Mikhail Leontyev is a Russian journalist and publicist, the permanent presenter of the television program “Odnako”. Today he hosts his own program “Main Topic” on the radio “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, holds the position of press secretary and vice president of the Rosneft corporation. Known for his harsh statements towards colleagues, as well as politicians, including those from other countries.
Childhood and youth
Mikhail Vladimirovich Leontyev was born into an intelligent family on October 12, 1958. Mira Moiseevna, the mother of the future journalist, worked as a teacher at the Moscow Institute. Plekhanov, father Vladimir Yakovlevich was an aircraft designer. By nationality, the newborn turned out to be half Jewish, half Russian.
Since childhood, Mikhail Leontyev had a passion for literature - the boy read “bingely”, he especially liked historical stories and novels. At the age of 5, the parents wanted to sign the child up for figure skating, but he refused. As a teenager, the boy passionately argued with his grandmother, proving to her, an inveterate communist, the shortcomings of the USSR's policies. In high school, Mikhail secretly read magazines that were banned in those years, secretly from his parents.
Journalist Mikhail Leontyev at the presentation of the book “Time to Betray” / Dmitry Rozhkov, Wikipedia
After school, the guy entered the economics department of the Plekhanov Institute and successfully defended his diploma in 1979. In his youth, the future journalist had to work as a loader.
After university, Mikhail Leontyev got a job at a research institute and tried to realize his potential in economics. Patience lasted for several years. In 1985, Mikhail retired from the research institute, from that moment life became brighter. The young scientist mastered the craft of carpentry, was an ordinary worker at the Literary Institute and a watchman at the dacha. Leontiev also made a living by tutoring.
Journalism
The biography of Mikhail Vladimirovich is closely connected with journalism. In 1987, Leontiev became seriously interested in sociology—Mikhail’s first analytical articles were devoted to this topic. After another 2 years, the man devoted himself entirely to journalism. At first he worked as a political correspondent for the Kommersant publication, then headed the department at Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
Biography
In 1993, when the history of the Segodnya newspaper began, Mikhail Vladimirovich took an active part in its organization. Subsequently, Mikhail Leontiev served as first deputy editor-in-chief of this publication.
1999-2000 - editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine "FAS".
From May 22, 2007 to March 2, 2009 - editor-in-chief of the business analytical magazine "Profile". The publisher claims that Leontyev's departure led to an increase in circulation.
Since June 10, 2009, it has been publishing the analytical magazine “Odnako” with ex-Profile journalists and “profile” columnists Evgeny Dodolev and Alexander Nevzorov.
A television
In April 1997, he came to television - he was the director and presenter of the program “Actually” (“TV Center”).
Since February 1999 he has been working on the ORT channel.
In March 1999, he became the host of the “However” program.
From May 2003 to January 2004 he worked on the original program “Puppet Theater with Mikhail Leontiev.”
From January 2006 to November 2007, he hosted the program “Master Class with Mikhail Leontyev” on the O2TV channel.
In May 2007, M. Leontiev was appointed editor-in-chief of the business analytical magazine Profile. He left Profile in March 2009. The magazine's publisher, Sergei Rodionov, argued that Leontyev's departure led to an increase in the publication's circulation.
M. Leontyev is a member of the journalistic “Serafimov Club”, he taught at the non-state Higher School of Management, where the “commissars” of the “Nashi” movement studied.
Igor Sechin thanked journalist Mikhail Leontyev by appointing him vice president of Rosneft
Original of this material© Kommersant.Ru, 01/08/2014, Photo: via @egor_mq
However, Rosneft
Kirill Melnikov, Ivan Safronov, Natalya KorchenkovaRosneft will have a new vice president for PR. A well-known journalist will oversee the company’s external relations Mikhail Leontyev. At the same time, Mr. Leontyev will retain his own projects: he will continue to host the “However” program on Channel One, as well as publish a magazine of the same name.
From January 13, journalist Mikhail Leontyev will become an adviser to the president of Rosneft with the rank of vice president for PR, sources close to the company, the government and the presidential administration told Kommersant. Rosneft itself declined to comment. Mr. Leontyev told Kommersant that “there is no official information yet, there is no point in commenting on anything.”
