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Vkusa case: for which the ex-owner of the chain of stores faces up to 20 years in prison
Former businessman Kirill Yakubovsky has once again found himself at the center of a major criminal trial. This time, the court is considering charges related to the activities of financial organizations and the multibillion-dollar damage that, according to investigators, was caused to investors and credit institutions. The defense insists that the claims are unfounded. The details of the case are in the Izvestia article.
What was Yakubovsky tried for?
On July 23, the Presnensky Court of the capital began considering a second criminal case against Kirill Yakubovsky, the former co-owner of the Coffee House and ABC of Taste coffee shops. He is accused of embezzling 14.6 billion rubles from investors.
The businessman was arrested in April 2023. At first, he was accused of fraud on a particularly large scale. According to investigators, in 2012-2015, he and his accomplices attracted large loans from entrepreneurs to finance the Cyprus investment company V.M.H.Y. Holdings Limited, where he owned 25% of shares. Subsequently, the structure controlled a number of assets, including the bankrupt M2M Privet Bank, LLC Financial and Trading Company, the rehabilitated PJSC Asia-Pacific Bank, as well as the Golden Gate office and hotel complex in Moscow and other facilities.
According to the investigation, five offshore companies allocated funds for investments and transferred them to Yakubovsky on their behalf. In the fall of 2016, interest payments on loans stopped, the entrepreneur was unable to repay either the interest or the principal. In 2017, investors contacted the police and demanded that a criminal case be opened against Yakubovsky and other co-owners of V.M.H.Y. Holdings Limited. In total, six lawsuits were filed in the amount of $126 million.
The lawyers of the Bartolius bureau, who represented the interests of the victims, stated in their Telegram channel that under the leadership of Yakubovsky, the company was insolvent and did not have a real loan repayment scheme.
"The organization initially did not plan to return funds to investors and was actually a pyramid scheme," the lawyers said. "Later, Kirill Yakubovsky formally resigned from the number of ultimate owners in order to withdraw assets that could serve as collateral for loans: as a result, he received the Golden Gate office and hotel complex and over $40 million."
Kirill Yakubovsky
In addition to the Cypriot offshore structures, private individuals were also recognized as victims in the case. Among them is Mikhail Vishnyakov, a former adviser to the chairman of the Board of Expobank, who died before the trial began, and who invested over $40 million in Yakubovsky's holding. In the mid-1990s, Yakubovsky himself was also one of the co-owners of Expobank.
There were other defendants in the dock: former co-founder of V.M.H.Y. Holdings Limited, ex-head of a large Petropavlovsk gold mining company and former senator from the Amur region Pavel Maslovsky, as well as former CEO of PPFIN Holding Svetlana Bezrukova.
Another defendant, the ex-co-owner of the Asia-Pacific Bank and the ABC of Taste, Andrei Vdovin, escaped from the investigation abroad and is wanted.
In April 2025, Yakubovsky was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in a penal colony. Maslovsky was given the same term, which will be added to the 5.5 years of imprisonment he received earlier in another case. Svetlana Bezrukova was sentenced to five years in a general regime penal colony — she was taken into custody right in the courtroom.
Pavel Maslovsky and Kirill Yakubovsky
In addition, the court settled two civil lawsuits for a total of $53 million (≈4.2 billion rubles), imposing joint responsibility on all the defendants. The seizure of the defendants' real estate, the Golden Gate office and hotel complex in Moscow and the Nitizen SPb building in St. Petersburg, remained in place to ensure the victims' claims.
What is the businessman being accused of again
At the same time, the defendants were charged with organizing or participating in a criminal community, as well as with five counts of embezzlement or embezzlement. And already in December 2025, the Moscow City Court released all three of them from punishment in the fraud case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.
According to the investigation, the second criminal case is related to the activities of an organized criminal community created by Pavel Maslovsky in 2011. Yakubovsky is charged with participating in this structure: he was on the boards of directors of credit institutions involved in the case.
The defendants in the case are Andrei Novikov, a shareholder of M2M Private Bank, Inna Ivanova, Acting Chairman of the bank's Management Board, Svetlana Bezrukova, General Director of PPFIN Region LLC, and Tatiana Shablyko, Branch Manager of Asia-Pacific Bank JSC in Moscow.
