Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the transfer to the Kherson region of more than 16.7 million shares of JSC «Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів», which are in federal ownership.
This is stated in the decree of the Russian leader.
The shares are to be transferred within three months, and the region is obliged to retain the shares and the company’s real estate in its ownership.
Interestingly, the combine was taken not from Ukrainian owners, but from Russian ones.
The real owner of PJSC “Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів”
In 2016, after changes to legislation in Ukraine, data on owners of large blocks of shares began to appear in the registers. In August of that year it became known that the modest PJSC “Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів” belonged to Russian pensioner Valery Yurevich from far-off Chelyabinsk.
Most likely, he bought 76% of the company’s shares in 2012. It was then that a record first appeared in the Smida system about the presence of a Russian owner of the shares, whose name was not disclosed.
At that time the Kalanchak Bread Products Plant was a small producer of pasta products. Its production capacity amounted to 10 thousand tons per year. Based on the company’s financial indicators (revenue in 2011 – 74 million UAH, net profit – 246 thousand UAH), 100% of its shares could have been valued at 40–50 million UAH (excluding debt), analysts at Dragon Capital noted at the time.
In the fourth quarter of the same year a record appeared in Smida according to which almost 13% of the shares of PJSC “Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів” became the property of the Russian OAO “Makfa” – one of the largest Russian producers of pasta products, flour and cereal products. The company, headquartered in Chelyabinsk, occupies about 25% of the Russian pasta market.
In the second quarter of 2015, 99.1208% of the shares ended up solely in the hands of an individual.
And in 2016 they were already owned by the Dutch company MGC International B.V. (MGC International B.V.). But the ultimate beneficiary of the Ukrainian company was, and still is, Cypriot Valery Yurevich.
At that time Ukrainian law enforcement suspected that the company was moving money out of Ukraine, minimizing taxes.
Over the years that passed he transformed from a Chelyabinsk pensioner into a Limassol resident.
And his son, ex-deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, former mayor of Chelyabinsk, former governor of Chelyabinsk Oblast and owner of the company “Makfa” Mikhail Valeryevich Yurevich — one of the most well-known figures in the Southern Urals — has become a fugitive Israeli.
On November 27, 2016, Mikhail Yurevich left Russia: at 22:20:59 his plane departed from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport heading to Israel. After that, his whereabouts became unknown to Russian law enforcement agencies. Since his departure from the country, Yurevich’s place of residence has not been reported, however interest in him from law enforcement and supervisory bodies remains.
On April 4, 2017, the FSB directorate for the Chelyabinsk region declared Mikhail Yurevich wanted under Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (receiving a bribe on an especially large scale) within criminal case No. 11702007709000017. Yurevich is being sought as an accused person who is evading FSB investigation.
During this period the enterprise in Kalanchak consistently showed an income of 30–40 million a year.
In 2020 it became known that the owners put the company up for sale for 3 million dollars. The company last filed financial reports in 2021. Then the revenue was almost one million dollars.
The end of “Makfa”
On March 28, 2024, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation filed a suit to seize the shares of the Russian company into state revenue. The company’s beneficiaries — Mikhail Yurevich and Vadim Belousov — were accused of conducting business while serving in government bodies, which, according to the plaintiffs, violates established legal restrictions.
On May 8, 2024, the Central District Court of Chelyabinsk ruled on the nationalization and transfer into the ownership of Rosmaina of the group of companies AO “Makfa”. The court also froze the accounts and assets of relatives of former deputy Vadim Belousov and former governor of Chelyabinsk region Mikhail Yurevich totaling 100 trillion rubles.
In June Valery Yurevich published a video appeal to the head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, in which he called the nationalization a raider takeover and asked to check the legality of the decision of the Chelyabinsk district court.
On July 5, 2024, the Chelyabinsk Regional Court considered the appeal and upheld the decision of the court of first instance.
On July 2, 2024, a decision was made to change the company’s management. Later it became known that management passed to the company LLC «РСХБ-Фінанс», which belongs to Rosselkhozbank.
Change of power in Kalanchak
It is hard to say now what happened after the occupation of the Kherson region, but it is known that in December 2022 the Russians re-registered “Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів” under their laws. Roman Ostapenko was appointed as director. And the custodian of the shares became the Russian AO “VTB Registrar”.
In the period from 2022 to 2025 the company showed consistent losses and wage arrears.
In April 2024 the shares of AO “Каланчацький комбінат хлібопродуктів” were seized on a suit filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation.
On November 20, 2025 the Russians appointed the former occupation minister of agriculture of the Kherson region Petro Zbarovskyi as director of the AO.