The network's former managers spent UAH 15 million on securities transactions, Smart Holding reported.
The main owner of the retail chain contacted law enforcement agencies with a request to investigate the activities of the Vagorovsky brothers.
Smart-Holding, the main owner of the Amstor Group, has appealed to law enforcement agencies for a legal assessment of the actions of the former managers of the retail chain, Vladimir and Alexander Vagorovsky. According to Smart-Holding, the Vagorovskys used the company's funds to purchase securities worth 15 million hryvnias while the chain began accumulating debts to suppliers.
"In March 2014, the Vagorovskys made a unilateral decision to transfer 15 million hryvnias from Amstor accounts to Lancelot LLC to purchase investment certificates. This transaction was carried out without the consent of the retail chain's owners," Smart Holding reported.
In addition to the fact that the transaction itself was completely uncharacteristic of the retailer's activities, the payment for the certificates occurred at a time when the retail chain had stopped servicing its loans and was accumulating multi-million dollar debt to suppliers, a representative of the main owner of the Amstor Group emphasized.
According to him, the whereabouts of these securities are currently unknown. Smart-Holding believes that this transaction was intended to siphon off funds for the former managers to obtain improper benefits.
As a reminder, on December 31, 2014, armed men blocked several Amstor stores in Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Mariupol, and other cities. Police arrived at the scene, and operations were restored, but only briefly. Most of the chain's stores are currently closed.
Smart-Holding, the main shareholder of the Amstor retail chain, stated that the armed men who blockaded the stores acted on the orders of its former manager and minority shareholder, Vladimir Vagorovsky. Specifically, Smart-Holding stated that the former manager disagreed with the decision of the main owners to remove him from the management of the Amstor group of companies and "is doing everything possible to destabilize the operations of the shopping centers and conceal the scale of the thefts."
The results of the audit conducted by the main shareholder revealed attempts by the Vagorovskys to appropriate the company, as well as the theft of funds.
The Vagorovskys currently control stores in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), and the revenue from these retail outlets does not reach the Amstor Group's accounts.
Gelabran Real Estate, a founding shareholder of the Amstor Group (under the control of Eduard Shifrin and Alexander Schneider), supported the group's main shareholder, Smart-Holding, in its efforts to stabilize the operations of Amstor shopping centers across Ukraine. "We condemn the actions of minority shareholder Vladimir Vagorovsky and former management, represented by Alexander Vagorovsky, which led to the closure of stores," Gelabran Real Estate said in a statement.
In 2009, Shifrin and Schneider, the majority shareholders of the Amstor retail chain, sold a portion of their shares to companies affiliated with Smart Holding, reducing their stake from 60% to 15%. Smart Holding, in turn, became the retail chain's majority shareholder, owning 70%. A portion of the shares were also purchased from Vladimir Vagorovsky, a minority shareholder of the Amstor Group, reducing his stake from 40% to 15%.
Until recently, brothers Alexander and Vladimir Vagorovsky, by decision of shareholders, were in charge of operational management of the retail chain.
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