alexander Domrachev, and the chairman of the board of BVA Bank, Konstantin Sergutin.

BVA-bank and its connection with cash desks

The group in which Shcherbakov acted consists of at least eight people - co-owners of BVA Bank. All of these individuals had one way or another to do with the cash reform – not this year, but the previous one, carried out in the mid-2000s. The previous reform, like the current one, also required all cash registers to be equipped with a new component. It was a secure electronic control tape (ECT) - the predecessor of the fiscal drive. It differed from it in having a smaller memory capacity and lacking an Internet connection.

Interpol targeting Vladimir Shcherbakov

The only license for the production of EKLZ was issued to the Besant company, which in 2004-2009. received 26.5 billion rubles from the sale of chips. Besant purchased components for the ECLZ from the Singaporean company Smartronic Projects, and then from the Kores company, which defended its right to the FSB to offer the same parts for less money. The project for re-equipping the cash registers itself was developed by order of the FSB by the Atlas-Kart company. In 2009, another vendor, the Scientific Instruments company, was involved in the production of EKLZ, connected with the FSB through various of its employees.

An investigation by the Republic resource showed that Vladimir Shcherbakov, wanted by Interpol, or his full namesake, owned 60% of the Atlas-Kart company through another company. It was not possible to establish the final owner of another 40% of Atlas-Kart shares. An investigation into the activities of BVA Bank revealed that Shcherbakov was its largest shareholder. The investigation believes that it was he who led the group that was withdrawing funds from Russia.

Part of the shares of BVA Bank belongs to the already mentioned Singaporean company Smartronic Projects, which supplied components for EKLZ. It was also established that Shcherbakov had connections with employees of Scientific Instruments - they were co-owners of the same companies.

According to Interpol, Shcherbakov was born on Sakhalin in 1959. He has Russian and Belgian citizenship. In 2008, a person with that name was a member of the Advisory and Expert Council on Cash Control Equipment at the Federal Agency for Industry (Rosprom), where he was a representative of the Ministry of Information and Communications, the predecessor of the current Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. Also, Shcherbakov’s full namesake appeared in the media in 1997 as the head of the marketing department of the Intellect-Service company. The company developed software and supplied equipment for the retail sector.

Fiscal drives and their production

A fiscal drive is a chip installed in a cash register and connected to the Internet. Data about checks is recorded on it. On July 1, 2017, a law comes into force according to which any cash register in Russia will have to send data about each sale to the Federal Tax Service. The technical ability to send data online is provided by the fiscal drive.

Thus, owners of cash registers have three months left to equip their devices with fiscal drives. The cost of such a chip is 6-8 thousand rubles. Since there are about 2 million cash desks in Russia, the total cost of the necessary storage devices reaches 12-16 billion rubles. The chip lasts about a year, after which it has to be replaced.

Only Rick has a license to produce chips. In March 2017, deputy Andrei Lugovoy, speaking in the State Duma, named Rick among the companies that receive disproportionately large profits due to a monopoly of one kind or another in the cash market. “Rick” Lugovoi indicated Shcherbakov as the beneficiary.

The distribution of fiscal drives, along with two other companies, is carried out by the FDO-METTEM company. A block of its shares is owned by the Morion company, which until 2008 belonged to Shcherbakov, and then to persons associated with him. At its plant in Tatarstan, FDO-METTEM produces tachographs - devices for recording the speed of cars. Since 2013, all legal entities in Russia must have such crypto-protected devices on their cars. The only supplier of cryptographic protection means for tachographs is Atlas-Kart. This is not the only thread connecting Rick with its fiscal drives and Atlas Cards, writes Republic.

Original of this material
© RBC news agency, 03/30/2017 The “beneficiary” of cash reform was put on the international wanted list Natalia Demchenko

Businessman Vladimir Shcherbakov, whom State Duma deputy Andrei Lugovoy named the beneficiary of a monopoly manufacturer of fiscal drives for cash registers, has been put on the international wanted list. The relevant information is posted on the Interpol website. This was brought to the attention of Republic, to which an Interpol representative confirmed that Shcherbakov was wanted.

