A day after a fatal armed raid at the company’s central Moscow offices, the CEO of retail business Wildberries and the estranged husband of the wealthiest lady in Russia were taken into custody on Thursday and charged with many crimes, including murder.
The wealthy Tatyana Bakalchuk, now divorcing her husband Vladislav Bakalchuk, led an armed incursion into the Wildberries headquarters, according to a heartfelt statement she sent out the day before.
The Arrest of Vladislav Bakalchuk:
Following a fatal firefight inside the Moscow location of Russia’s biggest online store, Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of the country’s most affluent lady, was taken into custody and charged with murder on Thursday, according to his attorneys.
A conflict over the company’s future turned deadly on Wednesday, killing two workers in a shooting at the Wildberries headquarters a few streets from the Kremlin. Police officers were among the seven injured parties.
When outdoor advertising company Russ Group and Wildberries announced in June that they would merge, it led to a public spat between Vladislav and his wife, Tatyana Bakalchuk, who filed for divorce in July.
Tatyana established Wildberries, the Russian equivalent of Amazon, in 2004 and saw it expand from a small online clothing retailer to a significant marketplace for a wide range of products. For the incident on Wednesday, both sides laid blame on one another.
According to Vladislav, office workers fired the initial bullets, and he had come for a scheduled meeting. Tatyana stated that there was no scheduled meeting and that Vladislav and his associates had attempted to take over the workplace.
The attorneys for Vladislav claimed that their client’s rights had been violated in a “blatant and unprecedented violation” when he was taken into custody and charged with both murder and attempted murder of a law enforcement officer.
The merger that created RVB, a new business with Robert Mirzoyan as CEO, and decreased Tatyana’s total ownership from 99% in Wildberries to about 65% in RVB is the primary source of contention in the business dispute.
At the time, Vladislav claimed his wife was being “manipulated.” In stepping in to help Vladislav, Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, referred to the merger as an “asset grab.”
Tatyana has refuted the two accusations. According to the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin endorsed the merger but won’t obstruct its advancement.
Tatyana stated in a heartfelt video message sent to Telegram early on Thursday: “Vladislav, what are you doing? How will you seem when you meet our kids’ and your parents’ eyes? How could you have made things so ridiculous?
The situation is reminiscent of the 1990s when Russia experienced frequent and deadly business turf wars due to the massive property redistribution that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
