Products

Mobile phones and digital technology

Turnover

RUB 61.91 billion (2010, IFRS)

Net profit

▲ RUB 5.58 billion (2010, IFRS)

Number of employees Website

Story

Creation and rapid growth of the company

Evgeny Chichvarkin

In the late 1990s - early 2000s, Euroset and its then head Evgeny Chichvarkin persistently emphasized the company’s bright and extraordinary, on the verge of shocking, image. The company’s sharp, “on the verge of a foul” advertising slogans (“Euroset - the prices are just crazy!”, etc.) became an important marketing tool. The company carried out scandalous advertising campaigns and promotions, including “Take off your clothes for a phone,” when participants were asked to undress in the Euroset Communications Palace in order to get a mobile phone; competitions “Miss Breasts”, “Erotic Photography”, etc.

The letters, interesting for their stylistic originality, through which Evgeny Chichvarkin communicated with the company’s personnel, became famous. They, in particular, contained instructions to “remove Samsung phones to distant shelves”, “the use of Nokia phones for personal purposes on company premises is prohibited”, etc. Euroset management did not deny the existence of such letters, but refused to comment on their content. In October 2008, the first color letter was published, addressed to “His Majesty the Buyer.”

External images
"Chichvarkin's Letters"
	Letter No. 1
	Letter No. 2
	Letter No. 3
	Letter No. 4

Problems with law enforcement agencies and Chichvarkin’s departure

On September 2, 2008, law enforcement officers conducted a search in the central office of Euroset, related to the investigation into the case of the kidnapping in 2003 of former Euroset forwarder Andrei Vlaskin, who was convicted by the company's security service of stealing cell phones. Based on this fact, a criminal case was opened against the owner of the company, Chichvarkin, and he was put on the international wanted list. Chichvarkin himself fled the country, moving to London.

On April 3, 2010, Evgeniy Chichvarkin’s mother was found dead in her apartment with numerous injuries on her body, the apartment was spattered with blood. At the same time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs officially stated that the woman died of acute heart failure and did not initiate a case of violent death. The media, as well as the businessman himself, expressed opinions that Chichvarkin’s mother was killed in order to put pressure on the businessman or take revenge on him.

In December 2010, the Moscow City Court acquitted Euroset employees who were accused of kidnapping the company's freight forwarder, and soon the Investigative Committee of Russia overturned the decision to arrest Chichvarkin in absentia, the criminal case against him was dropped (at the same time, the case against Euroset for smuggling cell phones phones continued to be developed until January 2012, when it was discontinued "due to amendments to the Criminal Code, according to which the smuggling of goods was decriminalized"). After this, the British judiciary closed the extradition case of the Russian businessman, but he refused to return to his homeland, citing impunity for the police officials who started persecuting him. In the summer of 2011, two police generals, Konstantin Machabeli and Boris Miroshnikov, whom Chichvarkin called the organizers of his persecution, were dismissed by decrees of the Russian President. Top managers of Euroset, who were wrongfully detained on charges of kidnapping, sued the Russian Ministry of Finance for large sums of compensation (for example, the former vice-president of the company Boris Levin - 20 million rubles).

After change of ownership

In February 2009, the company created the Eurovsyo social network for its employees.

In December 2010, Russian director, screenwriter, journalist and actor Ivan Okhlobystin became creative director of Euroset. On March 10, 2011, the company began rebranding: the yellow terrier became the new symbol of the network. It was assumed that in 2011 the new image would appear in approximately 2 thousand salons, in the rest - in 2012.

In April 2011, the company tried to conduct an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, but overvalued its shares, and the order book for the purchase of GDR shares was only 15% subscribed. As a result, the company refused to conduct an initial offering.

Mergers and acquisitions

In May 2005, Euroset bought the “USSR” network of communication stores (stands for “Network of Russian Communication Stores”), which included 32 stores in the Voronezh region, Saratov and Tambov region. On July 31, 2006, Euroset acquired the Ultra network of cellular communication stores, while retaining the Ultra brand.

In December 2006, Euroset management announced the acquisition of a network of cellular communication stores in Moldova, which owns 44 stores.

In the fall of 2011, Euroset acquired 100% of the Alt Telecom electronics retail chain. The purchase of the chain, which includes 520 salons, cost $70 million.

Managers

Owners and management

The owners of the company as of March 2011 were Alexander Mamut's ANN company (50.1%) and VimpelCom (49.9%).

The president of the company is Alexander Malis, and the senior management of Euroset as of December 2011 also included Dmitry Denisov (senior vice president for operations), Viktor Lukanin (vice president for commerce), Dmitry Milshtein (financial director), Sergey Malyshev (vice president for specialized business) and Vyacheslav Yakhin (vice president for marketing). In September 2012, ANN, represented by Alexander Mamut, sold its share of Euroset to MegaFon. .

