Putin plots to seize billions from Siberian snack king over alleged Ukraine ties

Billionaire’s empire targeted as Kremlin looks to punish potentially powerful political dissidents

The Kremlin is plotting to seize billions in assets from a Siberian snack food tycoon after accusing him of supporting Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin’s government has ordered Russian prosecutors to take control of Denis Shtengelov’s KDV Group, which is worth 500bn roubles (£4.4bn) and sells goods ranging from biscuits and wafers to chocolate bars and chewing gum.

According to Russia’s Interfax news agency, prosecutors have accused the billionaire, who reportedly lives on Queensland’s Gold Coast in Australia, of “extremism” for offering support to Ukraine.

As part of a lawsuit against Mr Shtengelov, it is alleged that he had shifted corporate funds out of Russia without approval.

Prosecutors have also claimed that Mr Shtengelov’s father, Nikolai, a Ukraine-based entrepreneur, donated money to Ukraine’s defence fund and formed his own paramilitary unit.

The case is due in court later this month, but Russian media reports suggested that KDV’s assets were already being seized.

The Russian company said in a statement on Sept 6 that it was “operating as normal”.

Mr Shtengelov is the latest in a string of Russian businessmen facing asset seizures, as the Kremlin looks to punish potentially powerful political dissidents.

Moscow law firm Nektorov, Saveliev & Partners has calculated that up to 3.9tn roubles have been confiscated since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to Bloomberg.

About 200bn roubles have been seized on the grounds of “extremism”, which is the charge made against Mr Shtengelov.

The prosecutors alleged Mr Shtengelov had voiced support for Ukraine, where his companies had also sent food supplies.

According to court documents, KDV had also “transferred income from the holding company’s activities, without permission from the government or other public regulators, to unfriendly jurisdictions”.

KDV said in a statement that the company had grown without government support, and had in the past three years paid 13.8bn roubles in Russian taxes and made 5.4bn roubles of investment into “factories, warehouses, technologies and jobs”.

“The company conscientiously fulfilled its obligations to the state, paid taxes and invested in Russia,” the company’s statement said. “Our team sincerely hopes for a fair and balanced resolution of the current situation.”

Bloomberg estimates Mr Shtengelov’s personal fortune to be at least $2.6bn (£1.9bn), while Forbes estimates it at $1.4bn.

He was born in Tomsk and completed an economics degree in the early 1990s. As Russia shook off communism, he started his entrepreneurial career selling sunflower seeds to elderly women.

He bought his first factory in 1997 and built a business that is now one of Russia’s largest food and beverage companies.

According to a Dutch media report from 2022, in which he is quoted as lamenting the invasion of Ukraine, he has been based in Australia since at least the early 2010s.

Ukrainian media reports suggest his father is a native of Ukraine’s partly Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia region, one of four Ukrainian provinces President Putin is claiming for Russia.

He reportedly went to Tomsk to study agriculture before eventually returning home to run a farming and food processing enterprise.