The husband of the founder of Wildberries complained to Kadyrov about the “raider takeover” of the company. The head of Chechnya promised to “protect legitimate business” Deal n? (2024)

Ramzan Kadyrov published a video with Vladislav Bakalchuk, the husband of Wildberries founder Tatyana Bakalchuk. According to the head of Chechnya, he “came to visit him.” In the recording, Bakalchuk complains that things are “not going well” for him - his wife “left home and got involved with an incomprehensible company that, under the guise of a merger, is squeezing out the business.”

Kadyrov states that the Russ Outdoor company, which announced a merger with the Wildberries marketplace, carried out an “open and brazen raider takeover.” He accused the owners of the Russ group, brothers Levan and Robert Mirzoyan and “several famous Caucasians” of “family destruction” and “raiding.” Kadyrov said that he considers them “devils” and not people and men.

In the caption to the video, the head of Chechnya promised that he would “do everything possible to help return Tatyana Bakalchuk to the family” and “protect legitimate business.” He instructed his colleague, State Duma deputy Adam Delimkhanov, to resolve this issue.

Soon Tatyana Bakalchuk responded to the video of the head of Chechnya. She rejected claims that the merger of Russ and Wildberries was a raider takeover. “This is not a raider takeover. This is a scam. From the very beginning, everything was agreed upon with Vladislav; he was personally present at the presentation to the top management of the new structure of the merged company,” said the entrepreneur.

Bakalchuk also published a joint photo with her husband and Robert Mirzoyan. After the news about the merger of Wildberries and Russ, RBC sources said that Mirzoyan will become the chief executive officer of the future combined group of companies, Bakalchuk will take the post of general director.

Wildberries said that the company and the Russ group continue to operate “in a stable manner.” “We are sure that the details of the divorce process and emotional details are not of interest to business publications. We will continue to inform you about new opportunities for our sellers, partners and clients,” added the marketplace’s press service.

The Bell notes that before Kadyrov’s statement, Wildberries began to transfer its business to a joint company with the Russ group. According to the SPARK-Interfax database, on July 22, the main legal entity of the marketplace, Wildberry LLC, transferred 26 of its subsidiaries to RVB LLC, a new joint company with the Russ group, created in early July. At the same time, in the new company, Wildberries own 65%, and RVB - 35%. On July 23, information appeared that Wildberries notified its sellers of an imminent change of legal entity.

Until the end of 2019, Tatyana Bakalchuk was the sole owner of Wildberries, but on December 31, 2019, she transferred 1% of the company to her husband. In 2021, the Bakalchuks entered the Forbes ranking of the richest families in Russia for the first time and immediately topped it. At that time, the magazine estimated their total wealth at $13.1 billion. After 2021, Forbes did not update the ranking.

According to the magazine's estimates for 2024, Tatyana Bakalchuk's fortune reaches $7.4 billion. She ranks 22nd in the ranking of 125 Russian billionaires. Her husband is not on this list.

The marketplace announced the merger of Wildberries and Russia's largest outdoor advertising operator of the Russ group on June 18. The parameters of the deal were not reported. The press release only noted that the merger was taking place with the goal of creating “the latest digital trading platform,” and the geography of the project would cover the territory of Russia, the former CIS countries, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, as well as India and China.

The merger of Wildberries and Russ was approved by the Russian government. The deal was supervised by Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Maxim Oreshkin, RBC sources reported. According to them, the new digital platform should become a competitor to the American Amazon and the Chinese Alibaba, and on its basis it will be necessary to create “a payment system for settlements in rubles around the world, bypassing SWIFT and the digital banking network.” Forbes claimed that the merger of Wildberries and Russ was personally approved by Vladimir Putin. The information that the Russian President ordered support for the deal was confirmed by the Kremlin.

The Russ Group has been buying up assets in the Russian outdoor advertising market for several years, The Bell wrote. During this time, the company became the owner of four of the largest operators on the market. RBC reported in 2019 that the structures of senator and billionaire Suleiman Kerimov were behind the creation of the group. Kommersant’s sources still claim that “Kerimov is still behind Russ.” The Bell's interlocutors, aware of the deal to merge Wildberries and Russ, said that this was Kerimov’s attempt to “get into” the Wildberries business.

Why Vladislav Bakalchuk decided to complain about the deal to Kadyrov and did it right now is still unclear. The intervention of the head of Chechnya indicates the reluctance of the Bakalchuks to agree among themselves on the division of business and the conflict between them, writes the Faridaily telegram channel, run by journalists Farida Rustamova and Maxim Tovkaylo. “In this conflict, Vladislav Bakalchuk took a rather ... bright step. Which, however, is unlikely to help him, since his wife’s roof is toothy,” the authors of the channel note.

Listen to the episode of the podcast “What Happened” about the strange merger of Wildberries with the Russ group, which is supervised in the Kremlin