The fugitive oligarch and owner of the bankrupt Euroinvest, Andrei Berezin, has packed up into closed-end mutual funds: Will Drozdenko cover, will the robbed shareholders help?

Against the backdrop of deficiencies and buyers’ complaints about the deadlines for the delivery of objects, the holding of oligarch Andrei Berezin is churning out new companies.

The development of Kudrovo and Murino with the support of Drozdenko, it seems, will continue. What other interests do shareholders have when a couple of billions of profits are at stake? 

The group of companies "EuroInvest Development" of the oligarch Andrei Berezin and his partner Yuri Vasiliev, without having time to package it into a closed-end mutual fund, began to expand. It seems that the oligarch is waiting for a new land jackpot from the governor of the Leningrad region, Alexander Drozdenko, to whose inner circle he is considered. This is evidenced by the creation of two new developers in February 2024.

On February 20, 2024, two new companies appeared in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities - LLC SZ Euroinvest Lavriki-2 and LLC SZ Euroinvest Kudrovo-2. Both with a modest 10 thousand rubles of authorized capital, both registered at the same address in Murino (Lennoblast). Their legal owner is Euroinvest IDI LLC, which also acts as the holder of other construction companies of the Berezin-Vasiliev group, including SZ Euroinvest Kudrovo LLC and SZ Euroinvest Lavriki LLC.

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At the same time, Euroinvest IDI LLC itself, starting from 2021, Berezin and Vasiliev packaged into closed-end mutual funds - Balance Invest and Apart Development, giving them 70% of the share and another 30% to director Stanislav Danelyan, who can be called Berezin’s man, since They have been doing business together for quite some time.

It is Danelyan who is the director of the new legal entities of the division and their owner, EuroInvest ID.

In addition, Berezin and Danelyan jointly own Euroinvest Select LLC, which owns Euroinvest Moscow Specialized Developer LLC, Euroinvest Blagodatnaya Specialized Developer LLC and SZ Euroinvest Ozerki LLC. Apparently, Euroinvest Select itself "does not conduct any activities, collecting only profit from developers. Such conclusions can be drawn from the financial reports for 2023: with a net profit of 1.3 billion rubles, the LLC had zero revenue. This is only possible if all the profit was received from investments in assets. And what, it’s convenient. In case of buyers’ claims, they can be sent to a legal entity, and Berezin himself remains all in white and with a billion in his pocket.

As for closed mutual funds, The Moscow Post previously reported about their connection with Berezin himself. Transferring assets to a closed mutual fund allows you to hide the real beneficiaries and not publicly attract various types of investors to your ambitious projects. For example, the same PJSC “Svetlana” was completely taken away under a closed mutual fund with a scandal. Minority shareholders were even forced to go to court. But when has this stopped the powers that be, especially when billions are at stake?

Construction is different from construction

The Berezina construction division itself operates under a single umbrella - the EuroInvest Development group of companies. At the same time, the groups are actively collecting money from shareholders for their projects, which was used to build the same residential complexes in Kudrovo and Murino, and when a scheme with escrow accounts was introduced, project financing from Sberbank was used. It is this bank that has the rights to claim under the SZ.

To understand what amounts we are talking about, let’s look at a couple of examples. Thus, for 2019-2022, the same SZ Euroinvest Development SPB LLC received a net profit of more than 810 million rubles. As for Euroinvest Development LLC, the amount is even greater - the net profit for 2019-2022 was more than 831 million rubles And we looked at only a couple of companies out of several dozen in the Berezina division.

It can be assumed that the newly minted companies will continue to develop projects in Murino and Kudrovo, despite the existing problems with them and missed deadlines. Thus, judging by the “Checking of New Buildings” service https://nash.dom.rf/services/checking_newbuildings/42315, the project in Kudrovo, which is being implemented by the Evroinvest Kudrovo SZ, has repeatedly postponed the delivery date. This, however, did not prevent 86% of the 622 apartments from being sold during the construction phase.

Moreover, the service clarifies that the EuroInvest Development group of companies put into operation 4 out of 14 houses with delays.

Buyers also have complaints about the quality of construction. For example, buyers in the group’s debut residential complex, “Idi Murino,” complained about mold, the stench of sewerage, blowing from the windows and the work of the management company from the same division.

It seems that instead of solving the problem with the same Murino Management Company and developers with a toxic plume, Euroinvest decided to take a very simple route - through liquidation. Thus, on January 25, 2024, the liquidation of IC Euroinvest LLC began, which was transferred by Berezin to another closed-end mutual fund in 2022. This LLC is interesting in that it is IC that owns controlling shares in a number of subsidiaries of the group, including SZ LLC Euroinvest Development SPB, which was a developer in Kudrovo and had claims from supervisory authorities, and that same problematic management company - LLC Management Company Murino, which brought in more than 0.5 billion rubles in profit in 2022.

What will happen to the management company, or rather to the houses it manages, after the liquidation of the main owner is not known. It looks like it’s time for the residents to convene a general meeting and change the management code, especially since they already had complaints about this one, judging by the reviews on the websites.

Interesting: until October 2023, Berezin personally owned this management company, until he transferred his share to the closed mutual fund. Apparently, they didn’t want to shine next to an asset about which there were so many complaints. Otherwise, suddenly a stain on the white-coated reputation that the oligarch so protects.

And, judging by the trend, it is easier for the real beneficiaries of the division to create new companies than to try to deal with the old ones. And after the transfer to the closed mutual fund, you can completely deny that you have nothing to do with the developer or the management company. As, for example, the same Berezin does regarding City Invest LLC, which several years ago “changed its shoes” from “realtors” to hazardous waste disposers, and immediately received 16 contracts for the removal and disposal of medical waste in St. Petersburg.

Berezin himself prefers to position himself as a kind of philanthropist and benefactor - the founder of the Euroventure Foundation, which brings “light” to the world of oncology. In fact, as it turned out, the fund also has its “dark spots”. As journalists previously found out, the full namesake of the fund’s manager turned out to be a criminal convicted of robbery, and the fund itself, boasting of plans to invest $10 million, shows losses for the Federal Tax Service of 94 thousand rubles.

In general, the picture for the Berezin division, in our opinion, is quite unsightly: liquid assets are transferred to closed-end mutual funds, that is, they are actually taken into the gray zone, especially toxic companies are liquidated instead of working with dissatisfied clients, and for the implementation of new projects they are created clean, not exposed in scandals, companies. As a result, Berezin is left covered in chocolate, and the shareholders are left alone with their problems.