Yara’s Russia relations featured

Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv wrote a lenghty piece on Yara’s (OSE: YAR) business dealings in Russia. The company has long maintained extensive and successful relationship with Ukrainian billionaire Alex Rovt and his companies. Last year Yara solds its minority position in OAO Minudobreniya, a company operating fertilizer plant in Rossosh for 390 million USD after dividends to Arkady Roternberg’s Laguz Management Limited as the latter acquired the entire operation. Yara had acquired the stake in a 2005 partnership agreement including technology transfer and the inclusion of Rossosh into Yara’s planning and marketing operations.

The reasons that the newspaper brings this up now is that there may have been a conflict with Norwegian law regarding the plant ownership if it turns out it had Russian politician involvement. Yara’s stake was owned through a 37.692 percent interest in a Cypriot holding company Yaibera Holdings Limited, which back then had a total of 79.59 percent in OAO Minudobreniya. Already last year during the sale, Russian news agency Interfax wrote that before Rotenberg acquired the company, unofficial reports said main owners were influential Voronezh Senator Nikolai Olshansky and his partner Alexander Rovt. Bloomberg hinted the same when deals were being discussed. All of this has hardly been verified.

Yara said when it sold its stake last year that it and “the other Yaibera shareholders” have agreed to sell. These apparently were IBE World Wide Holdings LLC of Mr. Rovt and Coladeco Holdings Co. Ltd. The latter firm is the one which is implicated. Yara’s consultancy payments to Rovt were also highlighted by the paper.