A court in Rodniki, Ivanovo Oblast, Russia, has received a request from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to declare a bakery owned by Latvian and Ukrainian citizens as extremist and to confiscate half of the company Rižskij hļeb (“Rīgas maize”), according to the newspaper Kommersant, as reported by the online media outlet Meduza.
The claim was filed against Latvian citizen Normunds Bomis and Ukrainian citizen Tatiana Prykhodko, their Limbaži-based company SIA Lielezers, as well as the Chernihiv and Kyiv-based companies Rižskij hļib and Hlibnyi Hurman, and the charitable organization Ziedot.lv.
According to the Russian Prosecutor’s Office, Bomis, Prykhodko, and their companies are “engaged in extremist activities aimed against Russia’s interests.”
Russian authorities claim that Bomis is sponsoring the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Azov Brigade through Ziedot.lv, which organizes various fundraising campaigns in support of Ukraine. Kommersant reported that the Latvian entrepreneur had published a call on the Lielezers website urging European Union citizens to donate to the Ukrainian army, and that a social center for rehabilitating Ukrainian soldiers had been opened on the bakery’s premises.
Kommersant also stated that
Prykhodko had discredited the Russian army on social media and praised the actions of members of Ukrainian military formations.
In Russia, Bomis owns 50% of the company Rižskij hļeb, located in Rodniki, Ivanovo Oblast. The other half is owned by Russian citizen Sergey Sirenko, who was born in Ukraine and had long resided in Latvia as a non-citizen. According to Kommersant, the company’s assets are estimated at 700 million rubles (approximately six million euros at the European Central Bank’s exchange rate on the 1st of March, 2022, when the bank ceased publishing ruble rates due to its volatility), and revenues amount to 1.5 billion rubles.
After Russia’s renewed invasion of Ukraine, Sirenko supported Russia and fell out with his business partner. According to him, Bomis demanded that he shut down the Russian company, founded in 2006, and sell off the assets, but Sirenko refused.
As part of the lawsuit, the Prosecutor General’s Office is requesting that Bomis’s shares in Rižskij hļeb be converted into revenue for the Russian state.
Read also: “IShowSpeed” event draws attention of Riga Police – administrative violation proceedings initiated