Activity

Trading pavilion "Euroset" in Tver

The main activities of the company are retail trade in cell phones, portable digital equipment, accessories, connection to telecom operators, and provision of high-tech services.

At Euroset you can purchase and pay for air tickets, traffic police fines, tourist vouchers, tickets to entertainment and sporting events, make subscription payments for satellite television, loan payments, and set up equipment.

Currently, the company's network includes more than 5.1 thousand stores located in 1,464 cities in Russia and the CIS countries. More than 4 thousand of them work in Russia.

Performance indicators

Euroset Group of Companies

The Euroset group of companies includes LLC Trading House Euroset, LLC Euroset-Retail, LLC Pro-Service and LLC Euroset-Logistics.

Euroset-logistic

Euroset-logistic is a limited liability company operating in the logistics market of Russia and the CIS countries since 2005 and is part of the Euroset group of companies.

The quality management system of Euroset-logistic LLC is certified in accordance with the requirements of the international quality standard ISO 9001:2000. The certificate was issued by AFAQ AFNOR International, the international division of the French group AFNOR.

The warehouse complex in Russia includes 17 regional warehouses with a total area of ​​more than 54,500 sq.m., 20,000 sq.m. of which are category “A” warehouses.

Performance indicators:

The services of the Euroset-Logistic Company are regularly used by divisions of the Euroset Holding and such well-known companies as Russian Lotto, Samsung, Panasonic, DHL, Gosloto, Samsonite.

Awards and prizes

On September 9, 2010, Euroset received the Retail Grand-Prix award in the category “Best advertising campaign of 2010 in media channels.”

On December 7, 2010, Euroset received the national award “Company of the Year 2010” in the “Retail Network” category.

Logo

Changed 1 logo. The current one is the 2nd in a row.

• In 1997-2011, the logo was the word “Euroset” in blue; instead of the third stripe in the letter “E” there was a Russian flag.
• From 2011 to the present, the logo is a yellow dog, with the signature “Euroset” underneath it. The font of the inscription has also changed, the letters are now black.

Notes

Links

Cellular communications in Russia
Operators
...virtual
Sales networks
Standards

During his trip to St. Petersburg at the end of 2009, President " " said that the company would be a universal payment acceptor. Since then I don’t remember Euroset reporting on progress in this direction. How much are you progress, are you still as enthusiastic?

Malis told the truth. We feel enthusiasm, and our most important report is to our buyer. We can talk a lot about the market, evaluate it, but when we are in the process of achieving a goal, we don’t like to talk about it. We like to talk about it when everything has already happened and we have something to brag about.

What can you boast about today?

We are now one of the largest box offices in Russia. Payments account for 70%, and somewhere around 80% of our company’s turnover. Almost the population of Poland passes through us every month (which means about 40 million people - DP). This is the first. Secondly, we developed and implemented for the first time in the world a unique service - cash loans to our Kukuruza loyalty card. You can receive a banking product on this card from several banks. There are four of them so far. This is generally a very promising direction in which we really believe.

Malis said then that payment acceptance services accounted for 1–2% of revenue. He was going to increase this share.

Everyone interprets the word “revenue” very loosely and differently. Therefore, we will now talk about turnover: as I already said, financial services in our structure occupy more than 70% of turnover. Despite the fact that in absolute terms the turnover itself is also growing at a gigantic pace. For example, if in St. Petersburg we have grown in terms of merchandise revenue, roughly speaking, by more than 30 percent during this time, then in terms of payment services - by more than 370%.

That is, the volume of accepted payments has increased 4.7 times?

These include payments and financial services, except for operator payments. And financial services include a lot of positions, to put it simply - both issuing and receiving money. We consider this a separate business. In our business structure, we distinguish three areas: sales of goods, operator services and financial services. The latter are growing by more than 400% per year.

And what are the shares of these three businesses in your revenue?

If previously the profit from services excluding operators took up a couple of percent, now it is more than 10%. And the share will change. The growth rate of financial services is many times higher than that of goods.

Let's talk about the part of the revenue that you receive from operators. After all In recent years, operators have been actively developing their own retail.

They are developing it while it is unprofitable. We have two types of business with operators: promoting their contracts and promoting their services. In the first case, we simply attract a subscriber and enter into an agreement with him. In the second case, we already serve his needs related to the use of subscription fees, accepting payments, and so on. We can say that the first indicator - the sale of contracts - is static. That is, just as we were selling a certain number of contracts 2-3 years ago, we are still selling them, plus or minus. And remuneration from operators is fixed in long-term agreements. Therefore it is a significant and fixed amount. And, accordingly, its share in our revenue is gradually decreasing, because the revenue itself is growing due to other areas.

The second part is more dynamic: we accept more payments, make more transactions, receive a commission, and this amount of money is constantly increasing. But if earlier payments to operators accounted for 80–90% of the payment turnover, now it is approximately 8%. No, of course, the volume of operator payments is growing, just at a slower pace than other services. Replacement is gradually taking place. We become a little less dependent on any specific cash flows. This share will continue to decline and reach 3–5%. It all depends on our ambitions in terms of financial services, where the pace today is limited only by our speed in installing new cash desks and expanding our payments.

