Criminal harvest: the son of the founder of the Pokrovsky concern was convicted of stealing the harvest in Kushchevka

The management of the structural unit of the criminal community, the financing of the raider seizure of land in the village of Kushchevskaya and the theft of thousands of tons of wheat, chickpeas, corn, sunflower and sugar beet — for such a list of charges, businessman Oleg Chebanov will have to go to prison and pay an impressive fine. Details of the criminal squabbles in the south of the country, which ended with the largest—scale nationalization of land in modern Russia, are available in the Izvestia article.

The Field and Wars

On February 25, the Preobrazhensky Court of Moscow announced the verdict of Oleg Chebanov, the son of Arkady Chebanov, the founder of the Pokrovsky concern. The prosecution demanded 15 years in prison for the defendant. Judge Natalia Bekhtereva decided to impose a sentence of one year less, but with a fine of 155 million rubles — in the amount of the defendant's income for four years before his arrest, from 2019 to 2022.

Chebanov Jr. was charged with participating in an organized criminal group created by his father and another former co-owner of Pokrovsky, Andrei Korovaiko. According to investigators, together with their accomplices, they developed criminal schemes for the purpose of illegally seizing agricultural assets in the south of Russia.

Among them was the company Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC, once controlled by the infamous Tsapkov gang. According to the case file, a criminal group created by the Pokrovskys attempted to raider land in the Kushchevsky district of the Krasnodar Territory and appropriated local crops.

In 2010, members of the family of a farmer were detained for the mass murder of a farmer's family in the same village of Kushchevskaya gangs of Herons. Immediately after their arrest, a scramble began in southern Russia to gain control of multibillion-dollar agricultural assets.

Among the contenders for the Tsapkov legacy were their long-time competitors from the Pokrovsky concern in Rostov. Its founders Andrey Korovaiko and Arkady Chebanov were well aware of the value of these assets — over the years of running their own agribusiness, they managed to combine more than 240 thousand hectares of land and 35 enterprises specializing in crop production, animal husbandry, sugar production and meat processing. They themselves estimated their assets at 100 billion rubles.

Rich in crops

In 2011, 13 thousand hectares of Kushchevskaya land became the property of CJSC Mayak, which belonged to the family of arbitration judge Svetlana Martynova. Realizing the "toxicity" of the business, which was associated with the massacre, the owners of Pokrovsky planned to receive shares in CJSC Mayak for 40 million rubles. They handed over the money to Martynova, but she did not fulfill her part of the deal. As a result, a fraud case was opened against the judge, which ended with a verdict of the Rostov Regional Court — seven years in prison. In 2023, the judge was given a sentence for embezzlement of 92 million rubles from the account of Nadezhda Tsapok, the ex-wife of the leader of the Kushchevskaya group.

The Mayak company has undergone bankruptcy proceedings. According to the investigation, the owners of Pokrovsky, through controlled firms, achieved participation in the bankruptcy mass of the company's creditors and appointed their bankruptcy administrators. With their help, they began to challenge land lease deals concluded by Mayak and Agrocomplex Kushchevsky LLC.

A criminal group created for this purpose began to put pressure on the director of the Kushchevsky Agrocomplex, Fyodor Streltsov, demanding that he transfer the asset under threat of criminal prosecution of the businessman and his family. Streltsov was offered 200 million rubles as compensation for the transfer of the business. Streltsov refused the offer.

Then lawyers and the Pokrovsky law enforcement wing, for which ex-FSB colonel Sergei Yechkalov was responsible, joined the case. According to investigators, he collected compromising information, organized the security of members of the criminal community and exerted pressure on opponents, including commissioned publications in the media. In 2022, Yechkalov was detained at Korovaiko's mother's house on charges of abuse of power and participation in the OPS. His case is currently being heard behind closed doors.

In order to ruin and bankrupt the Kushchevsky agricultural complex, the Pokrovsky group has developed a plan to steal its harvest, the case file clarifies. First, the tenant company was sued for allegedly owed hundreds of millions of rubles, then the accounts and property of the company were seized. Under the pretext of paying off debts to Pokrovsky, they managed to harvest and sell the 2018 Kushchevsky harvest through a bankruptcy trustee under their control.

As specified in the case file, 15 thousand tons of wheat, 1.2 thousand tons of chickpeas, 1.6 thousand tons of corn, 2.6 thousand tons of sunflower, 21 thousand tons of sugar beet were stolen. Investigators estimated the total damage at 138 million rubles. According to investigators, Chebanov Jr. played the role of a financier in this scheme. At that time, he held the position of General Director of OOO TD Valan, which was part of the Pokrovsky Concern. In support of their version, the investigation refers to Chebanov's correspondence in messengers and money transfers to other participants in the crime. Chebanov's defenders, lawyers Alexander Hofstein and Andronik Kichiyan declined to comment.

The judges in the case

In 2019, Pokrovsky managed to gain full control over Agricultural Holding Kushchevsky with assets of over 1.3 billion rubles, and by 2022 to complete the bankruptcy procedure. They were helped in this by the criminal case of extortion against Fyodor Streltsov: according to investigators, he demanded from his head of security to return 10 million previously transferred for "resolving issues" with claims from law enforcement agencies. When it became clear that it was not possible to reach an agreement, Streltsov began to demand the money back, and with interest. As it turned out, the head of the entrepreneur's security initially acted in the interests of the Pokrovskys. As a result, Streltsov went on the run and could no longer take part in protecting his assets. According to the website of the Russian Interior Ministry, he is still on the wanted list in criminal cases.

Everything was going well for the Pokrovskys until 2021. However, law enforcement agencies, which had long been accumulating materials regarding Korovaiko and Chebanov's business and their connections, decided to give effect to the statement of Larisa Prikhodko, the sister of the escaped Fyodor Streltsov. The owners of the concern, Chebanov and Korovaiko— were able to escape abroad, but the executors of their orders were detained. Chebanov Jr. was directly charged with leading a structural unit of an organized criminal group (Part 1 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code) and fraud on an especially large scale (part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code).

In 2023, all the property of the Pokrovsky concern was transferred to the state at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office. The court agreed with the opinion of the supervisory authority that Korovaiko had created his business empire thanks to corrupt ties developed during his work in the office of the presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District in the early 2000s.

According to law enforcement officials, corrupt Rostov judges also acted in the interests of the Pokrovskys. In January 2025, the most high-profile case in the history of Russian law enforcement agencies against representatives of the judiciary was transferred to the Pervomaisky District Court of Krasnodar. Several judges and staff members, headed by the former chairman of the Rostov Regional Court, Elena Zolotareva, appeared in the dock at once.