Following a ruling by the Yekaterinburg Lenin District Court, the Ventprom factory operating in the city of Artyomovsky in Russia’s Sverdlovsk region was transferred to state ownership.
On September 3, a lawyer representing one of the defendants answered “Yes, indeed” when asked whether the factory had been transferred to the state. The lawyer said they would not disclose details of the case at the client’s request and that no decision had yet been made on whether to appeal the ruling.
The decision to transfer the factory to state ownership
On August 17, the Lenin District Court accepted a lawsuit filed by the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor’s office seeking “the prohibition of the activities of a public organization.”
The case named the company’s former owner, Oleg Gorshkov, as well as several Ventprom unit managers and other individuals as defendants. Several foreign companies were also brought into the proceedings as defendants.
The case alleged that one of the company’s owners had transferred money to a Ukrainian citizen.
Ventprom was involved in the case as an interested party. The Sverdlovsk regional branch of the Federal Security Service, the financial monitoring authority for the Ural Federal District, the Federal Agency for State Property Management, and the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media also participated in the proceedings.
Ventilation fan production in Russia
Ventprom, a machine-building plant in Artyomovsky, is described as Russia’s only domestic producer of ventilation fans for mines, tunnels and subway systems.
The factory employs 600 people, and the fan systems developed at the facility are used both in Russia and abroad.
