 "The divorce of Tatyana Bakalchuk, Russia’s richest woman, just turned deadly. Here’s what happened")
It sounds like a plot straight out of a soap opera.
The husband of Russia’s richest woman has been charged with murder.
Vladislav Bakalchuk 47, the estranged husband of 48-year-old Tatyana Bakalchuk, was arrested after a shootout at a Moscow office.
Tatyana is the founder and CEO of the retailer Wildberries – Russia’s answer to Amazon.
But what happened? What do we know about the story of divorce and deaths and Russia’s richest woman?
Let’s take a closer look:
Who is Tatyana Bakalchuk?
Tatyana was the world’s 40th richest woman, as per Bloomberg’s 2021 Billionaire Index.
She is Russia’s first self-made woman billionaire, as per CBS News.
As per Le Monde, Tatyana is worth around $8 billion.
Wildberries began as an online clothing retailer in 2004.
It was founded by Tatyana and Vladislav.
Tatyana was a dynamic teacher turned businesswoman, while Vladislav was an IT technician.
Tatyana is the majority owner of Wildberries, while Vladislav owns just 1 per cent of the company.
It was Tatyana who transformed the firm from its original version to a major marketplace for all kinds of goods.
Wildberries is wildly popular in Russia.
As per Le Monde, it takes around 10 million orders per day
Divorce and dispute
Vladislav and Tatyana are in the midst of a bitter divorce.
The two have been at each other’s’ throats in public ever since Wildberries in June announced its plans to merge with Russ Group – an outdoor advertising firm.
The business dispute is centred around the merger that formed RVB, a new company with Robert Mirzoyan as CEO, which reduced Tatyana’s overall stake to around 65 per cent in RVB from 99 per cent in Wildberries.
Forbes reported that the deal has reduced Tatyana’s net worth by $3.4 billion.
Vladislav at the time said his wife was being “manipulated”.
As per Fortune, Vladislav also called the merger a ‘huge mistake’.
Vladislav has also claimed that he owns half of Tatyana’s assets because they didn’t sign a prenup.
Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who stepped in to support Vladislav, called the merger an “asset grab”.
Kadyrov met Putin and had vowed to halt the deal, as per Fortune.
But Tatyana has dismissed both of those allegations.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said the merger had won President Vladimir Putin’s backing and that he would not interfere with its progress.
What happened?
A shooting at the company’s Moscow office left two people dead and seven others wounded including police.
Both parties blamed each other for Wednesday’s shooting.
Vladislav’s lawyers said he had been arrested and charged with murder and the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, something they said was a “blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.
Vladislav said he had arrived for a pre-arranged meeting and that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots.
Tatyana said Vladislav and his colleagues had tried to seize the office and that there was no meeting scheduled.
“Today a group of people led by Vladislav Bakalchuk, Sergei Anufriev and Vladimir Bakin attempted to seize Wildberries’ offices in Moscow,” Tatyana was quoted as saying by Fortune.
“To my deep regret, as a result of the armed attack on Wildberries, a security guard at our office was killed,” she said.
But Vladislav said he had arrived for a pre-arranged meeting and that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots.
As per Fortune, Tatyana has labelled Vladislav’s claims as “absurd”.
“No one agreed to any negotiations,” she added.
In a tearful video message posted on Telegram early on Thursday, Tatyana said: “Vladislav, what are you doing? How will you look into the eyes of your parents and our children? How could you bring the situation to such absurdity?”
One eyewitness, Nadezhda, told AFP she heard screams and shooting inside the building, a business center that hosts other offices for other firms.
AFP saw several police vehicles near the office in central Moscow. Ten people have been detained in connection with the incident, Russia’s state RIA news agency said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal inquiry, as per F_ortune._
The affair harks back to the 1990s, when deadly corporate turf battles were commonplace as huge swathes of property were redistributed after the fall of the Soviet Union.
With inputs from agencies
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