You're reading: Poroshenko’s factory in Russia paralyzed by special police raid

Russian law enforcement groups blocked entrances to Roshen factory facilities in Lipetsk Oblast early on Apr 1, paralyzing the work, the company said in a statement.

Representatives of the law enforcement agencies without any prior notice invaded the corporation’s enterprises in Lipetsk, Sentsovo and Kosyrevka,” Roshen said in a statement. It is accused of evading taxes – a charge the company denies. “The tax audit in terms of previous claims is unacceptable and illegal,” Roshen said.

Roshen belongs to Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko. It’s the 22nd biggest confectionery business in the world, according to candyindustry.com, a specialized website. It has six plants in total, and its annual turnover is $800 million.

Poroshenko pledged to sell his significant assets, including Roshen, during his presidential election campaign last year, but no deal has been signed so far. A source close to the president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue in public, said that the attack on the Lipetsk factory was “the beginning of a procedure for confiscation of the factory by the Russian authorities, which are doing their best to make sure that there is no sale.”

The Lipetsk factory was blocked by the police and federal security services early on April 1, local website Gorod48 reported. The website posted photographs of masked people paroling the perimeter of the factory.

A spokesman at the Lipetsk department of the Russian Federal Security Service told the Kyiv Post that the service has nothing to do with the blocking of the factory, though.

The Lipetsk office of the Investigative Committee had no information about the raid. Vladimir Markin, a spokesman at the central office in Moscow, said that he could not speak to the Kyiv Post reporter because he speaks no Ukrainian. He added that it was an April Fool’s joke. Other agencies in Moscow also declined to comment on the case.

In 2014 the Lipetsk factory suspended its work a number of times because of blockages by law enforcers related to ongoing court disputes on the use of some trademarks.

In a separate development on March 31 an arbitration court in Moscow upheld the decision of a lower court dismissing Roshen’s claim to protect its business reputation. Roshen claimed that Russian holding Uniconf had spread untruthful information about the company, accusing it of failure to pay taxes and customs duties and producing sweets that are harmful for people’s health.

A Uniconf representative insisted in court that information about Roshen did not violate its legal rights and interests, according to an Interfax agency report.

Uniconf and Roshen have also had a number of disputes of the use of some trademarks. In March 2014, the Tver Court in Moscow arrested the accounts of Roshen in Russia after Uniconf demanded the company to pay 2.4 billion rubles (about $67 million at the time) for the illegal use of trademarks.

Production at the factory stopped for more than a month, until a court in Moscow over-turned the earlier ruling after Roshen’s appeal.