The Ministry of Development and Technology of Poland has placed the local assets of the co-owners of Technonikol Corporation, Russian billionaires Sergey Kolesnikov and Igor Rybakov, under external management.
This was announced by the head of the department, Waldemar Buda, the PAP news agency reports.
We are talking about Boerner Insulation and Boerner Service. The former produces building insulation materials, mainly mineral wool. The company employs about 200 people. This is the first large and fully Russian non-commodity plant built from scratch in the European Union after the collapse of the USSR. The second company sells building materials and employs about 50 people in its Warsaw office.
“We are the first country in Europe to introduce a mechanism of temporary compulsory administration. And we do not stop the process of blocking Russian influence and Russian capital,” Buda said.
He emphasized that now that these companies are no longer owned by Russians, the country will unblock their activities and thus save jobs.
Earlier, Kolesnikov and Rybakov were included in the Polish national sanctions list. The reasoning stated that the entrepreneurs were doing business “in key sectors of the economy, in particular, related to oil refining,” which is a significant source of income for the Russian authorities, and thus they “bear indirect responsibility for the material or financial support of activities that threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.”
Both billionaires are included in the Forbes ranking. Each is estimated to be worth $1.4 billion. Neither Kolesnikov nor Rybakov were subject to personal sanctions by the European Union, but their company Technonikol was blacklisted.
