Disgraced Belarusian Businessmen Started Having Problems In Russia
- 8.10.2025, 12:19
The assets are being taken from Chizh and Shakutin.
The fall of 2025 is not a quiet time for the "downed oligarchs", into whom once powerful Belarusian businessmen Yuri Chizh and Alexander Shakutin have turned. It seems that having lost almost everything in Belarus, they won't be able to sit quietly in retirement with dividends from Russian assets. As Plan.B has learned, the last Russian company of any value, Yuri Chizh, is being bankrupted. And Alexander Shakutin, who lost Amkodor, real estate and almost everything else in Belarus, is now being seized control over his Russian assets.
"The Battle of the Bankrupts"
The Chizh family squabbles, by analogy with one of the episodes of the popular TV series "Game of Thrones" "The Battle of the Bastards", can be called "The Battle of the Bankrupts".
In this "battle" on one side is Yuri Chizh himself. On the other - his two sons and ex-spouse. After coming out of prison, the once powerful businessman promised to return everything that his ungrateful children and ex-spouse had taken from him. And flooded the courts of Belarus and Russia with lawsuits.
But in Russia, where some of his assets were located, it seems, there is nothing to take away.
The company of his son Vladimir "StandardInvest" - in bankruptcy proceedings since the summer of this year. Yuri Chizh is bankrupting his ex-wife as an individual himself.
And in September, as Plan B. pointed out, an application for bankruptcy recognition of Yuri Chizh's main asset in Russia, the company Belaz-Pomorie, was filed by the Kirov region division of the Federal Tax Service.
This company is engaged in preparing sites for mining on orders from coal miners and other mining companies. It even grew last year. And it made half a billion Russian rubles in revenue from the orders.
But it has debts. And for the debts it wants to be declared bankrupt by the Russian tax authorities. The decision is planned to be made at a meeting scheduled by the court in mid-November.
There is a nuance of this asset. "Belaz-Pomorie" is 99.5% owned by the son of Chizh Sr. Vladimir. But it is managed by Yuri Chizh, who has 0.5% in the capital. Having obtained operational control in the courts and seeing the financial situation of the business, Chizh-senior himself was not averse to bankrupting it. Voluntarily, to agree with creditors and, perhaps, to sell the asset cleared of debts.
But now the Russian state wants to do it compulsorily. After all, the state has no time to wait for unpaid taxes to return to the budget. They need them in it - for the war with Ukraine and the collective West.
For Yuri Chizh it is a disadvantage in financial terms. Because in such an arrangement debts are not written off, as a rule. The manager is on the side of the creditor and will try to sell off the property and challenge earlier deals. Anyway, you shouldn't have laid a hand on your son. The output may be zero.
Without trumps and friends
Alexander Shakutin, as Plan.B found out, also has problems in Russia. The "downed oligarch" not only lost almost all his assets in Belarus, but is also losing them at the "reserve airfield" - in Russia.
In principle, the "reserve airfield" for Shakutin could be a personal monopoly on the sale of almost all "Amkodor" equipment in Russia. Almost immediately, having become a shareholder of the Amkodor holding in the early 2000s, he tied the sales of almost all of the holding's equipment there to his personal businesses. At the same time, he introduced personal structures not related to the Amkodor holding into the capital of three out of four production companies in Russia. In two of them (Amkodor-Onego in Petrozavodsk and Amkodor-Alga in Bashkortostan) he owns 50% each. In another one, Amkodor-Agidela (in Bashkortostan), he has 23%. But in "Amkodor-Agidela" it is not the Belarusian state, but a local partner who controls the stake.
The only production site with direct subordination to the state holding Amkodor was the plant "Amkodor-Bryansk".
But, as Plan B. found out, Shakutin's de facto monopoly on sales is already "nothing". The businessman lost this trump card.
The company he controlled, Amkodor-Center, unexpectedly withdrew from the holding's main distribution business in Russia, Amkodor-TD. It had been running it on an equal footing with the state ("Amkodor-Bryansk"). Whether it was done willingly, out of indiscretion or he was "asked" to do it, but Shakutin lost this key distribution channel with annual sales of 35-40 million dollars.
Gradually he is losing control over production assets - through the change of managers, his proteges.
In March he lost the former director of MTZ Fedor Domotenko. He headed the promising Amkodor-Alga production project. And in September, the new state managers of the holding removed Victor Krugly from the position of the largest and most promising production asset of the Amkodor holding in Russia, Amkodor-Agidela. The director, who was appointed by the former owner of Amkodor, Alexander Shakutin, was replaced by a government appointee.