The session in the Presnensky court began with a delay of half an hour. There were four defendants in the aquarium: Maslovsky, Yakubovsky, Bezrukova and Shablyko. Ivanova and Novikov were sitting on the other side of the glass with the lawyers. A panel of three judges was assigned to consider such a large-scale and complex criminal case.
Yakubovsky's lawyer stated that she doubts the objectivity of the Moscow courts in general and Presnensky in particular. She considers it necessary to transfer the case to one of the courts of St. Petersburg. The lawyer explained her claim by saying that the embezzlement in question had, in fact, already been dealt with in Moscow, only under other articles.
"At the same time, gross violations of my client's rights were committed — the busy schedule of meetings led to a deterioration in Yakubovsky's health and did not allow him to consult with a lawyer," she stressed.
The court dismissed the petition without consideration.
In addition, it turned out that Bezrukova and Shablyko did not have time to familiarize themselves with the case materials in full. However, the court decided to continue the process. The prosecutor spent about two hours reading the charges against Maslovsky, which included other defendants. Yakubovsky tried to insert objections a couple of times, but the judge asked not to interrupt the prosecutor.
Tatiana Shablyko, Kirill Yakubovsky
The OPS consisted of three divisions — "banking", "financial accounting" and "legal", the court said. According to the prosecution, in the period from 2011 to 2015, the defendants embezzled 4.3 billion rubles raised from investors of the V.M.H.Y. group. The agreements provided for the payment of 9-10% per annum, but the funds were not returned. Among the victims are seven organizations and one individual, Mikhail Vishnyakov, ex—co-owner of the Wimm-Bill-Dann company.
Maslovsky, Yakubovsky, Novikov, Bezrukova and Ivanova are also charged with two counts of embezzlement on an especially large scale. According to investigators, in 2011-2016, they withdrew 5.6 billion rubles from controlled organizations under fictitious loan agreements. In particular, M2M Private Bank provided funds secured by a collection of gold and platinum coins owned by Andrey Vdovin at an inflated cost. The damage to the Asia-Pacific Bank, which provided unsecured loans, was estimated at 4.7 billion rubles.
"They committed embezzlement of funds from credit institutions and other commercial structures for more than 14 billion rubles. For this purpose, non—repayable loans were issued to controlled organizations," the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office explained.
After the indictment was announced, the court asked the defendants if they understood its contents and whether they admitted their guilt. Maslovsky stated that the essence of the claims was not clear to him. His defense lawyer called the case far-fetched and said there was insufficient evidence of guilt.
— The investigation could not figure out what to charge until the last moment, - he said, — A particularly serious article about an organized community (OPS) appeared exactly at the moment when the verdict was handed down under the article on fraud in the organized crime group, which was canceled. This was done so that the expiration of the statute of limitations would not work. And there is no evidence that OPS was operating.
"I didn't participate, I wasn't a member, and I don't understand why I'm being accused of this," Yakubovsky said. — I didn't even communicate with these people. He was engaged in other matters and in another area during the specified period of time.
Bezrukova stated that she had never led a criminal unit, as indicated in the indictment.
Svetlana Bezrukova, Tatiana Shablyko
— And how could I use my official position to lead unidentified people? — the person involved asked.
The other defendants also pleaded not guilty. After that, the meeting was postponed to give Shablyko and Bezrukova time to study the materials.
What threatens the defendants
The defendants are charged with embezzlement on an especially large scale, committed by an organized group using their official position. Such a crime carries a serious penalty, said Vladimir Kuznetsov, chairman of the All-Russian Trade Union of Mediators.
The expert explained that embezzlement is one of the types of embezzlement — we are talking about the illegal disposal of someone else's property, which was entrusted to the accused.
— The defendants can be sentenced to up to 10 years with a fine of up to 1 million rubles. The probability that the court will impose a real term of imprisonment is high," said Vladimir Kuznetsov.
In addition, the defendants were charged with creating a criminal community using their official position. This is a particularly serious crime, which can result in 15 to 20 years in prison, said lawyer and member of the Russian Bar Association Alexei Sinitsyn. According to the lawyer, such associations are distinguished by a more complex system of organization and the distribution of roles among the participants.
At the same time, the previous case, which was closed due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, will not affect the new verdict: according to the law, the accused will be considered not convicted, the lawyer noted.
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