The Russian government on Tuesday appointed Yakub Zakriev, Chechnya’s agriculture minister, director of the Russian branch of yogurt maker Danone. Taimuraz Bolloev, a longtime friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was instead appointed director of Baltika, a Russian company that produces beer for the Carlsberg group.
The appointments of Zakriev and Bolloev were announced two days after the publication of the decree by which Russia had taken control of the local subsidiaries of Danone and Carlsberg, placing them under “temporary management” of the state. The decree was approved on the basis of a new rule introduced in Russia at the beginning of the year, according to which the government can decide to seize the assets of companies in countries considered “hostile”.
For different reasons both Zakriev and Bolloev have very close ties to Putin. Zakriev is the nephew of Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya and one of Putin’s best-known allies. Besides being friends with him for a long time, Bolloev is also very close to Yuri and Mikhail Kovalchuk, two Russian millionaires very loyal to Putin what second sources of the Financial Times they had expressed interest in Baltika.
Both the Kovalchuk brothers and Kadyrov are currently under the sanctions imposed by many Western governments in response to the invasion of Ukraine: entrusting the management of the Russian subsidiaries of Danone and Carlsberg to people close to them is a way around them. According to some analysts, Putin’s goal would be to enrich his supporters to strengthen the stability of his regime, inflicting economic damage on Western companies.
Danone and Carlsberg were among thousands of Western companies that had decided to stop doing business in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Some had already succeeded, others, such as Danone and Carlsberg, had been in negotiations for months to sell their activities in Russia. They were trying hard, as the Russian government had made it much more complicated in the meantime, he added conditions often onerous and arbitrarily established.
Danone, in particular, was just days away from finalizing the sale of its Russian operations. Carlsberg protested the Russian government’s decision, calling the situation “unexpected»; he also said that he is considering starting legal proceedings against Russia.
Danone and Carlsberg are not the first Western companies seized by the Russian government, that last April he had taken control also of the Russian branches of the Finnish and German energy companies Fortum and Uniper respectively. Also in this case, executives very close to Putin had been appointed at the head of the two companies seized.