Last year you had " "There was a quarrel...

Not a squabble, a brawl.

Fine. You then decided to occupy the salons where Svyaznoy operates. But he worked the way he did and it works and shows good results. What is the result of your struggle?

Our goal has been achieved - we got effective salons for almost the same money, the company you are talking about opened new ones for new money. We build different models of market behavior, different goals and different methods. Some people measure revenue per salon; for us, profit per square meter is important. Ultimately, any goal of any business is profit, no matter how someone cheats their soul.

What we did and what you are talking about is not a spontaneous decision. There are viable models on the market, and there are not so much. Of the latter, some die immediately, others gradually, accumulating a credit burden. Our credit burden, despite the overall financial growth, remained at a historically minimal level for the company, and we can comfortably service this debt without taking on new loans. Income for retail is income from salons. We took the most profitable ones that we needed.

Did you get a lot of them?

More than 400. We didn't need points with crazy rental rates. We implemented our program, we threw a pebble into the water.

But Svyaznoy did not leave the market.

It is likely that the brand will remain, but the question is: in what market? At the scale of our business, nothing can happen in one day. Today, the company must have economic sustainability.

You said that the share of Euroset's income from operators is decreasing. But that's why your business has always had very good profitability.

Share, not volume. And our profitability is still the highest in the market and is not decreasing.

Due to what?

There are many factors here. This includes better work with operators and the introduction of many financial services. Let's look at an example. Let's take the sale of air and train tickets. The volume of business is now comparable to accepting payments in favor of operators. And the profitability is higher there. This is substitution. At the same time, the commission from the buyer is scanty, and sometimes there is none at all; we receive a commission from ticket sellers.

But there are businesses that are much more profitable. For example, concert tickets. Two years ago, for the first time, we sold 5 million rubles worth of these tickets per month. We were euphoric. And now it’s hundreds of millions of rubles a month, and this figure is growing.

Which financial services are most profitable for you and which are the least profitable?

Not very high returns on remittances in relative terms. But this is the largest turnover, which compensates for this profitability in absolute terms. Now we don’t make less than 12–14 billion rubles a month.

Tell us why, if you have such great profitability, you failed holding an IPO?

Shareholders themselves decide what is beneficial for them at one time or another. It’s just that other goals outweighed these intentions.

If you go into the larger economy, Western investors understand only a few things: Russian energy resources and, at most, Russian food. Everything else is very difficult for them, given that our Russian operators and retail are not the same as in the West.

In the Western understanding, this kind of retail is operator retail. They don’t have free multi-format retail, they have nothing to compare with. They have no explanation for how this might work. In fact, during the time that has passed since the preparation for the IPO, our retail format has changed a lot. We depend on operators even less than before. Therefore, our economic readiness is now even higher, but this requires an objective reason. Considering the state of the economy today and the examples of Russian companies, and there are no examples from our market at all, this is not yet timely.

In principle, we do not need funds from the placement of shares. If money is needed, we have a profit. And any bank will be happy to give us a loan. Therefore, an IPO is not an end in itself. Preparing for an IPO is a mandatory course for any large company.

Besides financial services, what other growth drivers have you identified?

We must understand that, be that as it may, we are a traditional retail company, our main growth driver is digital devices. And our task is to provide the best range of these devices. They go to Euroset for this. Everything else - servicing this consumer traffic, providing them with related services - is business diversification. Largely thanks to us, the smartphone market in Russia is developing according to a slightly different scenario than the Western market. Our vendor mix is ​​different. If throughout the world the share of iOS (operating system) is 16%, then in Russia it is about 5%. The Bada operating system has 4% worldwide, and 16% in Russia.

Telecom operators have begun to sell equipment quite actively.

Technology for them is not an end in itself. For operators in this project, the main thing is to hang a sign so that it can be seen everywhere, and their monobrands are a channel of communication with a loyal subscriber base. We are a retail channel for selling and promoting devices and services. The Big Three occupy a combined 20% of this market, and we alone occupy more than 30%. We do not sell our own branded devices, we do not deal with Chinese products. Operators on devices will not make money like we do. This is not due to their lack of professionalism. Their goal is different. With their profitability of 45%, retail for them is a burden, a burden on the business, and a decrease in profitability. And for us this is a tool to increase it.

Select the fragment with the error text and press Ctrl+Enter

Alexander Adolfovich Malis was born on September 4, 1972 in Moscow. “His first place of work was a factory,” wrote the “Company” magazine: according to the publication, while collecting electronics during the holidays, Malis “managed to receive the category of a 2nd category assembler.”

