TMP on the brink of bankruptcy; offshore companies left the project

“Oskol Electrometallurgical Combine” JSC is a structure of Metalloinvest and belongs to the USM holding. One of the owners of the holding is billionaire Alisher Usmanov.

The second defendant, Miramonte Investments, is also related to Alisher Usmanov, according to the US Treasury Department. This company has not participated in TMP activities since March 2022, including general meetings of the company's participants, and has left the community's requests unanswered.

“The inaction of the responsible parties makes it impossible to take the most important decisions to implement measures for the financial recovery of society, which, in turn, does not allow the company to fulfill its obligations to creditors and puts the company under the risk of bankruptcy,” the Reconstruction and Development Fund claimed.

On June 12, the judicial panel of the Tashkent city court on economic affairs will satisfy the claim and Cypriot companies will be removed from the list of factory founders. It is also determined that 3.3 million soums of court costs will be collected from the defendant.

The foundation appealed the court’s decision and asked to change the decision on the distribution of court costs, to recover the costs from TMP. The reason for the appeal is that the defendants are residents of Cyprus, Uzbekistan does not have a bilateral agreement on mutual legal assistance with this country, and therefore it is impossible to recover court costs from the defendants.

However, the appellate court considers that the plaintiff’s arguments cannot be a basis for imposing court costs on the joint venture under Article 118 of the Economic Procedural Code, leaving the court’s decision of June 22 unchanged.

Founders

The founders of TMP, which initially had a charter capital of €197.8 million (now $154.8 million), are the Fund for Reconstruction and Development (49.9% or €98.7 million) and Metallurgical Technology and Engineering B.V. of the Netherlands. company (50.1%, €99.1 million).

SFI Management Group, which managed the project, wanted to be among the project shareholders. As a result, there was a change in the list of founders, and the share of Metallurgical Technology and Engineering B.V. decreased to 41.9%, while SFI Management Group acquired 8.2%.

After some time passed, Metallurgical Technology and Engineering B.V. company Metalloinvest Holding (Cyprus) took the place of 41.8%, and Miramonte Investments took the place of SFI and became the owner of 8.2%.

At the industrial exhibition held in Tashkent in April 2022, the CEO of “Metalloinvest” Nazim Efendiyev announced that the company “invested and entered the capital of TMP”. Thus, Metalloinvest Holding (Cyprus) Limited company replaced Metallurgical Technology and Engineering B.V. with 41.8 percent, and Miramonte Investments Limited replaced SFI with 8.2 percent.

For information, SFI group belongs to the family of billionaire Fattokh Shodiyev’s brother Kobil Shodiyev, according to Alisher Usmanov in an interview with Forbes. During the visit of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev to the TMP, Kobil Shodiyev made a presentation to the President about the plant.