Dmitry Kamenschik took Domodedovo upon himself. He was declared the beneficiary of the airport.

Domodedovo Airport disclosed its primary owner yesterday. The information says that “the ventures conducting airport activity in Domodedovo in compliance with national certificates and licenses are in the Russian jurisdiction, and citizen of the Russian Federation Dmitry Kamenschik is their beneficiary”. This information was disclosed the day after the Ministry of Economic Development presented the new draft law on obligatory disclosure of owners of large transport objects including international airports (see Kommersant, issue sated September 12).

However, a source well-informed of the situation around Domodedovo told Kommersant that the decision to disclose the beneficiary had been adopted earlier – after the declarations made by Vladimir Putin at the meeting on development of the Moscow air transportation hub (MAH) in July. He demanded that “all project participants should be in the Russian jurisdiction and with disclosed beneficiaries”. According to the President, this will enable understanding who, on whose account and in what amounts will provide financing for the development of airport infrastructure and who is finally responsible for what.

The funding question is especially acute for Domodedovo. Back in March, the Minister of Transport Maxim Sokolov admitted in the course of a meeting on transport issues that the airport facility, which includes one terminal of 184,2 thousand square meters of area, is overloaded, since its projected capability is of 21 million persons per year. The airport serviced 28,2 million people in 2012. The Minister said that this disparity of capabilities caused the decrease of quality. The airport officials claimed that it needed a new runway.

The sources of Kommersant occupying high government positions have mentioned more than once that the lack of information on the beneficiaries of Domodedovo was precisely the thing that impeded public funding of its infrastructure. But the yesterday’s disclosure will hardly satisfy the public officials: it is nothing new.

IPO of the Domodedovo airport failed in 2011, and Dmitry Kamenschik had been recognized as the only owner just before, but he himself denied it afterwards. When questioned by the Prosecutor’s Office during the investigation of the terrorist act at the airport, Mr. Kamenschik declared that “the airport complex consists of many legal entities, and different legal entities are owned by different beneficiaries”.

The aitport’s counsel later explained that Dmitry Kamenschik had interpreted the term in accordance with the Air Code. The Code says that the aitport includes other organizations: air companies, cargo terminals and even border control offices, which are separate from DME Ltd (the then holding company of the airport). All assets of DME Ltd were transferred to Verulia Investment Ltd of Cyprus in 2012, but the airport officials denied that fact of change of the owner.

So it happens that the State has been aware of the beneficiary of Domodedovo for more than two years, but it still believed that the information was undisclosed. Meanwhile, the market sources of Kommersant assured that even if Dmitry Kamenschik was a co-owner of Domodedovo, he surely wasn’t the only owner.

The secretariat if the First Deputy Chairman of Government Igor Shuvalov, who oversees the matters of development of the MAH, refused comments yesterday on whether the Domodedovo answer was satisfactory and whether the airport was eligible for funding. Alexander Bolomatov, Advocate, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", thinks that the requirement to disclose final beneficiaries is “strange”. According to him, there are ways, for example – in international law, when even an absolute shareholder, indicated in all documents, may have obligations to other persons, who may demand that the shares be assigned to them at any moment and for any sum.

See the source of the publication here.