Malis began his higher education at the Moscow Aviation Institute (specialty in applied mathematics), later continuing his studies at another university - the Moscow State University of Commerce (specialty in financial accounting and audit), from which he graduated in 1995. During these years, Malis not only worked, but also studied: he himself talked about how, as a student, he learned to shoe horses, after which he worked part-time as a horse farrier at the hippodrome (“he practically did not appear in classes, and met some teachers for the first time only during an exam ").

The press wrote about Malis that in 1990-1995 he worked as an expert, financial consultant, and then head of a department at the auditing company Rusconsult. However, there is also information that after starting to work at Rusconsult, in 1992 Malis worked as the commercial director of the publishing house (the name was not given) and at the same time created an enterprise “to provide organizational services” (the name was also not given).

In 1995 (according to other sources - in 1993 or 1994), Alexander Malis, together with his younger brother Oleg - a specialist in the field of banking consulting, a graduate of the ergonomics department of the Moscow Aviation Technology Institute - and a former Texas Instruments employee Michael Leibov (Michael Leibov) was one of the founders of the telecommunications company Corbina Telecom. Conceived as a company providing consulting services in the field of lending to private enterprises, searching for sources of financing and carrying out settlements for investment projects, it soon began to engage in the resale of telecommunications services. The initial investment in the company was $3 thousand. In 1996 (according to Finance, in 1997), the partners purchased a telephone exchange for 50 thousand dollars, the first sections of their own network were built, after which Corbina Telecom began to function as a telecom operator.

In 1998, Alexander Malis became a graduate of the graduate school of the Research Financial Institute of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.

By 2000, the turnover of Corbina Telecom reached $10 million. Realizing that without attracting a major partner the company would be crushed by competitors, the founders of Corbina sold it to the American concern Integrated Device Technology Inc. in 2000. (IDT); According to Finance, the transaction amount was $9 million. The Malis brothers remained to work at Corbin as hired managers. In particular, Alexander Malis, who at the time of the sale of the company held the post of its commercial director, responsible for the development of the client direction and new types of services, including long-distance and international telephony and mobile communications, became vice president (senior vice president) of Corbina Telecom ".

In 2006, Malis became the general director of Investelectrosvyaz CJSC, part of the Corbina Telecom group of companies. At the end of the same year, entrepreneurs Alexander Mamut and Viktor Vekselberg became co-owners of Corbina Telecom (through the Cyprus company Inure Enterprises) (structures close to Vekselberg's Renova holding acquired Corbina Telecom from IDT in November 2005). In January 2007, Malis became the acting general director of Corbina's parent company, Kortek CJSC, and already in February appeared in the media as the general director of Kortek. In May of the same year, after the completion of the transaction to sell a controlling stake in Cortek to the Russian telecommunications company Golden Telecom, Mamut became chairman of the board of directors of Corbina Telecom, and Malis retained the position of CEO of Cortek.

In February 2008, VimpelCom acquired 100 shares of Golden Telecom, and in June of the same year, it bought Corbina Telecom (49 percent of Kortek CJSC were purchased from Inure Enterprises, and 51 percent of the shares at the time of the transaction were already belonged to SCS Sovintel, a subsidiary of VimpelCom). In the same year, Malis was appointed director of broadband Internet access development for the VimpelCom group of companies.

In September 2008, it became known that the investment company A&NN, controlled by Mamut, acquired 100 percent of the shares of Euroset, Russia's largest seller of cell phones, from Evgeny Chichvarkin and Timur Artemyev. Shortly before this, Euroset faced claims from law enforcement agencies. Representatives of the Investigative Committee under the Russian Prosecutor's Office conducted searches at the company's central office: the vice president of Euroset and the head of its security service were arrested on suspicion of extortion and kidnapping. In October of the same year, Mamut’s structures sold 50 percent minus one share of Euroset to VimpelCom, and in April 2009, Alexander Malis was appointed president of Euroset, and a contract with him was signed for three years. Some analysts called him the best option for the company: "Mr. Malis is used to working at Corbin under strict financial constraints, achieving good results."

Participants in the telecommunications market characterized Malis as “one of the most creative and talented top managers” with extensive experience working “with the mass market.” Malis's managerial qualities were also highly appreciated by the former owner of Euroset, Evgeny Chichvarkin, who in one of his interviews stated that Malis's leadership style "combines all the good that can be found in the concept of 'cynicism'." “To put it mildly, he is a fairly effective pragmatist,” he explained. When asked by journalists what type of boss - dictator, liberal, rationalizer, "wedding general" - he belongs to, Malis answered: "Magicians out of category." He admitted that Chichvarkin’s personality played a big role in the development of the company, and, in his own words, did not set himself the task of changing the image of the company so that the characteristic features associated with the image of Chichvarkin would go away. "Now something else is being born<...>Everything is evolving very smoothly: the company is maturing,” he said in an interview in September 2009.

Malis is married and has a daughter. Malis’s mother, Nina Ilyinichna Malis, a professor at the Department of State Revenue at the Academy of Budget and Treasury of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, was also mentioned in the press.

