MOSCOW The dispute over the ownership arrangements of Russia’s largest online store spilled over for half a day on Wednesday.
CEO of the Wildberries company Tatyana Bakalchukin husband Vladislav arrived with his people at the company’s headquarters in the Romanov dvor business center.
It’s safe to say that Vladislav Bakaltšuk had brought muscles with him, as there were several martial arts athletes among him, including at least three free fighters and a boxing heavyweight champion. Many of those who came were from the North Caucasus of Russia.
The guards did not let the crowd in. There was a scuffle, and someone opened fire. Two guards were killed. The policemen who arrived at the scene were also fired upon. A total of seven people were wounded, including police officers.
At the neighboring Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University, students were told to stay indoors while shots were exchanged next door. Romanov dvor is located less than a kilometer from the heart of Russian state power, the Kremlin.
Online store Wildberries is a success story of the 21st century, but Wednesday’s events were more reminiscent of a familiar gang showdown from the 1990s, razborka, as it was called in the slang of the time.
The husband, Vladislav Bakaltšuk, said that he had come to a business meeting regarding Wildberries company’s warehouse projects. Wife Tatjana Bakaltšuk, on the other hand, said that no negotiations had been agreed upon. She accuses her husband and his companions of having arrived to hijack the company’s headquarters.
– Armed people broke into our office, started shooting, pogrom. Young men died. Vladislav, what are you doing? How can you look your parents and our children in the eye? How could you? How could you bring the situation to such an absurdity? Tatjana Bakaltšuk asked on her Telegram channel on video.
From Wednesday evening to Thursday night, Moscow’s security authorities feverishly rounded up those involved in the events. About 30 people were arrested. Vladislav Bakaltšuk was charged with murder, attempted murder, attempted murder of an official and arbitrariness. Still, he got away with it.
– On September 18, I and my group were victims of a cynical provocation and attack, Vladislav Bakaltšuk wrote on his Telegram channel.
The couple is in the middle of a bitter divorce, but there is much more going on in the background.
There is speculation in the media that the fate of Wildberries is being manipulated by an influential Dagestani businessman Suleiman Kerimov and the autocratic leader of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov. The men of the presidential administration have also been involved.
In Russia, business, politics and violence continue to overlap in a way that produces such surprises as the skirmish that escalated into a firefight near the Kremlin.
The family business became an online store
At first, the story is like a Russian version of the American dream.
Russian-Korean Tatjana Kim met her future husband, IT entrepreneur Vladislav Bakaltšuk, in the early 2000s. After the birth of her first child, Bakalchuk became interested in the idea of starting a company.
In 2004, Bakalčuk founded Wildberries with her husband. At first, it carried clothes and shoes. The warehouse operated in the family’s home, and at first relatives were hired to help.
The company began to grow rapidly. A small online store focused on selling clothes grew into a Russian online shopping giant, and Tatyana Bakalchuk became the richest woman in Russia.
The alliance raised questions
In June of this year, Wildberries announced a merger with Russ, Russia’s largest outdoor advertising company.
The merger caused confusion in the financial journals. Many commentators wondered how Wildberries’ online business would benefit from an outdoor advertising company.
Wildberries is a much bigger company than Russ. Still, in the joint company to be formed, Wildberries’ share is 65 percent and Russ’s as much as 35 percent.
The Russ company is run by brothers Robert and Levan Mirzoyanbut in the Russian media, influential businessman and senator Suleiman Kerimov has been seen as the silent background force of the integration project. Kerimov is the gray cardinal of Dagestan in the North Caucasus, with close ties to the presidential administration.
No big business ventures without the Kremlin
Financial newspaper RBK by The merger between Wildberries and Russ has the blessing of the highest Russian leadership.
Financial media Forbes, on the other hand told from the letter that Tatjana Bakalchuk and Russ CEO Robert Mirzoyan wrote to the President of Russia to Vladimir Putin.
In the letter, they boasted that the company to be formed would become a global online store similar to the US Amazon and China’s Alibaba, which would have 5.8 billion people in its sphere of influence. The company would create a new payment system that would enable payments to be handled in rubles without the international SWIFT system.
Putin gave the green light and allowed the deputy head of the presidential administration to promote the matter Maksim Oreshkin hands.
Kadyrov entered the picture
Shortly after the merger project, it became public knowledge that the Bakalchuks’ marriage was falling apart.
According to Tatjana Bakaltšuk, the marriage had begun to fall apart earlier, while Vladislav said that the reason is precisely the planned merger.
According to Tatjana Bakalchuk, her husband owns only one percent of Wildberries. Vladislav Bakaltšuk has said that the married couple does not have a prenuptial agreement, so they should divide their property in half.
Vladislav Bakaltšuk opposes the merger of Wildberries and Russ. According to him, it is a hostile business takeover.
Vladislav Bakaltšuk, worried about Russia, turned to Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of North Caucasian Chechnya. Kadyrov runs his republic arbitrarily like a medieval county lord and has never shied away from harsh measures.
Kadyrov announced On her Telegram channel, that there is a company hijacking going on and the hijackers have separated Tatjana Bakalchuk from her husband so that the spouses could not even talk to each other.
Kadyrov wrote that the brothers Levan and Robert Mirzoyan and “a few well-known Caucasians” are behind the takeover. This could refer to Suleiman Kerimov, among others.
Kadyrov demanded that the kidnappers return the wife to her husband and the business to the family and announced that he would go all the way to the end. On Wednesday in Moscow, we saw what that could mean.
According to media reports, at least one of the men who tried to enter the Wildberries office has connections to Kadyrov.
Freelancer Umar Chichayev serves as deputy commander of the Ahmat-1 unit of the National Guard in Chechnya. He has also achieved fame in taekwondo. As a freelancer, Chichaev has belonged to Kadyrov’s Aghmat club. Agentstvo news site tellsthat there are photographs of Chichayev standing next to Kadyrov and his close allies.
The Kremlin got a new dilemma
Putin’s administration once again has to balance between its various factions.
On one side of the horizontal cup are Suleiman Kerimov and the men of the presidential administration and on the other side Ramzan Kadyrov with his security forces. The future of Russia’s largest online store is on the table. It has now been solved both in public and with guns.
The question arises whether Ramzan Kadyrov tried to resolve a business dispute by sending armed musclemen to a business center in the heart of Moscow. Does Kadyrov want to scuttle the deal, which according to media reports has the blessing of his master, Vladimir Putin?
Kadyrov has been forgiven for a lot of arbitrariness before. He has kept such a troubled Chechnya quiet in the past, and it would not be easy for the Kremlin to replace him.
Putin should be the last-ditch mediator in business disputes between power blocs. The firefight in the heart of Moscow may indicate that he has not monitored the Wildberries case very closely.
Vladimir Putin’s big promise to Russian citizens was that his administration would make a clear difference to Boris Yeltsin’s troubled 90s. Putin’s time was supposed to mean stability and predictability. In fact, Putin’s rule is a direct extension of the 90s’ ways of doing things.
The Wildberries saga shows that the redistribution of property in Russia is not decided in the courts, but ultimately by personal relationships in the corridors of the Kremlin.