About 300 employees of the Russian "daughter" of the Lithuanian mobile game developer were left without a salary - the company refused to pay them money.
This was told to RT by the employees themselves, who turned to the Prosecutor General's Office with a request to conduct an inspection.
No money and never will
In June, Pavel Perekhozhikhih, a programmer at Game Insight, a mobile games company, returned to work after a vacation and learned from his colleagues that he, like the rest of the employees, had been fired.
“Late on the evening of June 14, almost all employees received a letter in the mail that Game Insight was going into liquidation and we would all be fired in a couple of months.
We were offered to write applications for termination of the employment contract.
After that, they immediately began to cut off the entire infrastructure of the company: we were disconnected from work chats, services and corporate VPN, ”Perohozhikhi said in an interview with RT.
Like dozens of his colleagues, he last received his salary on June 10.
Payments that were supposed to come on June 25, none of the employees waited.
According to Perekhozhikh, the employees were unable to contact the former executives of the company; instead, Pavel Sedov got in touch, who since June 21 was officially appointed the head of Game Insight in the status of a liquidator.
During the video conference, Sedov explained to employees that they can terminate their employment relationship of their own free will, by agreement of the parties, or in connection with liquidation.
At the same time, Sedov admitted that, although by law the company is obliged to transfer salaries and payments to employees in any case, there is no money and, possibly, there will not be.
Game Insight employees believe they are under pressure to successfully liquidate the company.
By law, a legal entity cannot go through the liquidation procedure until it pays off its creditors, in this case, employees.
“The only way to contact HR is to email them.
We wrote that according to the rules of liquidation, they must send us a paper version of this legal process, and not just an email from themselves.
They are silent, but when one of the colleagues asks to send a sample letter of resignation of their own free will, they answer in 30 minutes.
I personally know two people who wrote such statements, and they really received money after that, ”said Pavel Perekhozhih.
In addition, the company required employees, most of whom work remotely in different cities of Russia, to return corporate equipment at their own expense.
“Some even have corporate tables and chairs.
The management sent a notice demanding to send all this at their own expense, and then the company will allegedly return the money.
Sending a computer with a chair and a table from Krasnoyarsk to Moscow costs 20,000 rubles,” shared Pavel Perekhozhih.
His colleague Ilya added that he recently received a list of equipment that he must return.
The list even included a smartphone Apple iPhone 12 Pro 512GB, which he was presented with in honor of the fifth anniversary of his work in the company.
"Daughter" was without funds
In turn, the liquidator Pavel Sedov, in an interview with RT, said that it is already clear now: Game Insight will not be able to go through the liquidation procedure and pay off employees.
“We sell the company's property - computers, servers, furniture - and terminate all contracts.
The funds received will be used to pay off debts to employees, but it is already clear that they will not be enough.
I will apply to the arbitration court for the bankruptcy of the company and then transfer the functions to the bankruptcy trustee,” said Pavel Sedov.
According to him, the company owes its employees from 80 to 90 million rubles.
At best, the proceeds from the sale of property will amount to a third of the total debt.
That is, about 300 employees of Game Insight will be left without payments due to them by law.
“Since I became a liquidator, about 50 people have written letters of resignation of their own free will.
When the company has funds, we pay them the due money in turn.
Of these 50 people, about 15-20 people received payments, ”added Sedov.
As Sedov notes, the Russian company cannot pay off debts to its employees because of its foreign ties with the founder and customer.
The sole founder of Game Insight is the closed joint-stock company Game Insight Group, which has been registered in Lithuania since 2014.
A company is also registered there, which, according to Sedov, is the only customer of this mobile games developer.
In May, the Seimas of Lithuania recognized Russia as a state that "supports and carries out terrorism."
“Game Insight has only one client, and therefore a source of income.
This company is registered in Lithuania.
I can’t say what it’s called, because the management forbade it.
After the decision of the Lithuanian Seimas, any payment to a Russian legal entity or individual, even through third countries, automatically entails criminal prosecution.
Based on this, the Lithuanian customer company can no longer deal with Game Insight, and the founder, Game Insight Group, cannot transfer money to his “daughter,” Pavel Sedov explained.
A million dollars in the last month
However, Game Insight employees do not believe that the parent company cannot transfer money from abroad.
The fact is that some of them a week before the announcement of the dismissal received a letter in the mail with a proposal to "continue to make and support good games."
The project manager at Game Insight, Mechislav Prokofiev, told RT that several of his colleagues accepted the offer of a new job.
“Liquidator Pavel Sedov claims that there is no way to transfer money from the parent company to Russia, but this is a lie.
On June 10, some of my colleagues received an offer to move to a new company that will support existing games.
On July 10, they already received their first salary.
So, the Lithuanian office of Game Insight somehow found a way to transfer funds to Russia, ”said Prokofiev.
RT also had an employment contract at its disposal, which one of the former Game Insight employees concluded with a new company, Data Code LLC.
According to open data, it was registered on June 30 this year.
Mechislav Prokofiev emphasizes that Game Insight is far from being the only Russian company headquartered abroad.
According to him, “now it is rather the norm for domestic game development” (the field of computer game development. -
RT
).
“I don’t know about other companies, but Game Insight needed to go to Europe only to pay taxes to anyone, if only not to Russia.
And now, on the one hand, they continue to work in Russia, since their projects are supported by our citizens, and on the other hand, the hype with the dismissal of the majority can be conveniently used to show that you support the agenda and Western trends against Russia.
I really hope that the Prosecutor General’s Office will be interested in such anti-Russian activities of the company,” Mechislav said.
The CEO of the Lithuanian company that owns Game Insight, Anatoly Ropotov, founded the UltraHorse Ent game studio in London in May of this year.
In addition, despite the liquidation of the Russian "daughter", the head office of Game Insight continues to make money on mobile games that are supported by Russian programmers and developers.
According to open data, in the last 30 days alone, users have downloaded the company's mobile games more than 500 thousand times, and its income amounted to more than $1 million.
Evgeny Anishchenko, a programmer, game designer and CEO of the Siberian Koala video game studio, notes that most Russian game development companies do have head offices abroad: in Cyprus, the USA, Israel and other countries.
“Firstly, this is due to the fact that such companies have preferential taxation there.
Secondly, there are also political issues: it is easier for a company to work with Western partners, having a legal entity, for example, in Cyprus or London.
That is, there, in the West, the company publishes games from a Western legal entity, and transfers money to Russia to the game developers themselves, ”explained the interlocutor of RT.
According to Anishchenko, companies have faced difficulties in transferring money due to Western sanctions, but most firms do not want to leave Russia.
This is also due to the fact that here the level of salaries among game developers is an order of magnitude lower than among specialists in Europe and the United States.
“Someone transfers money through intermediaries, someone separates the business into Russian and foreign.
That is, companies are still trying to find some ways to solve this problem, although they found themselves in a very unstable situation, ”summed up Evgeny Anishchenko.