Russian law enforcement agencies put Shcherbakov on the international wanted list due to suspicions of large-scale withdrawal of funds abroad using fake documents and as part of an organized group, according to the Interpol alert.

The fact that Shcherbakov is a beneficiary of companies affiliated with each other that produce fiscal drives was announced at the beginning of March at a meeting in the State Duma by deputy Andrei Lugovoy. He was indignant that the production of fiscal drives, with which all cash registers must be equipped by July 1, 2017, is monopolized and Atlas-Kart JSC, Rick LLC and Bezant CJSC are making money on it, and due to shortcomings in According to the legislation, entrepreneurs are forced to buy devices at a price ten times higher than the cost price.

Other market participants, according to Lugovoi, cannot get their samples certified at the 8th FSB center: the technical requirements for the fiscal drive, which should be published on the official website of the Federal Tax Service, are in fact incomplete - “something is missing, something not said,” explained Lugovoi. “Someone is artificially at the government level, at the level of law enforcement agencies, doing everything to prevent new fiscal drives from appearing on the market,” the deputy said. [...]

New chips will enrich German Gref, Alisher Usmanov, Grigory Berezkin, Leonid Reiman Original of this material
© Republic.ru, 03/30/2017, Illustrations: via Republic.ru Cash fraternity Dmitry Filonov

By July, a complete replacement of all cash register equipment in Russia should be completed - businesses will have to re-equip more than two million cash registers. The entire volume of the resulting market is at least 20 billion rubles. Alisher Usmanov, German Gref and Grigory Berezkin are already involved in the cash register business. But the majority of this pie is claimed by little-known businessmen closely associated with the FSB. And the monopoly manufacturer of chips that will track all cash transactions in the country turned out to be closely connected with the mysterious entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov, who, as Republic found out, is wanted by Interpol. The businessman is suspected of illegally withdrawing money from the country. But that's not all. We figured out the complex schemes of the Russian cryptographic business in order to understand what it has to do with former minister Leonid Reiman, Dendy console manufacturer Andrei Cheglakov, as well as friends of Boris Gryzlov and Nikolai Patrushev.

Invaders of new niches In July 2012, the Federal Tax Service announced an open competition for a project to improve the control system for cash payments. Essentially, the department wanted to improve the current system for recording data from cash registers. Four companies took part in the competition with a starting price of 1.5 million rubles, but the winner’s offer was difficult to beat. The Atlas-Kart company agreed to develop proposals for only 1 ruble. The contract was concluded in September, and less than three months later the Federal Tax Service approved the finished reform project.

It was not in vain that Atlas-Kart undertook the development of the project for the ruble: the structures associated with it became the only suppliers of fiscal drives provided for by the reform - coin-sized devices that save and encrypt data on receipts. According to various estimates, there are now about two million cash registers in Russia. Each of them must be equipped with a fiscal drive, the cost of which ranges from 6,000 to 8,000 rubles. This means that we can talk about a market volume of 12–16 billion rubles per year.

This is not the first time such luck has smiled upon the owners of Atlas Cards - after the previous cash register reform, the company Besant, associated with them, turned out to be a monopolist. The predecessor of fiscal drives was EKLZ (“electronic control tape protected”) - the same drive, but without an Internet connection and with limited memory. Entrepreneurs were required to install ECLZ in the mid-2000s; it had to be changed once a year (the new fiscal drive has the same service life). As Kommersant wrote, the introduction of EKLZ was lobbied by the FSB under the slogan of fighting black cash. The production of equipment was also licensed by the FSB - and the only license was received by Besant, which then quickly raised prices by almost half, forcing dissatisfied entrepreneurs to complain to the website of then President Dmitry Medvedev.

How much did Besant earn? According to Republic calculations, the only manufacturer of EKLZ (and its legal successor with the same name) earned 26.5 billion rubles from 2004 to 2009 alone. But 90% of the cost of the finished EKLZ unit (5274 rubles) was the electronic module. “Bezant” bought it from two Russian intermediaries, and those from the Singaporean Smartronic Projects PTE LTD. In 2009, the Kores company offered to supply Besant with the same electronic modules for 2,000 rubles. Besant refused, and Kores complained to the FAS. The name Smartronic Projects is worth remembering. The beneficiaries of the Singapore company are unknown, but it participated in a variety of roles in most of the schemes of the owners of Besant and Atlas Cards.

