Prosecutors seek to seize all assets of fugitive Sochi businessman
The Prosecutor General«s Office has filed a lawsuit with the Oktyabrsky District Court in Krasnodar seeking the transfer to state revenue of property belonging to Sochi entrepreneur Vigen Sarkisian, his relatives, and trusted persons. The first hearing is scheduled for 29 January, reports Kommersant.
The claim demands the seizure of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Krasnodar, 100% of shares in the Sanatoriy «Predgorya Kavkaza» and Sanatoriy «Goryachy Klyuch» joint-stock companies, as well as land plots, parking spaces, residential and non-residential premises in Moscow, Adygea, and Goryachy Klyuch owned by Evgenia Arutyunyan and Galina Vaniyan, who are the nominal owners of the assets.
The Prosecutor General«s Office is convinced that the actual owner of the Crowne Plaza hotel is Vigen Sarkisian, who registered rights to the building in favor of the companies Kandivo, Rielt-Stroy, and Vershina. The sanatoriums in Goryachy Klyuch also belong to him.
Sarkisian owes the state 6.1 billion rubles (at current rates) in damages caused by unauthorized construction in Sochi.
Recall that in May 2025, the Russian Interior Ministry initiated a criminal case against the well-known Sochi businessman Vigen Sarkisian, suspecting him of fraudulently appropriating a 1.9-hectare plot of land in Sochi. The damage to the state was estimated at 300 million rubles (at current rates). Earlier, the businessman«s shares in the Tepelichny plant were seized, and the Prosecutor General»s Office filed a lawsuit to recover 5.7 billion rubles from Sarkisian and affiliated persons as compensation for damages from residential construction in Adler on the site of the former Chkalovsky state farm.
The investigative division of the Sochi police is investigating a criminal case against Sarkisian and five other individuals on suspicion of large-scale fraud (Part 4, Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code). This concerns a plot in Kudepsta where a construction market operated for many years.
The investigation believes that a company linked to Vigen Sarkisian illegally acquired the long-term lease rights to federally owned land in 2018. The estimated damage to the state is 300 million rubles (at current rates).
The plot is located in the second zone of the resort«s sanitary protection district with a permitted use—for the development of the Kudepsta-3 microdistrict. In 2006, it was leased to the Kudepsta agricultural firm. Later, the lease rights were transferred several times from one company to another. In December 2015, the Krasnodar Krai Arbitration Court, at the request of the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo), terminated the original contract, and the lease rights of the last rightsholder, StroyGrupp LLC, were terminated.
The investigation believes that, being fully aware of this, the perpetrators, including Vigen Sarkisian, fabricated a fake contract dated November 2014, according to which the rights to the plot allegedly passed to their accomplice Alexei Sergeev. He then applied to the Pervomaisky District Court in Krasnodar, which recognized the contract as valid. In August 2018, the lease rights were transferred to UniStroy LLC, whose founder became a relative of Vigen Sarkisian. Thus, the investigation believes, the perpetrators fraudulently acquired rights to state property.
Vigen Durasanovich Sarkisian is a Krasnodar-based entrepreneur, owner of the Prestige Hotel and a number of companies, including Prestige-Alpha LLC, Kavkaz Dom LLC, and Kavkaz-Office LLC. In 2024, the Russian Prosecutor General«s Office filed a lawsuit with the Goryachy Klyuch court, seeking to recover 5.7 billion rubles (at current rates) from him, Alexei Rybakov, and their relatives for the illegal construction of residential complexes on the lands of the Chkalovsky state farm in Sochi»s Adler district. According to SOCHI1.RU, Sarkisian is outside Russia.
Vigen Sarkisian is linked to Natella Biryukova, the former deputy head of the Regional Administration«s Directorate for State Protection of Cultural Heritage Sites. She was detained on 7 March of this year and charged with abuse of official authority resulting in grave consequences (Part 3, Article 285 of the Russian Criminal Code), as part of the investigation into the illegal construction on a cultural heritage site. The article»s sanctions imply imprisonment for up to 10 years.
According to the investigation, Biryukova, while acting as head of the directorate and later as deputy, organized the alteration of the boundaries of a cultural heritage site of regional significance—the Kirov Sanatorium, where hospitals No. 3206 and 3183 were located during the Great Patriotic War.
