"Ready to provide evidence": lawyers of Grudinin's ex-wife promised the CEC to confirm his share in offshore

The CEC will consider the issue of registering the list of the Communist Party.

Ex-presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin, who occupies third place in the party's list, after party leader Gennady Zyuganov and cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, may not be admitted to the elections.

The former wife of the candidate for deputy, Irina, told the CEC that he was hiding his stake in the international financial company Bontro Ltd.

According to open sources, Bontro Ltd was incorporated in 2003 in Belize.

She owns part of the shares of Universal Financial Company LLC, which is a co-owner of the Lenin State Farm. 

So far, the CEC has not made a decision, since none of the parties (neither Pavel Grudinin, nor his ex-spouse) provided evidence.

“If this fact is confirmed, then, of course, there should be exclusion from the list of candidates for deputies,” Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the CEC, told reporters.

Pavel Grudinin claims to have been the owner of Bontro Ltd until 2017, and the company was liquidated in 2018. 

Representatives of Irina Grudinina assure that a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation tried to fictitiously leave the company only during the period of legal disputes over the division of property and is still the owner.

“We are ready to provide evidence.

We have an extract from the Belize State Register confirming that Grudinin is a shareholder of Bontro Ltd.

We do not give up hope that we will also find foreign property that can be divided, ”said Dmitry Malbin, Irina's lawyer.

According to him, the fact that Grudinin has a share in the offshore was also confirmed by the decision of the Supreme Court in 2019.

“We have never announced this before, because the meeting was held behind closed doors,” the lawyer explained.

Forced statement

According to representatives of Irina Grudinina, the appeal to the CEC was a necessary measure.

“Today, her personal safety, health and personal well-being depend on whether her ex-husband has a State Duma mandate.

It is obvious to us that with the receipt of the mandate, Grudinin will have new opportunities, which he will use to put pressure on Irina, - said Malbin.

- The image that they are trying to create for Pavel Nikolaevich does not correspond to reality.

We see a vengeful man who takes revenge on all dissent.

The appeal is just a cry from the soul of a woman who has been harassed for many years. "

The Grudinin couple divorced in July 2018 after 37 years of marriage.

The reason, according to his wife, was the communist's secret connection with a girl 30 years younger than him.

Dmitry Malbin notes that before the divorce, Irina offered Grudinin to divide the property "amicably", to which he refused. "

Moreover, he began to hide property in advance, to withdraw all assets abroad so that his wife and children could not claim them, and only after that he began the divorce proceedings.

“And then Grudinin wanted to divide Irina’s property, including the apartment she inherited from her parents, but he didn’t want to divide the bank accounts,” the lawyer added.

In the spring of 2019, the court of the city of Vidnoye near Moscow satisfied the claim of Irina Grudinina, awarding her two-thirds of the jointly acquired property, since she took into account that the woman is a disabled person of the second group, she does not have a high income.

However, Pavel Grudinin refused to comply with this decision and appealed it several times.

As the lawyers note, the communist has not yet paid the compensation established by the court on the cost of gold bars and securities, which he held in foreign banks on dozens of accounts.

Turned off the lights and water

Malbin emphasizes that Grudinin even tried to deprive his ex-wife of his disability status.

“Irina Grudinina has health problems, she needs expensive treatment.

She was recognized as a disabled person of the second group.

Grudinin tried to deprive her of her disabled status and social support measures from the state, ”he said.

At the same time, according to lawyers, the eldest son, who supported his mother, also gets from the communist.

“He turns off the light and water in a small hairdressing salon, which Irina and her son own, and even in the house where they live.

But since the power outage in the village is rampant, many innocent residents fell victim to Pavel Grudinin, ”says Malbin.

He also stated that Grudinin allegedly wanted to evict the municipal cultural institutions from the premises, leaving the children without circles, and refuses to transfer the stadium to the ownership of the municipal school, although he had previously publicly stated that he was giving it to students.

“There are minority shareholders of the State Farm named after

Lenin, who are under pressure from Pavel Nikolaevich, for not agreeing with him, are trying to defend their rights.

These are grandmothers and grandfathers who have worked at the state farm for decades and now want to receive fair compensation for their shares, refuse to sell them.

And Grudinin is trying to exclude them from the shareholders of the state farm, to take their shares, ”said Irina's lawyer Artyom Ignatenko.

Account issues

It is not the first time that Pavel Grudinin finds himself in the center of a scandal over foreign assets.

So, in March 2018, during the presidential elections in which he nominated himself, it turned out that as of the end of 2017, Grudinin owned 13 accounts in Swiss banks, which contained more than one million dollars and more than five kilograms of gold.

The CEC learned about this from the Swiss Tax Service, the candidate himself had previously reported only two contributions.

In February 2019, the Council of Deputies of the urban settlement of Vidnoye made a decision on the early termination of the deputy powers of Pavel Grudinin.

The reason was the submission of the Vidnovskaya city prosecutor's office, issued due to the violation of anti-corruption legislation.

It was about unspecified personal data and incomplete information in the income tax return.

In March 2019, after the death of Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov, the Communist Party wanted to transfer his deputy mandate to Grudinin, but was refused by the CEC.

“A person who has foreign accounts at the time of registration as a candidate cannot be a deputy,” Bulaev said at the time.

As the CEC found out, at the time of registration as a candidate for State Duma deputy on the list of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Grudinin did not close a number of foreign accounts and deposits, although he submitted a notification to the CEC that he did not own bank accounts abroad and foreign financial instruments.