The FAS investigation showed that Besant and related companies (Atlas-kart was among them even then) were abusing their dominant position, and the FAS obliged the monopolist to enter into a contract with Kores. But by that time, Besant was not alone on the market: a month after the start of the investigation in 2009, another manufacturer began producing EKLZ - the St. Petersburg company Scientific Instruments.

The leaders of Scientific Instruments were also no strangers to the FSB. The board of directors of the company was headed (and is still headed) by retired KGB colonel Valery Sokolov, whom the Fontanka publication calls a good friend of the former head of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev. In August 2008, Sokolov’s wife Irina headed Vladimir Putin’s public reception in St. Petersburg, and at the same time was an assistant to State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov. As Kommersant wrote, Sokolova advised Scientific Instruments on legal issues, and on behalf of Gryzlov, she “oversaw the legal subtleties” of preparing a bill on the protection of cash registers. In conversations with Novaya Gazeta, St. Petersburg entrepreneurs called Sokolova the developer of the ECLZ law, and promised to sue Gryzlov. It is interesting that Gryzlov himself worked for 20 years in the structures of the St. Petersburg Elektronmash plant, which has been producing cash registers since Soviet times, and in the early 1990s became one of the first to produce cash registers based on Western models.

The new competitor, despite such serious connections, remained a nominal player, managing to win only 2% of the market by mid-2010. But was he seriously going to fight for the market? “Cryptography is a highly specialized topic, there are not many competitors. The people behind these companies [Atlas-Kart and Besant] skillfully lobbied their interests in various departments and became monopolists. When competitors appeared, they already managed to skim off all the cream,” says Republic’s interlocutor, who is familiar with the activities of Atlas-Karts and its affiliated structures.

Based on the results of the investigation, the FAS recognized that “Scientific Instruments” and “Bezant” are owned by different groups of people. But in fact, there was still a connection between the beneficiaries Besant and Scientific Instruments.

Mysterious owners Many companies around Besant were associated with people from the Russian holding Steepler - once a large system integrator and manufacturer of the Dendy console, popular in the 90s. Republic has already written about these connections in detail; they are also shown in the diagram published by Forbes. But there is another interested party.

The name “Atlas-cards” is consonant with the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Scientific and Technical Center “Atlas” - the main developer of special communications and information security means since Soviet times. The FSUE was under the jurisdiction of the FSB, and in 2008 it was transferred to the subordination of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. But Atlas-Kart is a private company. Who does it belong to?

Deputy Andrei Lugovoi, declaring in early March that Besant, Atlas-Kart and the related company Rick - the holder of the same FSB license for the production of fiscal drives - were unfairly enriching themselves from the sale of devices, named entrepreneur Vladimir Shcherbakov as the beneficiary of the scheme .

A person with the same name and surname was for a long time a co-owner of 60% of Atlas Cards through the Omega Holding company. The remaining 40% of Atlas Card is owned by the Service Plus company, which is owned by an offshore company and registered at the same address as Steepler. Steepler founder Andrei Cheglakov told Forbes that Service Plus is the company of “his friend.” When asked by Republic about Shcherbakov, Cheglakov only answered that “he hasn’t communicated with anyone from this circle for a long time.”

Very little is known about Vladimir Shcherbakov; there are almost no mentions of him on the Internet. It is only known that in 2008, his full namesake was a member of the advisory and expert council on cash register equipment at the Federal Agency for Industry (Rosprom). On the council, Shcherbakov represented the Ministry of Information and Communications, which was then headed by Leonid Reiman. Shcherbakov's namesake was mentioned in the press in 1997 as the head of the marketing department of the software developer and retail equipment supplier Intellect-Service.

