St. According to the joint press service of the St. Petersburg courts, St. The St. Petersburg Vyborg court arrested the former head of the Baltika brewing company Denis Sherstennikov and his former deputy Anton Rogachevsky.
The company’s former senior executives will remain in custody until December 30 this year. Sherstennikov also requested that Rogachevsky be granted house arrest or release on bail of 1 million rubles, and a decision on the measure was sought by the court. The court denied both requests and kept them in custody.
On November 15, Fontanka reported that a search was conducted at the Baltika factory in St. Petersburg. Media sources indicate that the prosecutor’s office is supervising the company amid a planned sale of Baltika by the Danish concern Carlsberg before transferring its assets to interim management.
The newspaper noted that searches affected several employees, including office staff and senior managers, and documents were seized. Investigative actions are part of a criminal inquiry that initially focused on causing material damage, but investigators later identified signs of large scale fraud.
Fraud allegations
The investigators believe that a number of Baltika executives acted in the interests of the Carlsberg Group and caused damage to the company. Sherstennikov and Rogachevsky were detained, while Baltika’s lawyer Elena Kuzmina, also a suspect, reportedly left Russia for Europe.
In one version of events, detained senior managers transferred Baltika rights to entities in Belarus and Kazakhstan through 2042, securing intellectual property rights in their favor worth at least 295.6 million rubles. As a result, the Russian enterprise reportedly lost the opportunity to export its products to those markets as well as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Mongolia.
Sherstennikov led Baltika from 2021 to 2023. Following the transfer of Carlsberg assets to the interim management of the Federal Property Management Agency and a leadership change at Baltika, he moved to the post of vice president before resigning of his own accord in mid-October. Kuzmina has not worked at Baltika since July this year and remained an active senior manager until Rogachevsky was arrested.
Conflict between Russia and Carlsberg
After Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, Carlsberg announced its withdrawal from the Russian market. In June 2023 the group signaled an agreement to sell Baltika.
Interfax reported that the Arnest group, which previously acquired Heineken assets, planned to purchase Baltika in a deal valued at over 71 billion rubles. The sale did not proceed after Vladimir Putin transferred Carlsberg assets to the Federal Property Management Agency for external management in mid-July, a step that protected property rights yet limited management decisions for the company.
Carlsberg’s Chief Executive Jacob Arup-Andersen described the Russian authorities’ actions as job theft. In early October the group also terminated licensing agreements with Baltika, affecting the production and sale of products under international brands.
Interfax also reported that Carlsberg filed formal notices of disagreement with Russian authorities under three international agreements and warned of pursuing a case in an international court if the dispute was not resolved within six months.