With respect to the founder of the Rolf group of companies, Sergey Petrov, and a number of other managers of the holding, a criminal case has been initiated regarding currency frauds in the amount of 4 billion rubles. This is stated in the press service of the Investigative Committee of Russia. The sanction under this article threatens with a penalty of imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine of 1 million rubles.
“The investigative committee of the Russian Federation against the founder, de facto owner and head of the Rolf group of companies Sergey Petrov and a number of its leaders initiated a criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 193.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the fact of their performing currency operations on transferring funds in especially large amounts to a non-resident's bank account with submission to a credit institution of knowingly forged documents, ”said the official representative of the department Svetlana Petrenko.
According to investigators, in 2014, Petrov transferred to the accounts of the Panabel Limited Cypriot company, controlled by him, the money received from the commercial work of Rolf.
For this, another company was involved - Rolf Estate, the actual owner of which is also Petrov. Rolf and Panabel Limited made a false agreement on the sale and purchase of Rolf Estate’s shares at an overvalued price of 4 billion rubles. Then the funds through the Moscow-controlled Petrov-controlled bank and foreign organizations entered into its circulation.
“In the criminal case, investigators of the Investigative Committee, together with employees of the Federal Security Service of Russia, in the offices of the Rolf group of companies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as the defendants in the criminal case, conduct searches, during which financial and economic documentation relevant to the criminal affairs, and also interrogations of employees of the Rolf company are carried out, - Petrenko concluded.
Note that on Thursday morning, June 27, a number of Rolf car dealerships in Moscow and St. Petersburg were searched in connection with the verification of information about the illegal withdrawal of funds abroad. The press service of the company noted that the events held are not related to the operating activities of the car dealer, who paid 23 billion rubles in taxes over the last three years.
- Sergey Petrov
- RIA News
- © Valery Levitin
The company stressed that they provided the investigators with all the necessary documents.
“They (the investigating authorities. - RT ) needed access to some computers, it was provided. Operating activities are going on regularly, ”RIA Novosti reports a statement from a representative of a car dealer.
The owner of Rolf, Sergei Petrov, is currently abroad. He stated that he did not plan to return to his homeland, but denies all charges. According to him, he always "oriented the company to a completely fair game."
“They (the investigators) became interested in the events that took place in 2014, although at that time I was working in the State Duma. The idea was that Rolf seemed to have bought some company, paid not so much how much it costs, inflated something, and used forged documents, ”the Vedomosti newspaper quotes the businessman.
The Rolf Group of Companies, founded in August 1991, is one of the largest importers and retailers of passenger cars in Russia, and has a dealer network of 62 showrooms in Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to the rating of the largest private companies according to Forbes, in 2018 Rolf was recognized as the leader of automotive retail in Russia.
Sergey Petrov left the post of president of the Rolf company in 2004. In 2019, he became 114th in the rating of 200 richest businessmen in Russia with a fortune of $ 900 million. In 2007 and 2011, he was elected to the State Duma from the party “Fair Russia”.
“He was a deputy from our faction in the last convocation, but he refused to run for a new convocation, and since then the faction does not maintain contact with him,” the deputy head of the faction Mikhail Yemelyanov quoted RIA Novosti.