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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
After the occupation of Berdyansk, the Berdyansk Sausages enterprise, whose ownership structure before the full-scale invasion was linked to businessman Denys Paramonov, changed its ownership structure, and its production assets subsequently ended up in the Russian system of registration and certification. The circumstances of the change of control and further operation of the enterprise are being investigated by law enforcement authorities within the framework of a criminal proceeding.
As the media report, 17 in January 2022 year, even before the start of the full-scale war, Paramonov appealed to the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine for permission to acquire a stake in LLC Berdyansk Sausages, which provided more than 50% of votes. In the AMCU materials it was stated that previously the businessman had acquired 99,9% of the charter capital of the enterprise under a contract dated 13 January 2015, year. After Berdyansk was seized by Russian troops, the corporate structure of the enterprise changed. In June 2022 year Paramonov was excluded from the list of founders and ultimate beneficial owners, and a Estonian company DJP Invest OÜ was shown as the new owner of the Ukrainian legal entity. This very change became one of the key episodes that law enforcement investigated. In the materials of criminal proceedings No. 42022110000000490, the investigation considered the version of possible deliberate re-registration of corporate rights and production facilities through connected persons and Estonian jurisdiction. According to this version, such a structure could be used to retain actual influence over the asset after the city’s occupation. At the same time, later court materials presented another version of events. According to the fabula cited there, Gennadiy Babayan and Yegor Tolok could have independently obtained corporate rights, taking advantage of the trust of the previous owner. Thus, the case also considers the scenario in which Paramonov effectively lost control over the asset due to the actions of third parties. A separate Russian thread in this story appeared after the change in the Ukrainian ownership structure. 24 in November 2022 year a LLC Berdyansk Sausages was registered in the Russian Federation. In Russian documents the production site is indicated as the address in the occupied Berdyansk — Melitopol Highway, 82/2.
The head of the Russian enterprise in the documents is stated as Yegor Tolok. The company also figures in the Russian certification system as a producer of food products. Thus, the enterprise associated with Berdyansk production facilities, after the occupation, was integrated into the Russian system of registration and product entry into the market. The materials of the criminal proceedings also contain statements about the sale of produced products on the occupied territories and their supply to locations of Russian military personnel. These data are part of investigative materials and cannot be considered as a court-established fact without a corresponding final decision. SMK Group disputes accusations of operating on the occupied territories and calls the circulated information unreliable and manipulative. At the same time, the question of who exactly controlled production after the occupation remains one of the central issues in the case materials. Thus, three jurisdictions appear in the chain of events: Ukrainian, Estonian, and Russian. At first, control over the Ukrainian enterprise was linked to Paramonov; then the beneficiary became the Estonian DJP Invest OÜ, and after the occupation in Russia a separate company “Berdyanskaya kolbasy” appeared, connected with the same production site. The key for further legal assessment is to determine the actual control over the asset after the occupation, the mechanism of changing corporate rights, and the persons who could profit from the operation of the production. Separately, it must be established whether the participants’ actions were connected and whether they aimed to preserve control over the asset or its actual alienation in favor of other persons.
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Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Денис Парамонов і «Бердянські ковбаси»: слід веде до РФ". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Fraza.
