Two top managers of the Baltika brewery have been arrested in Russia. The brewery, which belonged to the Danish Carlsberg group until the summer of this year, was nationalized shortly before it was sold.
Several months after the controversial nationalization of Carlsberg’s brewery business in Russia, two top managers there have been arrested. Dennis Scherstennikov and Anton Rogachevsky are accused of particularly serious fraud, the Russian agency Interfax reported today. Specifically, it concerns company rights that the two men allegedly acquired illegally. This caused damage to the Russian state, which currently manages the breweries.
According to the information, the two arrested are the ex-president and the current vice-president of the Baltika breweries, which until the summer belonged to the Danish Carlsberg group. Carlsberg rejected the allegations as false. “It is frightening that the Russian state’s efforts to justify the illegal takeover of our businesses in Russia are now leading to innocent employees being targeted,” the Danish news agency Ritzau quoted a company statement as saying.
nationalization in summer 2023
Carlsberg is one of the largest brewing companies in the world. A month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the company announced in March 2022 that it would withdraw completely from Russia and sell its Baltika brewery business there.
Baltika is considered the largest beer brewer in Russia. In the summer of 2023, Carlsberg announced that it had found a buyer for its Russian business. A little later, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree that nationalized the breweries without the knowledge or consent of the Danes.