Putin gives Mariupol steel plant to Chechen leader's associates for looting

Moscow is enriching Kremlin-friendly Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov by allowing him to loot Illich Iron and Steel Works, formerly owned by Rinat Akhmetov. Source: press service of The Wall Street Journal Details: Illich Iron and Steel Works was taken over by people close to Ramzan Kadyrov.

Ruslan Geremeyev was among them.

Ruslan Geremeyev and Vakhit Geremeyev, deputy head of Chechnya's Ministry of Construction and Housing, are relatives of Senator Suleiman Geremeyev, an ally of Kadyrov. His son Valid received half of the shares in Mariupol Illich Iron and Steel Works LLC, which now controls the plant. It is noted that the looting of the plant is in full swing.

Lorries with rolled products often leave the plant's premises and head towards Russia. The Russians dismantled and shipped to Russia a production line worth US£220 million that was installed shortly before the Great War.

As early as September 2022, a Moscow-based trading company exported US£380,000 worth of steel products from the plant. Other Russian companies then regularly sold the coal and other products that remained at the plant.

In January 2023, a batch of steel products worth US£50,000 was exported to Uzbekistan. After a while, Valid Korchagin's share was transferred to another person, also associated with Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Moscow-based Akhmat fight club, Alash Dadashov. The Geremeyevs, however, continue to run the plant. "There were a lot of dead bodies here; everything was mined," Vakhit Geremeyev told a pro-Russian Mariupol media outlet earlier this year as he walked through the plant's grounds in his military uniform.

According to Geremeyev, he fell in love with the plant and "almost became a metallurgist", intending to reopen it by 2026, but in the meantime, he wants to protect it from looting.

Alash Dadashov sends industrial gases from the plant to Russia through his other Mariupol-based company, Technical Materials, which he owns jointly with a local resident, former deputy head of Azovstal's oxygen shop Stanislav Komarovsky.

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