The post of Advisor and Vice President for PR at Rosneft is being created for Mr. Leontyev. He will oversee the activities of the information and advertising department. At the moment, it is headed by the former editor-in-chief of the REN TV channel Vladimir Tyulin, he is also the press secretary of Rosneft. Kommersant’s interlocutors do not know how their powers will be redistributed. Kommersant's sources say that between the president of the state-owned company Igor Sechin and Mikhail Leontyev have a long-standing “friendly relationship”. “Leontiev is a famous person, Igor Ivanovich likes to invite such people to work,” said one of Kommersant’s interlocutors. In particular, for example, the author of the cult book “Extraction”, Daniel Yergin, was part of the Rosneft integration committee, which was involved in the takeover of TNK-BP. “Leontiev is known as a journalist, now Igor Ivanovich was selecting PR people with a big name, there were other candidates. But it’s not at all clear what kind of PR man Mr. Leontyev will be,” noted one of Kommersant’s interlocutors.
Last year, one of the main targets of criticism in Mikhail Leontyev’s programs was Gazprom and the chairman of the company’s board Alexey Miller. In his question during Vladimir Putin’s “direct line” in April, Mr. Leontyev accused Mr. Miller is that the gas company ignores the “shale revolution”, while “losing markets and capitalization.”
Formally, appointments to positions of top managers of the country's largest company do not require approval from the presidential administration, but they are aware of Mikhail Leontyev's arrival at Rosneft. A Kommersant source close to the company said that “PR people of this level are always approved, this is standard practice.” “If Igor Ivanovich has confidence that Mikhail Leontyev will be able to benefit the company, then he, as the president of Rosneft, vouches for this decision,” said a senior official of the presidential administration.
At the same time, Mikhail Leontyev will continue to engage in journalism, Kommersant sources say: he will remain the host of the “However” program on Channel One, which is aired twice a week. The channel’s press service officially confirmed this information to Kommersant. “There is nothing unusual in such a combination, it happens often. It’s difficult to combine given the total operating style of Rosneft, but it’s quite possible,” one of Kommersant’s interlocutors said. According to Kommersant, the question of continuing Mr. Leontyev’s career on television was a matter of principle. “This was also discussed at a separate meeting between Igor Sechin and the general director of Channel One.” Konstantin Ernst, which took place before the New Year,” said one of Kommersant’s interlocutors. In addition, Mikhail Leontyev will continue to publish his own magazine “However”. He is also the author of a program on Mayak radio; nothing is known about its future yet.
Some of Kommersant’s interlocutors believe that Mr. Leontyev’s arrival at Rosneft may indicate the state company’s plans to create its own media holding. However, Kommersant sources close to her deny this. “The company doesn’t need this; it is engaged in oil and gas production,” said one of Kommersant’s interlocutors.
[AAV Sr., 01/08/2014, “Back in 2007...”: Back in 2007, Mikhail Leontyev, in a conversation with me, complained that Putin chose Medvedev, not Sechin, as his successor.
“If only there was a president!” he exclaimed.
Now he himself is Igor Ivanovich’s vice president.
Sechin doesn't forget neither good nor bad. - Insert K.ru]
[Kirill Shulika, 01/08/2014: Misha can only be hired for one job - as a drinking companion. Just if you are an adviser, then it is logical to call and have a glass in the boss’s office. If he’s the vice president of PR, then that’s completely crap, and crap at that. But Tyulin’s PR is no less of a bastard. Who forgot, he headed the criminal editorial office of NTV. On the other hand, Sechin does not need PR, he has slightly different functions and positions. Accordingly, you can just put good people on a budget. True, judging by the names of the vice-presidents, he doesn’t even need personnel in the company, because the person responsible for them in the position of Sechin’s deputy is the former head of the Federal Penitentiary Service Kalinin. - Insert K.ru]
What is Mikhail Leontiev famous for?
