lity it was full of cracks". The fourth additional issue of shares was registered on 16 June 2000, and distribution was supposed to start in two weeks. On different dates, all within the period of open distribution of the shares, a number of potential investors concluded standard acquisition agreements with Kolymaenergo Plc. Edinye Energeticheskiye Systemy Rossii [the biggest State-controlled energy company at that time], for good reason, bought shares for almost 1,680,000,000 roubles, thus investing in the construction of the Ust-Srednekanskaya HEPP. However, the situation has since changed, for the worse as regards most of the investors. One of the local companies, Regiondragmet Ltd, expressed an interest in purchasing shares for 1,200,000,000 roubles. When the director of Kolymaenergo Plc. Mr G.I.S., learned about that offer, he requested that all previous offers and the book where they were registered be destroyed, and decided that henceforth he would take care of the distribution of the shares.
Very soon, instead of the bank account in Krasnodar indicated in the original issue plan, a new bank account was opened, this time with the Korvet bank (Moscow), and, following that, the implementation of the whole scheme, as designed from the very beginning, started. In a very short time, three commercial firms were incorporated in Moscow: Bakkar Ltd, Promstroy TEK Ltd and ONEKS-Consulting Ltd. Bakkar transferred 140,000,000 roubles to Kolymaenergo's account with the Korvet bank; with that money the recipient [Kolymaenergo] paid for the promissory notes issued by ONEKS-Consulting. For those not familiar with of all the subtle details, I should explain that promissory notes, unlike shares, do not need to be secured by any property or financial resources of the company that issued them. That is why any limited company with a charter capital of eight or ten thousand roubles and nothing besides, not a bean, can issue promissory notes for one billion roubles, provided that a buyer comes forward.
In our case the buyer was Kolymaenergo, which at that time had an outstanding debt of more than a billion roubles owed to its employees, the pension fund and the State budget at different levels. The value of the promissory notes was no less than 1,300,000,000 roubles; it's no coincidence that the head of Bakkar earlier transferred 140,000,000 roubles to the account with the Korvet bank (see above). And then that amount was passed ten times through the corresponding bank accounts, with the use of the same photocopied bank payment order. As a result, Bakkar purchased, almost for free, a huge number of shares which amount to 15 per cent of the overall charter capital of Kolymaenergo.
It is easy to guess what the reaction of the would-be investors, who suffered both pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage, was. Numerous legal suits, petitions and complaints were addressed to the Magadan Town Court, the Commercial Court of the Magadan Region, Edinye Energeticheskiye Systemy Rossii and other senior authorities. On 14 May 2001 an NGO called Investory Kolymy was created by a group of persons, and it immediately joined in the process of uncovering the truth. The main goal of that NGO consisted in promoting the interests of the investors, shareholders and other interested persons, and protecting their investment in the energy industry of the Magadan Region before the courts, social policy institutions or any organisations competent to address their concerns in whatever manner. But they received silence in reply [to their petitions]. In particular, the board of directors of Kolymaenergo kept ignoring them, although it had been Mr V.A.P., the head of the board, who had approved the [share] issue plan.
As we can read in a letter from one of the shareholders of Kolymaenergo to the head of the management board of Kolymaenergo, Mr A.S. (with a copy to the head of the management board of Edinye Energeticheskiye Syst
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