The French company Danone announced the completion of the transaction for the sale of its Russian division. The buyer was Vamin R LLC.
According to the register of legal entities, 99% of the company belongs to the milk producer Vamin Tatatarstan, and 1% is owned by Ruslan Alisultanov, the former Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Chechnya.
Vamin, in turn, belongs to 29 -year-old Mintimer Mingazov, the son of former senator from Tatarstan Vagiz Mingazov. As Idel.Realii wrote, the first president of Tatarstan, Mintimer Shaimiev, “considered the patron of Mingazov,” transferred to him the dairy enterprises of the state-owned Tatmolagroprom. In 2006, they were renamed “Vamin” — after the first letters of the ex-senator’s name.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Danone announced it was looking for sellers for its Russian business. In July 2023, Vladimir Putin transferred their Russian division to the temporary management of the Federal Property Management Agency. Deputy Chairman of the Government of Chechnya Yakub Zakriev, a relative of Ramzan Kadyrov, was appointed general director of the company.
In February 2024, the Financial Times reported on negotiations on the sale of the Russian division, the name of which was changed to Health & Nutrition. According to the newspaper, the transaction amount was 17.7 billion rubles, of which 7.7 billion would have been spent on paying off debts. According to experts interviewed by Vedomosti, this is significantly less than the market value of assets, which they estimated at about 80 billion rubles. Danone had 17 factories in Russia with more than one hundred thousand employees.
Shortly after this, in March, Putin reversed the decision to nationalize the Russian division of Danone.