Private bussiness
Mikhail Vladimirovich Leontyev was born on October 12, 1958 in Moscow. In 1979 he graduated from the Plekhanov Moscow Institute of National Economy with a degree in labor economics.He worked at the Moscow Institute of Economic Problems, where, in his own words, he tried to “get involved in the real Soviet economy.” In 1985 he graduated from a vocational school with a degree in cabinetmaker. He worked as a laborer at the Literary Museum, guarded Boris Pasternak's dacha in Peredelkino, was a history tutor, and wrote analytical articles on sociology.
Since the end of 1989, he worked in the politics department of the Kommersant newspaper, at the same time collaborating with the Experimental Creative Center of Sergei Kurginyan and the Riga newspaper Atmoda. In 1990, he became a department editor at Nezavisimaya Gazeta, then was first deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly Business MN. In 1993, he took part in the creation of the Segodnya newspaper, where he subsequently worked as first deputy editor-in-chief. In December 1995, as an independent candidate, he unsuccessfully ran for the State Duma of the second convocation. Since April 1997, he has been the director and presenter of the “Actually” program on the TV Center channel. At the same time, he hosted the “Seventh Day” program and was the head of the television channel’s socio-political programs service. Since the beginning of 1999, he has been the author and presenter of the “However” program on Channel One (formerly ORT), and in 2009 he became the founder of the magazine of the same name. From 2007 to 2009 he was editor-in-chief of the Profile magazine.
Member of the United Russia party. Winner of the Golden Pen of Russia award.
In terms of booze, [Leontyev] was a real legend of the 1990s
Original of this material© , 06/09/2010
Orgy of patriotism
[...]Sokolova At this point I would like to change the topic a little and talk, so to speak, about the genesis, the formation of yours, so amazing for us glamorous girls, but coinciding with the people’s system of values. You, Mikhail, have not always been a pillar of the ideas of statehood. Quite the opposite! You started out with extremely liberal views. At the end of the Soviet Union, they guarded Pasternak’s dacha in the company of practically dissidents...
Leontyev The Pasternak Museum does not oblige you to anything ideological.
Sokolova This is true! But then you were friends with the main liberals of the 90s - Aven, Glazyev, Kagalovsky. You worked for Gusinsky in the Segodnya newspaper, and agreed with Khodorkovsky on the creation of the Delo newspaper.
Leontyev I was an economic liberal, because who else could a person who was undereducated by the Soviet economic school be? I have always considered myself a political conservative, but I was a radical economic liberal. I now believe that Samuelson's textbook works!
Sokolova Or maybe it’s not just about the venerable Samuelson? Legends were told about your income from Mr. Gusinsky in the Segodnya newspaper. According to your colleagues, you were entitled to 50 thousand dollars a month for hospitality expenses alone - and this, mind you, was almost 20 years ago, at a time far from oil stability. Whereas the statists were by no means popular in the 90s. The ideology of “conservation” was not capitalized.
Leontyev All this is nonsense. I told you that my views have changed. Being an economic liberal, I saw, figuratively speaking, only this napkin, but then I saw, as it were, this entire table.
Sobchak But still it’s somehow... suspicious. I personally don’t trust communists who suddenly start going to church, or Marxists who suddenly become liberals.
Sokolova And I personally believe in Mikhail! Apparently, he is an ideological person and money is not the main thing for him. In the magical world of true statesmen, there are things more important than money. Tell me, Mikhail, is it true that for the last 30 years you have been drinking vodka every day?
Leontyev No. Not every.
Sokolova I think you are being modest. They told me that when it comes to booze, you were a real legend of the 90s! American correspondent Carey Goldberg still cannot forget how in 1992, it seems, you fell on the floor and fell asleep drunk in her room. And the apartment on Vernadsky Avenue, which you rented in partnership with Andrei Babitsky, the star of Radio Liberty, who took a scandalous interview with Basayev and is now an enemy of Russia?! According to your friends, it was a desperate, months-long alcohol trip. They say that at one of your drinking sessions, Babitsky got so drunk that he uprooted the toilet in the toilet and then for a long time you relieved yourself in the yard.
Leontyev I don't remember about the toilet. I was drunk - I forgot.
Sokolova They also say that you haven’t missed a single skirt. And the girls willingly gave it to you, because in the early 90s you were a fashionable guy, you were shown on TV and in your pocket there was a credit card with a monthly half toss for hospitality. They say that one girl even jumped out of a window because of you...
