The founder of the car dealer “Rolf” Petrov will seek compensation from the Russian Federation

The founder of the Rolf car dealer, Sergei Petrov, said that he intends to seek compensation from the Russian authorities for transferring the company under state control. How said Petrov in an interview with Bloomberg, he will achieve this in foreign courts.

According to Petrov, an appeal was also filed in a Russian court, but it is unlikely to be satisfied. “This is a kleptocracy. There are no laws here, only selective application of justice,” Petrov said, in particular, about Russia and its judicial system. Therefore, the founder of Rolf intends to seek compensation following the example of the former Yukos shareholders, who were awarded more than $50 billion by a court in the Netherlands (the decision has not yet entered into force; the Russian authorities have already stated that in any case they will not comply with the court decision).

The Bloomberg publication also says that Petrov’s lawyers filed a lawsuit with the UN Human Rights Committee on the basis of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Details of this claim are not provided.

Petrov is a former State Duma deputy, founder and main shareholder of one of the largest Russian car dealers, Rolf. Now he lives abroad, as Bloomberg writes, he, in addition to Russian, has Austrian citizenship. In Russia, a criminal case has been opened against Petrov on suspicion of illegal currency transactions and the transfer of about four billion rubles to offshore companies. The businessman does not admit his guilt, stating that it was a matter of ordinary business optimization within one company. His criminal prosecution tied up with his support for the opposition, he particularly supported the “For Fair Elections” protests in 2011-2012.

On December 22, 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree transferring the shares of the Rolf car dealer to the temporary management of the Federal Property Management Agency – in accordance with his decree allowing the use of such measures against companies from so-called unfriendly countries. The shares belonged to the Cypriot company of the Petrov family. Sergey Petrov in the comments RBC then called the decision “legal chaos.”

A few days later, on December 27, the Prosecutor General’s Office filed a lawsuit in which it asked the court to seize Rolf’s assets in favor of the state “as property obtained in violation of anti-corruption legislation.” The prosecutor’s office claims that Petrov combined his parliamentary powers with managing the company, which is prohibited. In February 2024, a court in St. Petersburg, following a claim by the Prosecutor General’s Office, ruled to recover all assets of the Rolf car dealer in favor of the state. This is the first time in Russia that a company of a Russian businessman has been transferred to state management – previously only businesses of foreign owners were subject to nationalization.

In particular, all shares of Rolf JSC, Rolf Motors LLC and shares in the authorized capitals of three affiliated companies were recovered as state income. clarifies “Kommersant”. The total value of the holding’s assets is about 60 billion rubles.

How asserts The Insider edition, in March 2024, the assets of “Rolf” came under the control of Umar Kremlev, a businessman and sports functionary, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA). company headed Roman Antonov is Kremlev’s business partner.