Malis speaks English and Hebrew and is Jewish by religion. Information was published in the press about the businessman's hobby - gardening: Standard magazine called him the owner of one of the most beautiful gardens in Russia, designed in the English style. According to Malis, “tinkering with planting material relieves the nervous tension that accumulates during the working week,” and “a walk along the paths of the garden restores peace of mind and restores strength.” The entrepreneur's hobbies also included cars, collecting historical weapons and horse riding.

Malis Alexander Adolfovich

Alexander Adolfovich Malis is the president of the retail company Euroset.

Biography

Graduated from the Moscow State University of Commerce with a degree in Financial Accounting and Audit (1995), graduate school at NIFI (1998).

• In 1990-1995 - expert, financial consultant, head of department, RusConsult company.
• Since 1995 - commercial director of Corbina Telecom.
• Since 2000 - Vice President of Corbina Telecom.
• In 2006 - General Director of CJSC Investelectrosvyaz and acting. General Director of CJSC Kortek (trademark Corbina Telecom).
• In 2007-2008 - General Director of Corbina Telecom.
• 2008-2009 - Director for Broadband Development at VimpelCom Group of Companies
• Since April 2009 - President of the largest Russian cellular retailer, Euroset.

In one of the first video messages to employees after his appointment as Euroset general director, Alexander Malis demonstrated his superiority over the mobile operator MTS, with which his company then had an acute conflict.

“Many people ask me about the conflict with MTS,” Malis said. - This egg-headed operator got offended and began to behave like a hysterical wife... Usually in such cases, a wise husband gives a couple of slaps in the face. I am so familiar with eggs, I do this operation with them every morning.”

Residence in Israel

In 2010, Alexander Malis began extensive work on his site in the village of Aminadav near Jerusalem. Previously, a meat shop was located on the site. Malis explained the choice of location with the desire to “experience the biblical history and past of the people.” The entrepreneur received permission from the local construction commission to build a house, an outbuilding and a swimming pool.

Other residents of this town did not like the 12-meter fence he erected. Malis himself told Marker that only one of 69 neighbors opposed the high retaining wall he built, strengthening the slope of the ravine. The rest of the neighbors are on his side. Therefore, the court took his side.

The parties reached a compromise, the village administration told Marker. The height of the fence will be reduced by 30–50% - it will be different in different places to match the terrain. In addition, the administration says, Malis must plant mature, tall trees next to the new building. The wall (currently brick) will fit better into the landscape due to the fact that it will be covered with local natural stone. “This way it will look much more harmonious,” adds the administration representative.

In November 2011, it became known that the Construction Commission of the Israeli Jerusalem District rejected the appeal of the president of the Euroset company, Alexander Malis, regarding the demolition of the wall of his suburban area, the Kursor news agency reports. Malis was ordered to reduce the height of the wall four times - from 12 to 3 meters.

Since the complex is located on a cliff, permission was also issued to build a wall supporting it. However, when the wall was erected, some local residents and the nature conservation society considered it too high, which violates the appearance and mountainous landscape of the village. As a result, the county building commission last year revoked the lower-level permit and ordered the wall to be demolished.

Malis told CNews that he successfully appealed the district commission's demand in court. The decision to demolish it was reversed, but this did not suit the High Commissioner for Buildings, who now single-handedly established the requirement that a step be added to the wall, reducing its height.

“I do not agree with this requirement and will appeal it again in court,” Malis said. “Creating a step is expensive, and, as technical expertise has established, it is unsafe, since protection against cliffs is lost.”

Due to ongoing disputes over the wall, the President

PRO business real

Yes, says the new general director of Euroset, Alexander Malis, Evgeny Chichvarkin has lost his business, political prospects, lost many friends, and Russian prosecutors are seeking his extradition, but he “lives in a good area of ​​a good city.” This is Malis about London. Perhaps the director of Euroset is right, and we need to sympathize with him and his brother: Oleg Malis, vice president of Altimo, is suspected of obstructing the investigation into the Chichvarkin case, tax evasion, possession and use of narcotic drugs, and his phone is tapped Directorate "K" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation.

It was Oleg Malis, according to Directorate K, who on December 22 last year helped Chichvarkin, who was under surveillance, to get out of the Altimo office unnoticed, get to Domodedovo and escape to London. That day, in the office of Altimo, the largest shareholder of VimpelCom, which bought Euroset, Chichvarkin was probably discussing payment terms or something like that. "They just missed me," Chichvarkin told Newsweek. While Department K operatives from a car parked at the Altimo office were monitoring Chichvarkin’s car and his security guard, he drove away, lying on the floor of the back seat of another car.