Leontyev Not a single girl jumped out of the window because of me - I officially declare. Although I really prefer girls who drink.
Sobchak Why?
Leontyev They don't remember the bad things.
Sokolova And if they accidentally remember, they throw themselves out of the windows. But, fortunately, alcoholic amnesia is a disease that often affects representatives of the imperial nation of both sexes.
Leontyev God or nature rewarded me with a unique organism. In general, relationships with alcohol are an individual thing. There are a lot of decent people, more moral and worthy than me, who have a difficult relationship with alcohol. What is binge drinking? This is pure biochemistry. The person is not to blame.
Sokolova That is, according to Dovlatov: “I drink every day, and I also have binges.”
Leontyev I don't have binges! I’m telling you, I have a unique organism. I have never been late for an important meeting in my life, nor have I missed a single broadcast. I worked in daily broadcasting for a very serious time and worked in a daily newspaper, where I wrote two or three texts per issue. I've never missed a deadline in my life.
Sokolova Bravo! Not many people manage to combine. Alcoholism is a full-time job.
Leontyev Because I work at a frantic pace, my mind is always on what I'm working on. In order to rest, you need to somehow unload your brains, you need to turn them off so that you can sleep and not come up with texts in your sleep. I found a way, nature allows me to relax in this way.
Sokolova But for a public person, drinking almost every day is simply dangerous. Serious reputational losses are possible.
Leontyev Agree. I remember once in Transnistria I came to see General Lebed. Well, in the evening I went to a tavern there, met a man, and had a drink. In the morning I came to the general not quite fresh. And he kicked me out. In the evening I had to go again.
Sokolova Is this when you went to persuade Lebed to become the Russian Pinochet?
Leontyev Nothing like this! About Pinochet - that's different. I made a film about the general.
Sokolova They say you told Putin the same story. That, they say, V.V. is the Russian Pinochet, the savior of the Fatherland. More stories were told.
Leontyev I do not know anything.
Sokolova And I also heard that the Chechens sentenced you to death because somewhere out of a hangover you snatched a machine gun from a soldier and fired a burst of fire in the room.
Leontyev The yellow newspapers wrote this nonsense.
Sokolova Come on, be modest! For example, it’s now clear to me why all the girls gave it to you in the 90s! After meeting you, the image of the statesman literally shone with new, unknown facets. But life is probably not easy for you with such views in the 2000s.
Leontyev Why?
Sokolova The trend has changed. You know, the cult of health, muscles, beauty fascism, fitness clubs. But most importantly, the image of a cute drunk has lost its relevance. I’m afraid that being an alcoholic statist is now even less prestigious than belonging to the Kasparov-Kasyanov camarilla. Moreover, according to rumors, your love for a glass cost you your personal friendly relationship with Putin. Vladimir Vladimirovich, as you know, cannot tolerate alcoholism.
Leontyev Vladimir Vladimirovich controls himself very well, so he appears to others exactly in the form in which he wants to appear.
Sokolova So you want to say that the prime minister is secretly working hard?
Sobchak Here I can say as an eyewitness! The great advantage of the St. Petersburg team is their negative attitude towards alcohol. In this, the “Petersburgers” are the absolute opposite of the crazy Yeltsin times.
Leontyev And I think that drinking is not shameful. Now, if Lesha Kudrin drank, he would be more useful!
Sobchak After talking with you, I became convinced that there is a direct relationship between the position of a statesman and vodka. People who theorize a lot about the state tend to drink bitter drinks.
Leontyev I am flesh of the flesh of my people - my people drink and therefore, like that drinking girl, they do not remember the bad, but remember that the state is good.
Sokolova Mikhail, you are a great theorist! And most importantly, a godsend for the interviewer. There is no need to pull anything out of you with pincers, you have formulated everything brilliantly yourself! Probably that drink we found you drinking helped you...
Leontyev A year ago, I put forward the concept of an anti-crisis policy, which our government is implementing in practice, although in fact it does not admit it.
Sokolova Should everyone drink “liquid for corns”?