It was not possible to contact Vladimir Shcherbakov during the preparation of this article: according to one of Republic’s interlocutors, he is on the international wanted list at the request of Russian law enforcement agencies and has left the country. On the Interpol website there is a reference to Vladimir Shcherbakov, who was born on Sakhalin in 1959 and has Russian and Belgian citizenship. But he is wanted not because of his business with cash registers, but for “a large-scale withdrawal of money from the country using illegal schemes.” An Interpol representative confirmed to Republic the relevance of the orientation.

Apparently, we are talking about a case of illegal withdrawal abroad through a small BVA bank, which Russian law enforcement agencies opened in 2014. The co-owners of this bank were at least eight people associated with companies involved in the EKLZ scheme (including the Cypriot nominee owners of Service Plus).

The largest shareholder of the bank (and, according to investigators, the leader of the criminal group) was Vladimir Shcherbakov. In addition to him, the bank's chairman of the board, Konstantin Sergutin, and a native of Steepler, Alexander Domrachev, whom investigators considered the owner of intermediary companies involved in fraudulent schemes (both are now under recognizance not to leave), were also under investigation. As stated in the case materials, funds were withdrawn from Goznak contracts - Andrei Cheglakov worked there for a long time. It is interesting that companies with the same names as those used to supply electronic modules for EKLZ were used to withdraw funds. Another shareholder of BVA Bank was the same Singaporean company Smartronic Projects, from which chips for drives were purchased.

Shcherbakov also has indirect connections with Boris Gryzlov’s acquaintances from Scientific Instruments. In 2002, Shcherbakov’s Omega Holding owned 41% of CJSC Research Institute of Physics of Fullerenes and New Materials of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Another 10% was owned by Scientific Instruments, whose board of directors is headed by Valery Sokolov. And 31% was owned by the notorious Viktor Petrik, who, together with Gryzlov, was a co-author of a patent for a filter for purifying radiation-contaminated water. Then this development was recognized as pseudoscientific.

From 2007 to 2009, the owner of 25% of Omega Holding was not only Shcherbakov, but also Sokolov’s full namesake from Scientific Instruments. It turns out that Sokolov’s wife worked on the EKLZ reform, and he himself could have been a co-owner or director of both companies that made money from this reform.

One of the distributors selling fiscal drives, the FDO-METTEM company, a joint venture of a subsidiary of the German concern Continental and several Russian entrepreneurs, is also associated with Shcherbakov’s structures. Among the shareholders of FDO-METTEM is the Morion company, which was owned by Vladimir Shcherbakov until 2008, and then by persons affiliated with him. FDO-METTEM has a plant in Tatarstan that produces tachographs - devices that record the speed and other parameters of cars, as well as the working hours of drivers. Since 2013, the Ministry of Transport has adopted an order obliging all vehicles owned by legal entities to be equipped with tachographs with cryptographic protection. The only supplier of cryptographic protection tools was the same Atlas-Kart. FAS argued that the technical requirements of the order of the Ministry of Transport were written specifically for the development of Atlas Maps.

Companies with history The investigation against Besant was not the only one that the FAS conducted in connection with the production of EKLZ. Then the department did not like the work of the Zelenograd plant “Angstrem”, which produced the “heart” of EKLZ - cryptographic chips. The fact is that the chips from Zelenograd did not immediately reach the Tensor plant in Dubna, where their final assembly took place. Angstrem produced chips and sold them to Singapore's Smartronic Projects - in 2008, this contract brought in a third of the plant's revenue, about 460 million rubles. The Singaporeans transferred the chips to China to the Flash Electronics plant, where partial assembly of the ECLZ took place. Then the devices were again moved to Russia with the help of Alexander Domrachev’s companies - Unitek and Technotransservice Engineering. And only then did we get to the final assembly at Tensor in Dubna. The Singapore company had the exclusive right to purchase chips - and the FAS did not like this.

The largest co-owners of Tensor at that time were the co-founders of Steepler - Cheglakov and Andrey Andreev (about 18% each). At the time of the start of EKLZ implementation, Angstrem belonged to Sergei Veremeev, a partner of banker Sergei Pugachev at Mezhprombank. But when the FAS began an investigation, the enterprise was already controlled by a group of “St. Petersburg signalmen”, which was always associated with Leonid Reiman, who served as Minister of Communications of the Russian Federation in 2004–2008. In 2011, Reiman, who retired from government service, became the official owner of Angstrem. FAS representatives claimed that Angstrem was also connected to Besant through an opaque scheme, but did not provide evidence in court, citing the complexity of the scheme.

