A number of Ukrainian media published an investigation by Valeriy Shcherbina, an analyst at the Infrastructure Monitoring Institute, regarding the activities of the “Brocard” perfume company in the occupied Crimea, which operates 8 stores of the Russian “Letual” chain, the beneficiary of which for a long time was Tatyana Volodina, who owned, through Cypriot gasket companies, and “Brocard-Ukraine” and “Egzagon” businesses operating in the controlled territory of Ukraine, registered in Kyiv.
After a large-scale Russian aggression in April 2022, the Ukrainian authorities began criminal proceedings on the activities of these structures, and on May 18 last year, the court seized the corporate rights of “Brocard” and “Egzagon” LLC. But a week later, the media reported on the alleged “purchase of Cypriot companies’ that owned these Ukrainian firms, by the Frenchman Philippe Bénacin.
Philippe Bénacin is a millionaire and the owner of a minority stake in the large French corporation “Interparfums”, a global manufacturer of premium perfumes, he has previously visited Moscow on several occasions at the invitation of the aforementioned Volodina. Therefore, the investigators point out, it is more than obvious that the purchase agreement may be fictitious, “with the expectation that the alleged new owner is French, so the Ukrainian authorities will not dare to confiscate the company, although it was acquired in violation of the current legislation”.
Further, in September 2022, the final beneficiary was changed in the Ukrainian register from a citizen of Russian Volodina to a Frenchman Philippe Bénacin, and the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine officially stated that it did not give permission for it, because it froze the consideration of such permissions until the end of martial law.
Therefore, experts state how, in general, the Russian woman Volodina “sold Ukrainian assets” is still unknown, and a year later, from the “official notice of the sale”, the leadership in Ukrainian companies was not changed, which indicates Volodina’s influence and access to the leadership of “Brocard Ukraine” and “Egzagon”.