Leontyev Not so radical. Let people go on a drinking binge during the crisis. This also provides a solution to the main problems! Firstly, social tension is completely destroyed. Secondly, complete import substitution is taking place, because a basic snack is the only thing that our national economy is able to produce.
Sokolova Great plan! I have just one comment. Don't you think that you are speaking in the spirit of the “theorists of fascism”? Are you sending people on a drinking binge, even though you’ve never been there yourself?
Leontyev This is how my body is!
Sokolova What about suffering for the sake of the Fatherland?
Leontyev Why not? I think I deserve a drink.
Leontyev is also a co-owner of two technology companies. One of them is a resident of Skolkovo, the presumed main owner of the second is a former official of Rosrybolovstvo, accused of fraud amounting to several hundred million rubles; The business of both is closely related to government orders. Meduza special correspondents Ivan Golunov and Ilya Zhegulev figured out what kind of companies they were and what Leontyev was doing there.
Leontiev and wing aerodynamics
In the spring of 2013, publicist Mikhail Leontiev made a sharp statement. He defended Skolkovo from attacks from the Investigative Committee of Russia and the Accounts Chamber, which accused the innovation center of inefficiency. In the TV show “However” on Channel One and an article in the magazine of the same name, of which he is the editor-in-chief, Leontyev explained that Skolkovo is the only venture fund in the world that does not “take the project away from the developer.”Leontyev is well acquainted with the operating principles of Skolkovo. He is a co-owner of one of the fund's residents, the Optimenga-777 company, which is engaged in the aerodynamic design of wings for aircraft.
It was founded in 2012 by Sergei Peigin, a graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Tomsk State University, and his Israeli partner Boris Epstein. A year after this, Mikhail Leontyev began to own 10% of the enterprise, and Optimenga-777 received about 80 million rubles from Skolkovo as part of a grant for the creation of a software product that can greatly reduce the cost and time of designing an aircraft wing. The company stated that the project was “revolutionary in nature”: their algorithm solved the test problem of optimizing a wing in 27 hours, and the Boeing program in 50 days.
| Sergey Peigin
|
UAC Meduza confirmed that Optimenga carried out a number of works on mathematical modeling of structures, but noted that similar work is ordered from several companies at once.
“I have known these guys [from Optimeng] since childhood, they are very talented, I tried to help them, but, unfortunately, there is no business there,” Mikhail Leontyev told Meduza. - Nobody ever likes innovators. These are all tears and moans; no word “business” is applicable to this story. Many people tried to help somehow, but you can’t act against the system. The system can only produce a Superjet."
Leontiev and the fishing fleet
Airplanes are not the only area of interest for Mikhail Leontyev. He also has businesses related to water transport. In April 2013, the journalist co-founded the Agro-Marin-LNG company, which designs ships powered by liquefied natural gas. (The fact that Leontyev has shares in Optimeng and Agro-Marina-LNG was also reported by the Dozhd TV channel.)The main owner of Agro-Marina is the British company Valser Oil, which, according to the UK commercial register, belongs to two offshore companies registered in the Marshall Islands: Pintox Systems Limited and Syten Group Limited. Information about the directors and owners of these companies is not disclosed. There are 25 companies set up by Pintox and Syten registered with the New Zealand Ministry of Justice alone; some of them were involved in scandals related to money laundering through Moldovan banks.
In April 2017, Valser Oil published a notice adding Valery Suraev, an Austrian citizen born in Russia in 1960, to the list of persons influencing the company’s activities. This is a person well-known in the shipbuilding market: in the 2000s, Suraev headed the department of the fishing fleet, ports and ship repairs at Rosrybolovstvo. During an audit of the department in 2010, the Accounts Chamber revealed fraud around a billion rubles, which were received in 2005 for the construction of research ships in the Far East. One of the contracts was won by the company “Research and Production Center for Industrial Fisheries, Exploration and Monitoring of Marine Bioresources” (NPC), registered in Yaroslavl.
