Vičiūnai Group, a company co-owned by Kaunas Mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis, has sold its entire business in Russia – a factory in Sovetsk, Kaliningrad, and six other companies involved in logistics, warehousing, wholesale of surimi products, and waste management – to Gruppa Okean, a Russian management company.
The transaction was registered in the Russian Register of Legal Entities on Thursday, April 18, according to the documents provided to BNS by Siena, an investigative journalism centre.
The documents show that Gruppa Okean, registered in Saint Petersburg, now owns 100 percent of the shares in Vičiunai-Rus.
Vičiūnai Group on Friday officially confirmed the sale of its factory in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, as well as logistics and trading companies in seven other countries – a total of 15 businesses.
“The company has thus completely withdrawn from Russia and other markets in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS),” Vičiūnai Group said in a statement.
“The sale agreement was signed with the Russian company Ocean Group, which has already transferred most of the agreed amount through a European bank branch,” it added.
Dainius Matijošaitis, a member of the management board at Vičiūnai Group, described the deal as the most challenging in the company's history.
“Obviously, we were playing someone else’s game by someone else’s rules or without any rules at all, so we can only state that we have finally succeeded,” he was quoted as saying in the statement.
“We hope to smoothly and quickly wrap up the remaining process and then continue our rapid expansion in Western markets,” he added.
In addition to seven companies in Russia (Viciunai-Rus, BaltKo, Fort Trans Logistika, LK Centrus, Frost Logistics, RefTerminal, and ViciRusTrans), the portfolio includes three companies in Belarus (EcoFort, Viciunai Bel, and Viciunai Logistik), as well as companies in Kazakhstan (Vici-Kazakhstan), Azerbaijan (Viciunai Azerbaijan), Kyrgyzstan (Viciunai KG), Uzbekistan (Viciunai Vostok), and Georgia (Viciunai Sakartvelo).
Ocean Group has taken over the ownership of all the companies and has also acquired the right to use the Viči brand in the CIS markets.The value of the deal is not being disclosed.
Russian media reported last week that the buyer of Viciunai-Rus is linked to Unifrost, a large Russian importer of fish and seafood.
According to Russian media, Gruppa Okean was established in Saint Petersburg in June 2023, but its owners are not named in Russia’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
According to a Forbes.ru source, the company may be acting in the interests of Unifrost, but Unifrost itself has refused to comment on third-party transactions.
Gruppa Okean has an authorised capital of 100,000 rubles (around 1,000 euros).
Vičiūnai Group has been promising to sell its Russian business since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Vičiūnai Group companies paid 5.46 billion roubles (54.7 million euros) in taxes to the Russian budget last year, 10.2 percent more than in 2022, according to the STOP Trade in Russia initiative group.
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