Russia plans to make use of an American-owned corporate whose property it seized to provide meals to its military, Reuters reported Thursday, bringing up a report it got.
President Vladimir Putin ordered the seizure of Glavprodukt, the rustic’s greatest canned meals manufacturer, and its placement underneath brief state keep an eye on in October 2024. Whilst Moscow has nationalized a number of foreign-owned companies because the invasion of Ukraine, Glavprodukt is the primary to be taken from an American shareholder.
In a letter to the Prosecutor Basic reviewed via Reuters, Glavprodukt’s new control claimed the takeover was once essential to verify strong meals manufacturing, together with for provides to the Nationwide Guard and the Protection Ministry.
Glavprodukt had by no means equipped the army ahead of its seizure, an individual accustomed to the subject advised Reuters.
Following the switch, Glavprodukt’s proprietor, U.S. businessman Leonid Smirnov, was once accused of transferring roughly 1.38 billion rubles ($17 million) of the corporate’s budget out of Russia from 2022 to 2024 in defiance of Russia’s wartime restrictions on capital withdrawal.
In keeping with the Prosecutor Basic’s Administrative center, Smirnov additionally tried to dam Glavprodukt’s meals shipments to the entrance and steered staff to not cooperate with the brand new corporate control, allegedly out of a way of revenge for the takeover.
Smirnov denies any wrongdoing.
The seizure of Glavprodukt seems poised to learn trade pursuits connected to Alexander Tkachev, a former agriculture minister who’s underneath Western sanctions, Reuters reported.
Smirnov based Glavprodukt in 1999. Born within the Soviet Union, he emigrated to the U.S. within the Seventies, constructed a trade occupation and returned to Russia in 1995.
These days, the corporate operates 3 main factories that produce a variety of canned meat, condensed milk and canned fish and greens. These days 2024, Smirnov stated the corporate held more or less 10% of Russia’s canned meat marketplace, 7% of the dairy phase and as much as 3% of the fish marketplace.
In April 2023, Putin licensed the federal government to grab the Russia-based property of overseas firms from international locations the Kremlin perspectives as “unfriendly,” a transfer broadly noticed as retaliation to the West freezing round $300 billion in Russian state property.
