How the SSU stopped the "Rollton" noodle factory

How the SSU stopped the "Rollton" noodle factory

The story is about the Vietnamese in Ukraine, whom the SSU accused of high treason, paralyzed the work of their plant, and six months later closed the case “for lack of corpus delicti.”

Businessmen do not like to tell journalists about their problems with the SSU. Therefore, they rarely appear in the media. However, sometimes this can be done without the entrepreneurs themselves. We found one of these wild stories in the Register of Judgments. We will describe it briefly and without emotion, and we will record additional details for amateurs in the appendices. So

June 29, 2022 - the investigative department of the State Security Service of Ukraine in Kyiv and the Kyiv region opened proceedings No. 22022101110000218 against Mareven Food Europe LLC (TM Rollton). The plant is in Bila Tserkva. The owner is Vietnamese citizen Mai Van Minh. Reason: Part 4 of Art. 110-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Financing the overthrow of the constitutional order or changing the boundaries of the territories of Ukraine).

July 27 – searches in the Kyiv office and on the territory of the plant.

August 2 – arrest of production facilities with a ban on disposal and alienation. The entrepreneurs learned about this arrest by chance, only on September 17.

22 August – first attempt to transfer the plant to Armagh. The investigating judge refuses.

September 15 – the plant is transferred to ARMA. Transferred to the Kyiv Court of Appeal, where the prosecutor appealed the intransigence of the investigating judges. The owners announced the stoppage of production in Bila Tserkva.

September 22 – The Kyiv Court of Appeal rejected the lawyers’ petition and did not lift the arrest .

October 25 – the same court again did not lift the arrest .

November 3 – arrest of the corporate rights of the enterprise itself.

November 10 – arrest of accounts.

November 17 – the court refuses to lift the arrest.

December 20 – the court refuses to lift the arrest.

December 29 – by a resolution of the senior investigator at the Department of Internal Affairs of the Investigation Department of the State Security Service in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, criminal proceedings were closed on the basis of clause 2, part 1 of Art. 284 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation, due to the lack of corpus delicti.

All. End of story. And now the applications.

Removal of arrests

Despite the closure of the case, the prosecutor did not lift the arrest, and the entrepreneurs had to sue. Only on February 2 were the accounts released from seizure, and on February 3 – the property.

This could have happened faster if Ukraine had followed the rules of the Criminal Procedure Code: “The prosecutor, simultaneously with issuing a decision to close criminal proceedings, cancels the seizure of property.”

Change of owner

After the plant shut down, the owners sold the rights to the enterprise. Instead of Mareven Food Europe (Cyprus), the owner also became the Cypriot Jelmond LTD. Another Vietnamese, Tran Tuan Minh, is listed as the official beneficiary.

What were the Vietnamese charged with?

1. The Cypriot owner company also had its branch in Russia.
2. The rights to the Rollton brand were held by the Russian branch and the Ukrainian company paid for use. However, the last time this payment occurred was before the war - in 2021.
3. “From 2019 to the present, agreements have been concluded for the supply of products manufactured in Ukraine to the Russian Federation and ensuring their sale in the territory of the aggressor country.” That is, not trade itself, but the conclusion of contracts.

In principle, that’s all. It later turned out that all the accusations were false.

Although, based on these “facts”, the investigation made loud conclusions. One of the prosecutor’s quotes for the court:

“corporate rights... are used in favor of the Russian Federation for the preparation, planning and waging of an aggressive war against Ukraine, in particular, through a set of foreign policy and economic actions aimed at protecting the national (state) commercial interests of the Russian Federation, as well as for the purpose of spreading its political and economic influence, while contributing to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, since the Russian Federation uses the income received from the commercial activities of this corporation to finance its Armed Forces, purchase spare parts and parts for military equipment, and finance the activities of sabotage and reconnaissance groups and terrorist organizations on the territory of Ukraine so-called “DPR”, “LPR”, financing of political parties, in particular in European countries pursuing anti-Ukrainian policies.”

Who are the investigator and the prosecutor?

Fortunately, in one of the decisions the names were not erased. Therefore, we can share.

Senior Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine S.P. Kravchenko

Prosecutor of the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office Kovalchuk A.A.

The final

After a six-month shutdown of the plant, on February 23, 2023, Mareven Food Europe LLC changed its name to Euro Food Service LLC. Not a single government official was injured.

Oleksa Shalayskyi, “ Our money ”