The Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region turned the assets of the company 'DME Holding', which manages the group of operating companies of Domodedovo Airport, into state revenue. The decision was made at the very first court session on the merits and must be executed immediately.
As noted by 'Kommersant', the 'Domodedovo' group of companies includes 25 organizations worth more than 1 trillion rubles. This is comparable to the value of all assets seized from businesses in 2024 and is an absolute record since the beginning of the war.
The Prosecutor General's Office in its lawsuit demanded the nationalization of the company, as the beneficiaries of the airport were foreign residents. According to the department, the head of the Domodedovo supervisory board Valery Kogan is a citizen of Israel, and the main owner of the airport Dmitry Kamenshchik was a resident of the UAE and Turkey. The Prosecutor General's Office believes that they illegally managed the airport's assets and transferred multimillion-dollar profits abroad.
The lawsuit was filed in January, and in February it became known that the court took interim measures on the lawsuit of the Prosecutor General's Office and gave Rosaviatsia access to manage the airport. In addition, the court arrested the shares of Kogan and Kamenshchik, as well as the property and accounts of organizations associated with the airport.
Since 2023, the prosecutor's office has more frequently turned to courts with lawsuits to transfer large assets into state ownership, whose owners, according to the department, acquired them in violation of the law. Under such lawsuits, the authorities have already nationalized the property of the largest pasta manufacturer 'Makfa', the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, and the Sarov and Kuznetsov Ferroalloy Plants.
As anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov told the 'Agency'*, the future of the asset has two scenarios. Either it will be controlled by the state: first, Rosimushchestvo receives the asset, and then it moves into the perimeter of the Ministry of Transport or another state player. Or the asset will pass into the hands of the owners of Sheremetyevo (Rotenberg and his junior partners Skorobogatko and Ponomarev), which is more likely. Earlier, Financial Times, citing a source in constant contact with the Russian government, wrote that the Rotenberg brothers are behind a series of cases on the nationalization of large companies after the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
According to a study by 'Novaya Gazeta. Europe'**, since the beginning of the war, Russian authorities have seized assets worth almost 2.56 trillion rubles from businesses. Last year, this figure reached 1.1 trillion, setting a record for three years.
* Recognized in Russia as a 'foreign agent'.
** Recognized in Russia as a 'foreign agent' and 'undesirable' organization.