A month before the murder, Andrei Burlakov accused the son of Igor Yusufov of the raider seizure of the Wadan shipyards

A month before the murder in the Moscow Khutorok cafe, businessman Andrei Burlakov tried to initiate a criminal case against the son of Vitaly, a member of the board of directors of Gazprom Igor Yusufov , and also to have his stake in the Bank of Moscow arrested, lawyer Mikhail Khalilulin told Izvestia. representing the interests of Burlakov’s common-law wife Anna Etkina.

September 29 - that evening the killer shot Burlakov and Anna Etkina (she is in serious condition in the hospital) - Vitaly Yusufov sold his shares of the Bank of Moscow to VTB Bank.

The director of the anti-corruption center “Analytics and Security” Ruslan Milchenko confirmed to Izvestia that two months ago Etkina and Burlakov turned to the center for help.

“They said they lost the Wadan shipyards as a result of a raid. We have begun work on collecting evidence,” says Milchenko.

About a month ago, the couple began to notice that they were being followed: they were accompanied by cars and suspicious people.

Shortly before the assassination attempt, Etkina reported to law enforcement agencies that in July 2008, a deal was concluded for FLC-West Holding (Luxembourg) to acquire 70% of the shares of the Norwegian company Aker Yards (later renamed Wadan Yards Group - Wygas), which owns two shipyards in Germany and one in Ukraine. The transaction amount is €291.6 million.

Etkina and Burlakov claimed that the transaction was financed from two sources. Firstly, in the form of borrowing under loan agreements from the company OJSC Financial Leasing Company (FLK), of which Burlakov was the deputy general director.

In addition, about €200 million was allocated by the Tamplestowe company, whose representative was Igor Yusufov. As a result, according to Etkina, at the time of the purchase of the shipyards, the owners of FLC-West were Tamplestowe, controlled by Yusufov by 74%, Cypriot offshore companies Blakstead (25%) and FLC (1%).

Etkina claims that Yusufov asked not to advertise his participation in the project, to include his representative on the board of directors and to coordinate each operation with his son.

“I have never had anything to do with Wadan Yards,” Vitaly Yusufov told Izvestia. — In June 2009, I organized the Nordic Yards company from scratch. Having established it, on August 14 of the same year, I acquired at auction the property complex remaining from the Wadan Yards shipyards, which by that time had already gone bankrupt. My application won an open competition. Plus, under the contract, I obliged to complete the construction of two large ferries (the cost of each of them was about €200 million), which I did in 2010.

[ Slon.ru, 09/30/2011, “Yusufov’s execution investments”: Vitaly Yusufov advised him on the deal, and in the future they planned to jointly own the company. “I’ve known him since such a time, since childhood, I’m Uncle Andrei for him,” Burlakov told a Spiegel journalist two years ago. The elder Yusufov was his personal consultant, and he also helped him obtain a loan from Western banks for 200 million euros to purchase shipyards. […]
The problem of the shipyards was discussed by Angela Merkel and Dmitry Medvedev in July 2009, and as a result, Vitaly Yusufov bought them for 40 million euros. The deal proposed by the former head of the Moscow representative office of Nord Stream Vitaly Yusufov and the special representative of the president, a member of the board of directors of Gazprom Igor Yusufov, satisfied both high parties. [...] Yusufov Jr., after acquiring the shipyards, stated that he had nothing to do with the persecution of Burlakov, and explained the loss of his asset by management mistakes. — Insert K.ru]

Vitaly Yusufov claims that he knew Burlakov superficially.

- We crossed paths. However, no business was carried out, says the owner of Nordic Yards. “I also do not know about any debts that the deceased entrepreneur might have had.

According to the official version, in 2009, due to financial problems, outstanding loans and a lack of orders, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy - the company’s debts amounted to about €100 million. The fate of the shipyards was discussed during a meeting between Angela Merkel and Dmitry Medvedev, who decided to find " a new pool of investors." Such an investor was Vitaly Yusufov, who bought two shipyards for €40 million.

However, Etkina and Burlakov stated that the Yusufovs controlled the shipyards even before their bankruptcy and the “official purchase” of the enterprise in 2009. The defense calls what happened inside the company a “raider takeover.”

In July 2009, Burlakov and Etkina became involved in a case of fraudulent theft of 2.7 billion rubles, which were used to purchase Wadan shares in 2008. Etkina’s lawyer Khalilulin stated that the case was fabricated in order to eliminate Burlakov - he was arrested . After that, he was removed from the post of chairman of the board of directors, and the Yusufovs allegedly transferred a shipyard in Nikolaev worth more than €40 million from the company to a company from Dagestan for $100 and declared the parent company bankrupt.

According to the lawyers of the deceased, in February 2011, Vitaly Yusufov took out a loan from the Bank of Moscow in the amount of $1.1 billion secured by shares of the Nordic Yards company, which owns shipyards in Germany, valued at $950 million. These funds were used to purchase a stake in the Bank of Moscow for Vitaly Yusufova .

Vitaly Yusufov clarified in a conversation with Izvestia that in fact we are talking about Nordic Yards contracts planned for 10 years.

“There were and are no special accounts,” he claims. — And the loan taken from the Bank of Moscow has been repaid.

“Burlakov and Etkina were actively involved in blocking the block of shares as illegally obtained as a result of a raider takeover, which created a serious threat,” explains Ruslan Milchenko.

“The VTB Group, having purchased shares of the Bank of Moscow from Vitaly Yusufov, is their bona fide purchaser,” the press service of the state bank told Izvestia.

Andrei Burlakov was the last witness to the death of Anatoly Sobchak

The original of this material
© IA "Rosbalt" , 09.30.2011, The last witness to Sobchak’s death,

Alexander Shvarev,

was shot […] Andrei Burlakov at one time graduated from the Red Banner Institute of Military Translators, mastered the Japanese language perfectly and became an employee of one of the intelligence departments of the USSR. He worked under diplomatic cover in Tokyo for a long time. According to one of Burlakov’s acquaintances, in the 1980s and 1990s he became close friends with businessman Shabtai Kalmanovich. Also an intelligence officer who served time in Israel for spying for the USSR. Whether they agreed on the basis of working for special services or joint business projects, history is silent. But Burlakov and Kalmanovich became close friends and business partners. According to the agency’s interlocutor, at one time Shabtai introduced Andrei to the mayor of St. Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. Kalmanovich was friendly with the mayor, and in 1995 his company Liat-Dixie received several sites in the Northern capital for the construction of hypermarkets, as well as a large shopping center. The agency’s source assures that Burlakov also took part in all these projects.

In February 2000, Anatoly Sobchak, at the invitation of Kalmanovich and Burlakov, went to the city of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region. Businessmen there were implementing a project to create a free economic trade zone. Suddenly, the former mayor became ill in the hotel. A Rosbalt source assures that Andrei and Shabtai immediately came to Sobchak’s room. Later, in an interview, Kalmanovich admitted that Sobchak died in his arms.

According to the official version, the former head of the Northern capital died of a heart attack . However, even then, many of Rosbalt’s interlocutors in various circles, including among former intelligence officers, doubted Sobchak’s natural death, pointing out that Shabtai allegedly had something to do with what happened. When Kalmanovich was shot in Moscow

in November 2009 , one of the former representatives of the special services directly told Rosbalt: “They reminded him of Sobchak.” And now the killers have dealt with another person who was present at the death of the ex-mayor of St. Petersburg.