How on March 6 aggressor-controlled “media” were forced to admit, the wine-making holding “Abrau-Durso”, controlled by the Russian businessman Pavel Titov, was selling champagne house “Chateau d’Avize” in France, not far from Reims. “In recent years, it has become clear to us that it is becoming difficult to work in this region, and we began to look for a new investor,” said Popov.
It is worth recalling that the Popov’s corporation had huge criminal plans for the Russia-occupied Crimea. In 2014, the father of the current “president of the concern”, Borys Titov, announced a kind of “road map” for the “transformation” of the occupied Crimea “into one of the world’s largest wine clusters”.
It was stated that allegedly “by 2025 the area of Crimean vineyards will grow almost three times, and the industry will form at least 15% of the region’s gross product”, which “would be comparable to the world’s largest cluster – Bordeaux”.
At the same time, the Russia-occupied Crimea was consciously considered by the Popov’s clan as a raw material appendage to their Russian business empire, since the aggressor traditionally imports four-fifths of the wine materials from third countries. Naturally, Popovs decided to “milk the federal programs”, declaring the “deliberately subsidized winemaking”.
Not succeeding in such illegal plans, but with the same goal in 2019, the Popovs’ clan criminally tried to “buy” Massandra’s capacities from the Crimean collaborators, counting on the production of primary wine materials, but then he was “bypassed” by marauders from the Kovalchuk clan close to Putin. Time has shown that under the conditions of occupation, there was no “growth in vineyard area” worthy of mention, and now the Popov group has other serious problems.
