Detained Ariant employees released to go home

Security forces raided the 'Ariant' company in Chelyabinsk, detaining employees who have now been released after being held for over 12 hours.

Jan 21, 2026

The detentions occurred at an «Ariant» plant on Kopeykskoye Highway, where the company«s founders once started sausage production.
Source:
yandex.ru / search, Natalya Laptsevich, Semyon Kazmin

Employees of the «Ariant» company, who were detained yesterday at a division on Kopeykskoye Highway in Chelyabinsk, have been released home. This was reported to 74.RU by relatives of those who had to spend long hours in police custody.

According to our interlocutors, besides management staff, security forces took 10 ordinary workers from the enterprise. This happened around 7:00, and they were released at approximately 19:00.

‘More than 12 hours without being offered a drink, food, or phones,’ the relatives are outraged.

As 74.RU found out, among other things, MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) employees were checking information about possible fraud with bonuses for «Ariant» workers.

The Chelyabinsk Region MVD Directorate reported that operational activities are continuing.

According to a message on the official «Ariant» website, at 48 Kopeykskoye Highway is located a division of the company — the «Perant» plant. A company with this name was registered in 1996, and in 2012 it became part of the Ural-Siberian Metallurgical Company (USMC), which produced meat products using raw materials from the Krasnogorsky pig complex. Previously, ChEMK, the Serov ferroalloy plant, «Kuznetskie Ferrosplavy», the Katav-Ivanovsky foundry, and «Metaglomerat» were part of USMC. It was the main structure of the empire of well-known Chelyabinsk businessmen Yuri Antipov and Alexander Aristov.

Recall that more than a dozen «Ariant» workers were taken to police yesterday. The company said that the enterprise is operating as usual.

Meanwhile, in December last year, employees of the regional FSB (Federal Security Service) directorate detained red-handed while taking a bribe the head of the procurement department of the «Ariant» agrofirm, 43-year-old Maxim Berger, and sent him to a pre-trial detention center.

In April 2024, the Chelyabinsk Region Arbitration Court decided to nationalize the enterprises of the «Ariant» group at the suit of the Prosecutor General«s Office. All on this topic — in a special section of 74.RU.