Many details of this thriller are already well known. It is known that on September 22, MTS’s option to purchase Euroset expired, and until it expired, Chichvarkin could not negotiate with other buyers. It is known that on September 3, the vice-president of Euroset, Boris Levin, the second most important participant in the deal on the company’s side, was arrested, and Chichvarkin himself and his assistants began to be dragged for interrogation. It is known that Chichvarkin held out until the right moment and on the night of September 23 finally sold the company to the structures of Alexander Mamut, and those to VimpelCom.

And during the interrogation on December 17, recalls Chichvarkin’s lawyer Yuri Gervis, it became clear that the businessman would be reclassified as an accused. Now Chichvarkin is awaiting a decision from the London High Court on his extradition. It used to be a symbol of success. Now his case symbolizes the relationship between the state and business. Newsweek figured out in detail how Chichvarkin, from a semi-legal smuggler, became a successful businessman and quarreled with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

BROKER LEFT, ROOF LEAKED

They say that in the spring of 2005, a man arrived at Sheremetyevo customs, introducing himself as an envoy of Directorate “K” of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. His area of ​​responsibility is crimes in the field of high technology. Sheremetyevo customs was the main channel for importing mobile phones into Russia: approximately two-thirds of the devices entered the country through it. The messenger outlined the parameters of cooperation: “$1 from each device.” This meant about $20 million a year.

Not a single mobile phone sold in Russia before the fall of 2005 was imported legally, cell phone dealers say. Since the beginning of the 2000s, to determine the customs value of imported goods, there was an order from the customs management, which allowed customs clearance of phones according to “risk profiles.” The order was called a “grid”. He allowed customs officers, Chichvarkin recalls, to value phones worth up to $100 at $20, those worth from $100 to $200 at $30, and so on.

Theoretically, the order applied to all market participants. In practice - to a narrow circle of intermediaries. The cost of their services for telephone dealers was 3-7% of the real price of the devices. According to research company IDC, the size of the mobile phone market in 2004 was $4.5 billion. Consequently, traders paid customs brokers from $150 million to $300 million a year for “gray” customs clearance. Approximately two-thirds of the devices were imported through Sheremetyevo customs, the rest “traveled by land” - mainly through the North-West Customs Administration.

The wholesale company Teleko in St. Petersburg and structures associated with Yakov Ardashnikov in Moscow dominated the import market for mobile phones for most large networks at the beginning of 2005. It is unknown whether Ardashnikov was the real beneficiary of these structures or their nominal owner. But the income of his structures exceeded $20 million a year. It was he - or those who stood behind him - who allegedly refused to pay a dollar from the phone in the spring of 2005.

After this, the prosecutor's office began an investigation into abuses at Sheremetyevo. It immediately became clear that the “grid” scheme was categorically illegal. Ardashnikov was put on the wanted list on charges of smuggling, and he fled to Israel. Deputy head of Sheremetyevo customs Valery Kuzmin was sentenced to nine years in prison.

In addition, the police arrested several shipments of phones totaling approximately $100 million as contraband. Criminal cases were also initiated against the traders. “Your broker has left, the roof [at customs] is leaking,” cell phone dealers allegedly heard approximately these words from representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “Of course, we were scared half to death,” recalls one of them.

DEAL WITH GREF

The police have confiscated phones before. Market participants even suspected customs brokers of handing over to the authorities the logistics of the movement of “gray” pipes. Authorities came to the warehouse for inspections and discovered smuggled goods. “The phones were simply taken away without any paperwork, and no one complained,” recalls one of the market participants. What was there to complain about? These telephone numbers were not included in the papers. Then the police sold them to professional dealers - often the same ones from whom these pipes had just been confiscated. The price of the issue is 30% of the cost of the phone according to the “risk profile”, that is, fortunately for the dealer, greatly underestimated. Nevertheless, market participants estimated the volume of these fees to be at least $50 million per year.

But the arrests that took place in August 2005 went beyond the usual: at one point, almost a month’s worth of devices were confiscated. Many small traders were left without working capital. There was no money to import a new batch. And it is not clear how - the intermediary left for Israel, the scheme did not work. Initiated criminal cases added to the fear. “As a result, there were practically no deliveries of phones to Russia for several months,” says Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group. Euroset employees bought phones from other stores just to have something to put on the shelf, recalls Denis Kuskov, head of the St. Petersburg agency Telecom Daily.

Why the security forces suddenly seized such a large shipment is not entirely clear. According to one version, work was underway to create a single customs broker, which, instead of the Ardashnikov and Teleko structures, would deal with customs clearance of phones throughout Russia. According to another, Ardashnikov himself crossed someone’s road. But no one expected that such a scandal would come out of this story, and especially with such consequences.

The story made it into the newspapers, and the Minister of Economic Development German Gref, who was assigned to oversee the work of customs by Vladimir Putin in 2004, learned about it. The minister summoned major market players and had a tough conversation with them. “We talked for more than two hours until Gref understood in detail how and why this business works,” says one of the meeting participants. As a result, Gref offered the traders a deal: they refuse the services of all intermediaries, honestly pay all taxes and fees at the border, and he personally guarantees that their cargo will be cleared at customs accurately and on time. “If there is a delay of even two days, call me at the reception immediately,” the traders allegedly left the meeting with such parting words.

