The Arbitration Court of the Chelyabinsk Region decided to recover 105 billion rubles from Yuri Antipov, his wife Lyudmila and son Mikhail, as well as the Etalon company, which owned the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant, Interfax reports.
The meeting was held in closed mode. As noted, in the filed lawsuit, the Prosecutor General's Office asked to seize the assets of the Ariant group of companies, which includes winemaking and agro-industrial enterprises, as well as a foundry.
The department considered that 105 billion rubles was the amount of “unjust enrichment,” and the prosecutor’s office initially filed a claim for 25 billion rubles, but later increased the amount claimed fourfold.
Before this, in February, a court in the Sverdlovsk region, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office, decided to seize three factories from Antipov in favor of the state; the billionaire is trying to challenge this decision in an appeal. At the end of February, it was reported that Antipov was detained, but later a source from RIA Novosti assured that the billionaire was a witness in a criminal case.
Antipov was not the first businessman whose property was confiscated in favor of the state as part of the fight against “illegal privatization»: before this, the companies «Volzhsky Orgsintez», «Metafrax Chemicals» and several large plants were nationalized.