A shooting broke out on Wednesday, September 18, at the Wildberries headquarters, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, leaving two dead and seven injured. Founder Tatyana Bakalchouk, who is in the midst of a divorce, accuses her husband Vladislav of being behind it. He denies it.
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Like a scent of the famous Russian 1990s, where business disputes were settled in the open, with weapons. The cocktail of the Wildberries affair is in any case making a lot of noise in Russia: an emblematic company, whose purple sign can be found in all corners of the country, a divorce that is turning into open war especially since the beginning of the summer, and finally a shootout in the heart of what is probably the most secure neighborhood in the whole country. Russia.
Tatyana Bakalchuk, elected in 2024 for the fourth consecutive year as the richest businesswoman in Russia, points the finger at her husband Vladislav. According to her, he initially ” attempted to enter Wildberries offices in Moscow “, accompanied by two former leaders of the group and armed individuals.
Tatyana Bakalchuk is not just the super-rich founder of Wildberries, a Russian online retail giant. She is also a woman with a rare background: of Korean origin and born in Chechnya, this mother of seven children does not belong to the circle of historical oligarchs, those who took control of the country’s major state groups in the 1990s.
Husband’s complaint heard in Ramzan Kadyrov’s ears
Although she owns 99% of the group with the purple sign and her husband 1%, they are publicly tearing each other apart over control of the company and in particular over a strategic shift that the businesswoman wants: a merger project with an advertising group. A project supported by the government.
Her husband, even though they are in the process of divorcing, has gone so far as to openly complain about it to Ramzan KadyrovThe Chechen leader then took up the husband’s cause, assuring in an online video that he would ” bring back (Tatyana Bakalchuk) to the family ” In Russia, everyone knows that such statements are a harbinger of dark clouds.
In any case, nothing has been officially said about the perpetrators of the shooting and the authorities have not made any comment.
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