Euroset was the first to switch to direct contracts with suppliers, followed by others. Gref’s scheme was more expensive for the market - 24% of the cost of imports, that is, at least $600-700 million per year. In Ardashnikov’s scheme, taking into account market growth, businessmen would lose only $300-400 million a year. But “white” customs clearance had obvious advantages. Banks began to give cheaper loans against it. Income has become more predictable and transparent from the investors' point of view. And most importantly, the risk of criminal prosecution has dropped sharply. At the end of 2005, Chichvarkin started talking about an IPO: from a small, semi-criminal businessman, a mobile phone seller was turning before our eyes into a respected businessman who could no longer be approached so easily.

FUCK YOU, NOT IPO

In March 2006, customs officers discovered that the temporary storage warehouse in the Sheremetyevo-Cargo terminal was being monitored by Department K employees. This means that they had reason to believe that there was some kind of disorder with high-tech cargo, customs officers reasoned. The last visit of the “kushniks” to Sheremetyevo ended in arrests and a high-profile criminal case. With this in mind, the head of the post ordered a complete check of the cargo arriving at the warehouse.

The cargo consisted of 167,500 Motorola phones imported by Euroset. “What we were most afraid of then was misgrading; with such large quantities it is almost inevitable,” recalls one of the former Euroset consultants. Misgrading is when the actual number of models does not coincide with that stated in the declaration.

For ten days, customs officers opened all the phone boxes, one by one, and checked the contents. There is a fine for misgrading, and Euroset has already prepared the money. But Motorola did a fantastic job, says the same consultant, and the number of models exactly matched what was stated. The check ended, the cargo left the territory of the customs warehouse and on the night of March 29 was arrested by the “kushniks”.

“FUCK you, not the IPO,” one of the arresting officers allegedly said. According to some sources, an intermediary came to Euroset, who first offered to solve the problem for $10 million. Then it was as if they negotiated down to $5 million. It seemed that everything was returning to normal: there are security forces, there are businessmen whom they milk.

In fact, a lot has changed. Previously, traders carried the money themselves because they knew that their goods were imported illegally. Now the owners of Euroset have realized that buying back the devices is no longer the only option.

With the transition to legal status, deliveries began to be carried out on DDU terms - delivery duty unpaid. Roughly speaking, if previously the insurer’s responsibility ended at the moment unloading began in Moscow, now it ends at the recipient’s warehouse. And getting insurance turned out to be more profitable than buying goods from intermediaries.

By that time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs already had an expert opinion that phones pose a health hazard. On April 27, Vladimir Knyazev, an employee of Directorate K, signed an act on the destruction of almost 50,000 devices. Journalists were invited to this procedure. And the destroyed devices themselves soon appeared for sale on the Tsaritsyn market. According to former Euroset employees, up to 30,000 Motorola phones were sold there.

In order to obtain compensation from the insurance company Atradius, it was necessary to prove to it that the phones had been properly cleared through customs (under the terms of DDU, duty payment is the responsibility of the buyer). And also that the phones really did not reach the buyer and the devices from the insured lot that ended up on the shelves have nothing to do with him.

Proving this was not so easy. At first the phones were declared contraband. Customs did not confirm this. Then - counterfeit: allegedly Motorola did not give permission for supplies. The Americans confirmed in an official letter that the phones were delivered to Russia with their knowledge and consent.

At the same time, Motorola, says a source close to Euroset, complained to the State Department. And in July 2006, before the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, meeting with Vladimir Putin, George Bush, according to some sources, casually mentioned the story with Motorola. The source says that an enraged Putin called the Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliev, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development German Gref and ordered both to investigate and report.

Less than two months have passed since Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov was suddenly removed from his post and the investigation into the “Three Whales” case - a furniture smuggling case supervised by FSB officers - was resumed. After listening to Gref and Nurgaliev, Putin unexpectedly sided with the businessmen.

It turned out that the examination report was false. The act of destroying the devices also turned out to be fake. Vice President of Euroset Boris Levin proved to the insurance company Atradius that the phones were stolen. Atradius paid the refund and left the Russian market. A criminal case was initiated against the policemen. Four low-ranking law enforcement officers were convicted; investigator Dmitry Latysh, who gave the order to destroy the phones, is still on the run. Boris Levin became enemy number one for the police.

ANDREY, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

Businessmen suspect that just a few years ago the police had informants at customs who reported to them about the routes of “gray” phones. And businessmen had sources who warned about these checks. Having received a warning, traders sent forwarders to the warehouses, and they removed as many phones as they could before the inspections began.

