Criminal history of the Klimovsky cartridge plant

January 9, Governor of the Moscow Region Andrey Vorobyov reported about the decision to nationalize Klimovsky Specialized Cartridge Plant CJSC after an emergency with heating. What is known about the plant is in the Kommersant certificate.

The company traces its history back to the Novopodolsk Cartridge Plant, established in 1936 near Podolsk. For achievements during the war years, his team was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, and was awarded the Red Banner. Later, the plant became the base enterprise for the production of 7.62×39 mm combat cartridges – the Kalashnikov assault rifle, adopted for service in 1949, was designed specifically for this cartridge. Since 1960, the enterprise was called the Klimovsky Stamping Plant, in 1993 it was transformed into an OJSC, and in 2001 it was re-registered as the Klimovsky Specialized Cartridge Plant CJSC (KSPZ).

At the end of the 1990s, the plant actually went bankrupt; out of 8 thousand employees, less than 100 people remained. In the early 2000s, the company was bought by businessman Jorge Portilla-Sumin, who had previously been convicted of murder. In 2002, the plant was declared bankrupt (in 2008, ex-director of KSPZ Vitaly Melnik was given a two-year suspended sentence in a case of deliberate bankruptcy, and Jorge Portilla-Sumin was put on the international wanted list). In 2003, another former director of the plant, Evgeny Rudakov, disappeared without a trace, and the entire accounting department of the enterprise burned down in a fire.

In April 2006, the board of directors was headed by the former commander of the internal troops – Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation (1995–1997) Anatoly Shkirko. The plant launched the production of cartridges and traumatic pistols “Jorge” for the special forces “Vympel”, “Vityaz”, “Alpha” and “Lynx”. The number of employees of the enterprise increased to 1.5 thousand, and at the end of 2006, the volume of products sold exceeded 1 billion rubles. The KSPZ website reports that the plant is the leading Russian and the only enterprise in the capital region for the production of cartridges and weapons of the highest reliability and quality.

In 2008, the Russian government ordered the transfer of the state-owned 26% of the plant’s shares to the state corporation Russian Technologies. However, the shares were not transferred, and in May 2012 the Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a case against unnamed former shareholders of KSPZ for the theft of state-owned shares. Nevertheless, the plant continued to produce traumatic and pneumatic weapons and cartridges and in 2011–2014 entered into 17 government contracts worth 21 million rubles.

In October 2014, Odintsovo City Court, Moscow Region arrested former and current plant managers on charges of embezzlement in 2010–2011 of 200 million rubles. from a defense enterprise under the guise of leasing high-precision metalworking equipment to it.

The former owner of the KSPZ, Jorge Portilla-Sumin, who has been hiding abroad for more than ten years, who at one time represented the interests of the Georgian authorities in the United States, was eventually detained. In November 2023, the TV channel RT reported that the Moscow Regional Court is secretly considering a criminal case against a 60-year-old entrepreneur on charges of fraud, deliberate bankruptcy and money laundering.

In February 2023, Kommersant became known about the case against the general director of the plant, Ivan Dorogikh, who, according to the Investigative Committee, got a job in 2018 using a fictitious higher education diploma. It is also known that in 2020, during an inspection by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a workshop for the production of counterfeit alcohol products was discovered on the territory of the plant. A criminal case was opened, but then the leadership of the KSPP avoided criminal prosecution.