“According to the documents, the scientific ship was built, Suraev signed the acceptance certificate, after which more than 283 million rubles were transferred to the accounts of the NPC,” sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs told Izvestia. “Then this money disappeared into the accounts of shell companies.” During the audit of the Accounts Chamber, it turned out that the skeleton of the ship remained standing on the slipway of the plant in Khabarovsk among garbage and scrap metal. Three more unfinished vessels within the framework of the same project never left the slipways of the plant in the Kirov region.
Law enforcement authorities suspected that the real owner of the NPC was Valery Suraev. After the start of the inspection of Rosrybolovstvo, he resigned from the civil service and headed this Yaroslavl company. In 2011, as Rosbalt reported, Suraev received a residence permit in Estonia; a year later, a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of fraud, and the former official was given a written undertaking not to leave. The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond to Meduza’s request about the progress of the investigation.
In 2013, NPC was declared bankrupt - this happened at the request of the Marine-Invest company, whose owner was Valser Oil, which subsequently established Agro-Marin-LNG. Agro-Marin bought most of the SPC property for a million rubles; In addition, the company fully owns the Khabarovsk Shipyard.
Mikhail Leontyev knew Valery Suraev long before these events. In the early 2000s, he devoted an entire episode of his author’s program on Channel One to the problems of the fishing fleet - and published several of Suraev’s columns about these problems in the magazine “However”.
“He came to me [as a journalist] with [fishing] problems and impressed me. I had ten programs on this topic,” recalls Leontyev. “Suraev and I did a very serious thing together - if we now have some kind of fishing left in Russia and some prospects for creating Russian ships, then the country owes this to Valerka Suraev, whom I helped a little.”
Another old acquaintance of Leontyev is the general director of Agro-Marin-LNG - this is Vladimir Koloskov, the former first deputy general director of the Rodionov Publishing House, who published the magazines Krestyanka and FHM, which were closed in 2015. Leontyev also worked in the same publishing house - in the late 2000s, he headed the Profile magazine for two years.
For the first three years after its creation, Agro-Marin-LNG did not show itself in any way. At the end of 2016, the company won two tenders from the Krylov State Research Center for the development and modernization of fishing vessels powered by liquefied natural gas. Both contracts were concluded under the “Purchase from a Single Supplier” procedure - since their conclusion, according to the documentation, was necessary to prevent accidents and other “force majeure” emergencies.
It took Agro-Marin-LNG only a week to develop projects for two ships - having concluded a government contract on November 25, the company handed over the finished project to the customer on December 2. Kommersant explained that such a rush had a simple explanation: the work was financed under the federal target program “Development of Civil Marine Equipment for 2009–2016” and officials could not reschedule the acceptance of completed work until next year. As it turned out a little later, the ships under the Agro-Marina project will be built on the basis of the hulls of those ships that were once not completed by Valery Suraev’s company.
According to a source familiar with the company’s activities, Agro-Marin-LNG planned to take part in the construction of ice-class gas tankers - they are necessary to export liquefied gas along the Northern Sea Route, which the Novatek company produces in Yamal with funds received from the National Welfare Fund.
About one and a half dozen gas carriers are needed. The first of them (it was named “Christophe de Margerie” in honor of the head of Total, who died in a plane crash in Vnukovo) arrived in Yamal at the end of March 2017 from South Korea - however, it is planned that further gas carriers will be built in Russia, at the Far Eastern shipyard Zvezda " This shipyard belongs to Gazprombank and the Rosneft company, whose press secretary is Mikhail Leontyev. Leontyev himself told Meduza that “there was a project with gas carriers, but I’m not in the subject.”
Leontyev claims that he “never in my life received even one kopeck from these [companies].” “If someone signed me up as a founder for some purpose, God will be their judge. “I remember roughly what they are talking about, but I don’t even remember the names of these companies,” he said. - How many people have I tried to help? I tried to help a friend make a film. Every person in life tries to help someone, unless he is a complete scumbag.”
[RBC news agency, 05/10/2017, “Mikhail Leontyev turned out to be the owner of a stake in technology companies”: In a conversation with RBC, the press secretary of Rosneft called Meduza’s publication “about nothing.” “There is nothing there, there was nothing and, unfortunately, nothing came of it. Zero rubles, zero kopecks, zero results. Zero everything. And this is a great pity. I wish there was something there,” he said.