In the early 1990s, Reiman in St. Petersburg was responsible for the creation of joint ventures with foreigners and the privatization of city communications companies. Shares in the joint venture and privatized companies were then consolidated into the Telecominvest holding. The holding, for example, owned the cellular operator North-West GSM, on the basis of which Megafon grew. The shareholders were offshore companies, but Reiman was considered the real Russian co-owner of Telecominvest. The Moscow office of Telecominvest was headed by Vladimir Putin’s ex-wife Lyudmila. At the end of the 2000s, German authorities investigated a corruption case against Reiman.

Leonid Reiman, through his representative, told Republic that he does not have any companies that deal with cash registers. Be that as it may, the “St. Petersburg signalmen” were well acquainted with the cash market. St. Petersburg SKB Iskra, which has been developing cash register equipment since Soviet times, has worked closely with many large companies in the telecommunications industry. Together with the state-owned Svyazinvest, the design bureau carried out automation of enterprises in 50 regions of the country. “The most powerful industry that used cash desks was the post office (FSUE Russian Post, subordinate to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. - Republic). Reiman, who was directly involved in this, was, of course, familiar with the issues,” Marina Yaroshevskaya, co-owner and general director of Iskra, told Republic correspondents. According to her, in the early 2000s, Iskra itself worked on additional protection for cash registers: “In essence, we were developing the predecessor of EKLZ. But we were told that we needed to implement protection. And they offered it as RIC, a Russian intellectual map that was produced by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Atlas. And then Iskra didn’t bother with it, we just gave away what we had. “Bezant,” who was part of this department, took over this work.”

License holder The name of the only licensed manufacturer of fiscal drives, RIC, coincides with the name of the chip developed by FSUE Atlas, which Yaroshevskaya is talking about. And one of the co-owners of RIC is associated with the RTK-Leasing company, the beneficiary of which was Leonid Reiman.

The ultimate owners of RIC are two individuals, Elena Ionova and Sergey Litvinov. The latter, according to SPARK, also heads the Komtrin company, which is associated with the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin. True, Berezkin himself told Republic that Litvinov had already resigned from Comtrin.

Even less is known about Elena Ionova. Previously, she was the owner of the software manufacturer RVO Group, data about which could not be found in Republic open sources. A former employee of the company says that RVO Group developed software for data storage about four years ago, but the project fell apart.

The co-owners of RVO Group were associated with the RTK-Leasing company, which in one of the German police investigations appeared as an asset of Leonid Reiman. German law enforcement officers alleged that Reiman, as minister, forced state-owned Rostelecom and Svyazinvest to use the services of RTK-Leasing. German police assumed that RTK-Leasing was intended to make a profit by siphoning funds from Rostelecom and Svyazinvest subsidiaries, including through inflated leasing rates.

One of the former shareholders of RVO Group, Pavel Kaplunov, was the holder of a small stake in RTK-Leasing at the beginning of the 2000s, and another, Mikhail Margolin, was a member of the board of RTK-Leasing. In 2011, RVO Group began a leapfrog with the owners; for some time, 98% of RVO belonged to the Data Storage Center company, the co-owner of which, in addition to Kaplunov and Margolin, was Cheglakov from Steepler.

In 2012, RVO changed its owner again. The sole shareholder of the company was the same Atlas-Kart. But in March 2015, the asset was transferred to a private individual - Andrey Golub, and in November he transferred 60% to Elena Ionova, the owner of half of RIC. That same year, interesting changes occurred with the RVO. In 2014, the company’s revenue amounted to a modest 3.5 million rubles, and in 2015 it jumped to 1.7 billion. Any government orders of RVO Group are not reflected in the Spark database. Ionova remained the owner of the company for just over a year; in December 2016, her share was transferred to another individual.