Dmitry Kanunnikov worked at Euroset as an auditor. His job was to monitor whether the company's employees were stealing. By the time Kanunnikov caught freight forwarder Andrei Vlaskin stealing goods worth about a million dollars, he had already bought a BMW X5 and Mercedes ML 320, began building a cottage near Moscow and paid his driver Dmitry Smurgin $2,000 a month, although he himself received it from Euroset. $1200.

On May 15, 2003, a banner with an offensive hand grenade (RGN) was hung on the door of the Kanunnikovs’ apartment. A few days later, he himself was beaten by unknown assailants and stabbed several times. Nevertheless, Kanunnikov set the matter in motion. On July 21, manager Victoria Nakhshunova, the boss of the forwarder Vlaskin, called him with the question: “Andrey, what have you done?” Two hours later, Nakhshunova called back again: Smurgin, Vlaskin’s partner, had already been taken and was going after him.

Prepared for such a development of the situation, Vlaskin and his family left for a village in the Tambov region in his BMW X5. They searched for him for almost six months. On December 27 in Tambov, after going out to get a drink from a party, forwarder Vlaskin asked a random passerby for a light. He presented his identification as an employee of the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the city of Moscow and tried to handcuff Vlaskin. A fight ensued. The forwarder was forced into a car and taken to Moscow.

The arrest warrant was issued by Major Denis Evsyukov. The forwarder brought to Moscow was first interrogated by the police. Then the operatives released him on his own recognizance and handed him over to the vice-president of Euroset Levin and his people. Levin personally handcuffed him. Vlaskin was kept in rented apartments and, he claims, was severely beaten at least once.

In January, freight forwarder Vlaskin, dressed in a woman’s wig and dressed in a woman’s fur coat and hat, ran away from a rented apartment in Moscow’s Brateev. However, then within a year he re-registered his property to one of the Euroset employees. When the value of the transferred property exceeded half the value of the stolen property, the company abandoned its material claims, and the case against Vlaskin was closed, says lawyer Marat Faizulin. He admits that the Euroset security service exceeded its powers: the police should have done all this, but they did nothing.

WINDOW ON THE BORDER

By last summer, Euroset had been reporting according to international standards for three years. This is a necessary condition for an IPO. Chichvarkin was looking for a strategic investor - he claims that he wanted to sell the company because he foresaw a crisis. Cellular companies could no longer grow due to a general increase in the number of subscribers - everyone who could had already connected - and began to lure customers away from each other. Large pipe traders are the ideal instrument for such a fight, and Euroset was an attractive asset in the market.

Chichvarkin almost reached an agreement with MTS when, at the end of July, Boris Levin allegedly came to his office and said that there would be no deal: “A raider takeover is being prepared, they want to take everything for nothing.” “This can't happen. Borya, you’ve worked too much, you’re tired, it’s time for you to go on vacation,” Chichvarkin allegedly replied. Sistema OJSC, which owns MTS, has since repeatedly publicly denied its involvement in these events.

Levin returned from vacation and was soon arrested - on his desk they found a folder with materials on the development of the forwarder Vlaskin, who at the end of July began to actively testify to Euroset. The standard procedure for a raider takeover is as follows: a criminal case is opened against the head of the company, he ends up in a pre-trial detention center and does not prevent the new owners from taking over the business.

Chichvarkin considered himself inviolable: he was a public figure, a member of the Kremlin, and was Dmitry Medvedev’s confidant in the presidential elections. A week after Levin’s arrest, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov called him and congratulated him on his birthday, says the businessman’s lawyer, Yuri Gervis. Chichvarkin decided that this was a sign: despite the arrests, criminal case and threats, he had not yet been written off. The company was sold to VimpelCom.

At the same time, Chichvarkin was offered to head the Moscow branch of the Right Cause party - this was also a sign of support from the Kremlin. A source close to the Kremlin makes it clear that everyone in the Kremlin supported Chichvarkin, in particular because he was ready to invest his own resources in promoting the “Right Cause”. The entrepreneur clearly felt safe.

Why the persecution of Chichvarkin himself then began is not entirely clear. One version - political - is that after the “March of Dissent” was brutally suppressed in Moscow on December 14, Chichvarkin spoke out on his party activists in the spirit that “Right Cause”, a party of entrepreneurs, should fight police brutality . This version is doubtful. According to another version, of a very general nature, having felt support from officials, the businessman overestimated his capabilities in the fight against the security forces: as the story of the freight forwarder Vlaskin surfaced, Kremlin employees wanted to help him less and less.

One way or another, the green light turned on in the Chichvarkin case. The head of the Investigative Committee, Bastrykin, was given the command to “dig up on him in two days,” says a source close to the Kremlin. According to him, the maximum that they could do for Chichvarkin was to warn him that it was time to leave. The pressure was growing. Chichvarkin’s summons was carried by the same employee of Directorate “K”, Vladimir Knyazev, who in the spring signed an act on the destruction of confiscated Motorola phones. On December 22, Chichvarkin drove his car, accompanied by a security guard, to the Altimo office.