According to Leontyev, “all the stupid hints” about his financial interests in the companies mentioned in the article have no basis. “Yes, everything that I received from this, I would personally convey to Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky. Because that’s a lot of hemorrhoids,” he said.
He noted that the activities of the Optimenga-777 company continue. “People are working, doing something. Seryozha Peigin (owns 27.5% of the company - RBC) - he is an applied mathematician of a very high world level. He did this in different countries, he really wanted to do it here. They really do it really well,” he said.
“As for fish, you can see how much I wrote about keel quotas. Some time was spent. Now, by the way, we can say that there is a result, because keel quotas exist. How does this relate to a specific business? None,” Leontyev added. - Insert K.ru] Original of this material
© SDG, 01/22/2017, Photo: East News, Illustrations: SDG
Mikhail Leontiev owes 233.5 million rubles to Investbank depositors
Sponsorship of 170 million rubles by Rosneft did not correct the situation with the debt of the magazine Odnako
Anastasia GorshkovaAs the Investigation Management Center (IMC) learned, the publishing group Press Code, which published the magazine “However” by Mikhail Leontyev, owes the depositors of the bankrupt Investment Bank 233.5 million rubles. There is no sign that this money has been returned: the bailiffs cannot find the publishing house even to collect tax debts. Earlier, the LRC learned that in May 2015, Rosneft allocated 170 million rubles to support the struggling publication of its vice president, after which the magazine closed.
The investor of Leontyev's media startup was Converse Group father and son Antonov. Expenses for the first year of the project, according to Leontiev, should have amounted to up to $4 million. “We want to turn this project into a commercially successful publication, and we have the opportunity to wait out difficult times,” Leontiev said at a press conference dedicated to the launch of the weekly “ However” in the crisis year of 2009. He also emphasized that the investor “insisted on financing the project,” even despite Leontyev’s warnings regarding difficulties with advertising and return on investment.
The money was allocated through credit lines from the Antonov Jr. Investment Bank from October 2009 to November 2010. Since December, funding for the magazine stopped, and at the beginning of 2011 Vladimir Antonov sold his shares in the bank to its top managers. Apparently, the new shareholders were confused by the media asset, but they managed to reach an agreement: the bank received 15% of the publishing house (the share of Channel One), and the loans were guaranteed by Snoras-Nedvizhimost LLC, 50% of which at that time belonged to Antonov’s business partner - Deputy Chairman of the Board of Academkhimbank Viktor Yampolsky. By 2013, the magazine was published once every two months.
According to SPARK, the shareholders of Press Code Publishing Group LLC are Mikhail Leontiev (15%), Ekaterina Sedova (15%), Investbank (15%) and Dukelevel Holdings Limited (55%) registered in Cyprus. In 2009, Leontyev told Kommersant that the majority shareholder is the main investor in the project.
And then, as usual, the Central Bank appeared in history. On December 3, 2013, he revoked Investmentbank’s license due to unsatisfactory asset quality. At that time, the bank occupied 80th place among the largest banks in Russia with an estimated assets of 75.6 billion rubles. It soon became clear that the bank did not have enough 44 billion rubles to pay creditors. This was a record size of the hole at that time, comparable only to the bankrupt Mezhprombank of Sergei Pugachev. The investment bank was declared bankrupt on March 4, 2014. The Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) began searching for assets and collecting receivables. As of the summer of 2016, the DIA managed to return only 4.1 billion rubles out of 40 to depositors; in total, the bank’s debt to creditors amounts to 60.2 billion rubles.
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| Decision to declare Investbank bankrupt
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And this is where the fun begins. The decision came into force on December 30, 2015, but there are no signs that the money was returned to Investment Bank. An important detail is that Press Code representatives were not present at the court hearings. According to SPARK, the publishing house did not report to the tax authorities for more than a year. And according to the bailiff database, enforcement proceedings to collect tax debts from Press Code, which began in August and November 2016, were soon terminated: it is impossible to establish the location of the debtor, his property or obtain information about the money in the accounts (Article 46 Part. 1 clause 3 of the Federal Law “On Enforcement Proceedings”).
