State Duma deputy Khinshtein demanded the nationalization of the telecom operator Ufanet
The head of the State Duma Committee on Communications and IT, Alexander Khinshtein, appealed to the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Maxim Shaskolsky with a demand to block the sale of shares in the Bashkir telecom operator Ufanet, reports “Kommersant”.
He emphasized that the intention of the company’s majority shareholders Marat Akhmetshin and Marat Fattakhov to get rid of their stake in the company would entail negative consequences for the authorities, since the operator has licenses from the FSB and FSTEC in the field of encryption, cryptography and information security, and would cause significant damage to the rights and interests of citizens .
In a comment to the publication, the deputy also indicated that he had asked the department, together with the prosecutor’s office, to initiate the procedure for nationalizing the stake.
According to Khinshtein, Akhmetshin and Fattakhov have already sent a petition to the FAS to approve the sale transaction. However, Akhmetshin claims that he did not submit an application, although he is always ready for a deal if he is offered decent money.
The Ufanet company was founded in 2005. The publication’s sources claim that about 500 thousand people remain its subscribers. The operator’s revenue in 2023 amounted to 9.1 billion rubles, and net profit – 866 billion. Akhmetshin and Fattakhov each own 29.95 percent of the shares, Alfiya Khazigaleeva – 25.67 percent (received her share after her divorce from Artur Khazigaleev), General Director of Ufanet Iskandar Bakhtiyarov – 24.8 percent, and 14.41 percent are owned by other individuals .
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At the end of last year, Khazigaleev and members of his family, as part of a conflict with Akhmetshin and Fattakhov, filed a lawsuit against Ufanet, but in April Khazigaleev was sent to a pre-trial detention center as part of a criminal case for fraud on an especially large scale.
Khinshtein joined the conflict in February. Then he promised to remove Ufanet from foreign control, and at the end of April he already appealed to Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov to recover the share of Akhmetshin and Fattakhov in favor of the state due to their dual citizenship, as well as the discreditation of the Russian army by Akhmetshin.
Earlier, the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, explained the state corporation’s interest in the assets of Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant JSC (CHEMK), which was nationalized in 2024 at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, by the need for metal production. Without it, the company’s general director explained, it would be impossible to build “neither planes, nor tanks, nor guns.”
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