The number of interconnected companies in the case of both EKLZ and fiscal drives goes into the dozens. Many have not changed since the mid-2000s or even the beginning of the 2000s. Why? “I think there are two factors. The first is laziness. Second, too many interests converged. If you start opening new companies, claims may arise,” says one of Republic’s interlocutors. According to him, this trail of companies contains both the strength and weakness of the system: yes, traces remain, but there is not one person whose removal would allow the business to be intercepted.

In the near future, RIC, like Besant once, may have a competitor in the fiscal storage market. On March 10, one of the largest manufacturers of cash register equipment, Shtrikh-M, began accepting applications for their supply. Representatives of the company expect that any day they should receive a license from the FSB and be included in the register of manufacturers. But at the time the article was submitted, only “RIK” was in the register. “We decided to help RIK, since it may not have time to produce the required number of drives,” a representative of Shtrikh-M told Republic. At the same time, he noted that the drives produced by them will primarily be supplied for their own cash register equipment.

RIC representatives told Republic that they had forwarded questions to the company's CEO, but had not provided answers by the time the article was published.

The last mile There is another segment in the market for new online cash registers, which is being developed by more transparent and large companies. After the seller installs a new cash register with a fiscal drive, the receipt data will be transmitted online to the Federal Tax Service. At this stage, another link enters the chain - the fiscal data operator. As Nikolai Zhmurenko, director of the large operator OFD.ru, explains, the entrepreneur will have 30 days to transfer data from his cash register to the operator - in fact, connect it to the Internet, and the operator will have one day to transfer the data to the Federal Tax Service. This market segment, based on the number of cash desks in the country, can be estimated at 6 billion rubles per year. But operators say that there is actually less money.

The OFD.ru operator is owned by another structure that was previously associated with Leonid Reiman - Peter-Service. Together with other assets of Telecominvest, the asset went to billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Initially, the company developed billing systems, and then moved into fiscal data. In 2016, Usmanov and his partners invested 500 million rubles in the company.

OFD.ru is not the only fiscal data operator. Four more companies received licenses for such activities - Energy Systems and Communications (EKS), Evotor OFD, Yarus and Taxcom. Who owns them? It is interesting that all companies that will collect information about cash flows in Russia have offshore companies among their shareholders in one form or another. For example, the owner of the ECS is the Cyprus Ospina Company, although the final beneficiary, according to Republic, is the owner of the ESN group Grigory Berezkin. The businessman’s representative confirmed to Republic that EKS is one of his group’s projects. In 2016, Forbes magazine estimated Berezkin’s fortune at $700 million. According to a representative of the Unified Social Tax, Energy Systems and Communications previously developed a platform for electricity meters, and the principles of operation of the system there are similar to fiscal data.

Another operator, Evotor OFD, is a subsidiary of the Evotor company, the creation of which was initiated by Sberbank. “At first I didn’t like this name,” said the head of Sberbank, German Gref, at the presentation of the project. - And then they explained to me that “Evotor” is an application for a very ambitious goal. This is an evolution in trade." The company also produces smart cash registers for small businesses.

Sberbank owns 40% in Evotor, another 30% belongs to the cash register manufacturer Atol. The new project of Sberbank was headed by the co-founder of the Qiwi payment system Andrey Romanenko, he, his father and partners own the remaining part of Evotor OFD. It is interesting that the parent Evotor is not the only owner of the operator - it owns only 70% of the company, and the remaining 30% belongs to the Singaporean AVT Innovation PTE.

The fourth operator, Yarus, is also owned by offshore companies - Cypriot Kylachi Holdings Limited (67%) and Singaporean Flexwell International Pte (33%). The cash register manufacturer Shtrikh-M calls itself the ultimate owner of the operator.

The fifth operator, Taxcom, has existed since 2000. The company specializes in the implementation of electronic document management systems, and among its clients are the Presidential Administration, the State Duma, the Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Central Bank, Sberbank, and Russian Post. Together with the Ministry of Finance and the Federal Tax Service, Taxcom even carried out several pilot projects to introduce secure electronic document management systems in the regions. The company has four owners, each of whom owns 25%: Olga Khazova, Nikolay Tsarev, Levon Amdilyan (through the Digitest company) and the Cypriot Virgton Management Limited (through its subsidiary Belton). The offshore, according to the Cyprus registry, is owned by 1C Limited.

