Kolesnik Andrei Ivanovich

Kolesnik Andrei Ivanovich

Biography

2023: Seizure of 51.75% shares of Kaliningrad Commercial Sea Port

In July 2023, the Central District Court of Kaliningrad seized from the State Duma deputy from United Russia Andrei Kolesnik and his family 51.75% of the shares of the Kaliningrad Commercial Sea Port (KMTP) in state revenue. As Vedomosti writes with reference to the statement of claim of the Prosecutor General's Office, Kolesnik violated the requirements of anti-corruption legislation: he illegally acquired and secretly owned KMTP shares, illegally conducted commercial activities to manage the port and was illegally enriched.

As reported in the Telegram channel of the Kaliningrad Regional Court, Kolesnik in 2001-2002 acquired a 28.5% stake in the port - first he issued them for legal entities, then resold them to himself and became the director of the JSC. In 2011, he received a deputy mandate and had to abandon entrepreneurial activity.

The court seized 51.75% of the shares of the Kaliningrad Commercial Sea Port from the deputy of United Russia and ordered him to pay 369 million rubles

Contrary to the established prohibitions, he acquired assets and made profits in the industry in which he made legislative decisions as a deputy - port and transport. Thus, the profitability of his business directly depended on the rule-making activities of the State Duma, in which he took a personal part. A.I. Kolesnik did not report the conflict of interest to the competent authorities, the court said.

It also says that to disguise his activities, the deputy introduced relatives to the board of directors of the port, transferred the shares to proxies. The Prosecutor General's Office determined that in this way Kolesnik illegally received more than 369 million rubles. This amount, as well as the shares of the port from the accounts of Kolesnik (28.5 thousand pieces) and his mother-in-law (23.25 thousand pieces), the court decided to recover to the income of the state.

Kolesnik, previously commenting on the fact of the trial to Vedomosti, said that he considered the case a "normal civil lawsuit." He claimed that he transferred his stake in AO to his mother-in-law as soon as he was elected to the lower house of parliament.^[1]

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