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A Russian court has upheld a scandal-plagued merger involving the country’s largest online retailer, potentially ending a bitter feud between the estranged couple who founded the business and a Chechen warlord that has implicated the Kremlin. There is sex.
The controversy began last year with Tatiana Kim’s decision to merge retailer Wild Berry’s and billboard advertising group Russ Outdoors. Two people were killed and seven others were injured in a shootout outside Wild Berry’s headquarters in September amid apparent tensions.
Mr. Kim’s co-founder, Vladislav Bakarchuk, asked the court to invalidate the agreement transferring Wild Berry’s assets to RWB (the company created as a result of the merger), which would result in damage to Mr. Kim and Wild Berry’s. It was claimed that it was intended to give
Kim, who announced last summer that she had filed for divorce from Bakarchuk, was ranked by Forbes as Russia’s richest woman, with a pre-dispute fortune estimated at $7.4 billion.
The merger will give Russ Outdoors a 35% stake in the joint venture, even though its sales are less than a fraction of Wild Berry’s.
According to court documents cited by Russian news agency RIA, the court said Friday that “no evidence has been presented that these transactions caused or were intended to harm Wild Berry’s and the plaintiffs.” handed down a judgment.
Bakalchuk, who was left with a 1% stake in Wild Berry’s, said on his Telegram channel that the ruling was “outrageous, illegal and completely unsatisfactory,” adding that he intended to appeal.
After Kim and Russ’ Robert Mirzoyan sent a letter to President Putin claiming the deal could create “the world’s largest digital banking network and payment system for ruble payments.” The Kremlin announced in July 2024 that the merger had received approval from President Vladimir Putin. To reach 5.8 billion customers.
Bakarchuk then surprised Russians by calling on Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov to help block the deal.
Mr. Kadyrov pledged his support after Mr. Bakarchuk, who he described as an old friend, addressed the Chechen leader in a video posted on social media, lamenting that Mr. Kim had tried to exclude him from the company.
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A few weeks later, Bakarchuk and his colleagues were involved in a shootout at Wild Berry’s headquarters that left two security guards dead, according to media reports. Bakarchuk was later arrested on multiple felonies, including murder. He has since been released but said he has not been charged.
Dozens of others associated with Kadyrov, including several mixed martial arts fighters and the deputy head of the Chechen National Guard, were reported to be in jail awaiting trial for the shootout.
Western sanctions have fueled a brutal battle for assets among Russia’s elites, not seen since the post-Soviet scramble for business in the 1990s.
Founded by Kim and Bakarchuk in 2004, Wild Berry’s has grown over the past two decades from an online retailer of women’s clothing to Russia’s second-largest tech company, selling everything from cars to Western consumer electronics brought into the country through parallel imports. I sold everything.