Taxcom co-owner Levon Amdilyan has been known in the IT market since the early 1990s. He was the founder of the International Computer Club (ICC) company, in which his good friend Mikhail Mishustin worked under the leadership of Amdilyan. Now Mishustin heads the Federal Tax Service - this is the department responsible for the reform of cash registers. Another shareholder, Nikolai Tsarev, became a co-owner of Taxcom in January 2017, after the company received an operator’s license. Tsarev has also been involved in information technology since the 90s. Together with venture investor Alexander Galitsky, he is a co-owner of Elvis+ Group, a developer of information security solutions. Galitsky is a member of the public council of the Federal Tax Service.

The services of all fiscal data operators cost almost the same - about 3,000 rubles per year. Why is that? OFD.ru director Nikolai Zhmurenko says that infrastructure costs for all operators and expectations for return on investment are approximately the same. “The first operator calculated how much services should cost in order to pay off on time, and the others began to focus on this amount. If you bet more, there will be no clients. Less means working at a loss,” argues Zhmurenko. At the same time, according to him, OFD.ru plans to develop additional services and make money on them.

Is it possible that new fiscal data operators will emerge? For example, Yandex wanted to be such an operator; it even registered the company Yandex.OFD for this purpose. However, in the register of companies that have received a license published on the website of the Federal Tax Service, the Yandex subsidiary is missing. “Five operators are enough to cover the entire country, and at the same time they will make money. If there are seven, then everyone will break even. If there is more, then everyone will work at a loss,” Zhmurenko believes. According to him, if the market is significant, then new players will come, old ones may leave - this was the case in other newly formed markets.

Vladimir Shcherbakov, a businessman called the “beneficiary” of the cash register reform, according to Republic, took his own life in London. In its report, the publication refers to two sources - an acquaintance and a former business partner of the deceased entrepreneur.

So what is Mr. Shcherbakov known for? Yes, because his companies were the only ones that received rich contracts during the implementation of “innovative” reforms carried out by the Russian government.

In particular, the chip manufacturer is directly connected with the entrepreneur, who will monitor all payment transactions. He was the only one who received a license from the FSB to supply fiscal drives - the main element of new cash registers, which will immediately transmit information about it to the Federal Tax Service after each transaction is completed. All businessmen should be equipped with such equipment by July 1, 2017.

The history of choosing the executor of this contract is interesting. Five years ago, the Federal Tax Service announced a competition for a project to improve the control system for cash payments. There were four contenders for victory, but no one was able to beat the conditions offered by the Atlas-Kart company affiliated with Shcherbakov - it accepted the obligation to complete all the work for 1 ruble and received the coveted contract.

The businessmen knew what they were doing - literally three months later the “cash reform” began. This meant that each of the cash registers, the total number of which in Russia is about two million, had to be equipped with a fiscal storage device costing from 6 to 8 thousand rubles. The total amount of this renovation of calculations is 12-16 billion rubles per year.

And this, as Republic writes, is not the only commercial success of companies associated with Shcherbakov. It was preceded by the monopoly of another company affiliated with the businessman at the previous stage of the cash reform, when all cash registers were required to be equipped with an electronic control tape with protection (ECLZ). It differed from the drives installed this year in that it did not have access to the Internet and its memory capacity was limited, so it required regular replacement.

The only license then was also issued by the FSB, a company associated with Shcherbakov, "Bezant".

The entrepreneur also took part in a program to equip vehicles with tachographs and produce biopassports.

But recently, Vladimir Shcherbakov lived in London, where he was hiding from the investigation into the case of the illegal withdrawal from Russia of 10 billion rubles from BVA Bank. The Ministry of Internal Affairs first put him on the international wanted list, but literally on July 3 the case was suddenly dropped “for lack of evidence of a crime, and the data from the Interpol database on Shcherbakov was deleted.

The London police did not confirm the suicide and death of the Businessman at Republic’s request.