Kremlin takes control of Auchan, Nestle and former Leroy Merlin assets

Filed 1h ago · Via NV · The Buffoon Desk

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The Path of the Goblin King

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: CBP Photography · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Vladimir Putin signed a decree placing the Russian assets of Auchan, Nestle, and the former Leroy Merlin business under the control of JSC L.E.V. Management, according to Russian outlet Interfax. The same firm also takes over FM Logistics, Bati Logistics, and Le Monlid LLC, tied to the rebranded former Leroy Merlin chain now called Lemana PRO.

L.E.V. Management was registered in Russia in October 2024, is run by a CEO named Andrey Krayushkin, and has no publicly disclosed ultimate owners. The decree is framed as temporary management rather than confiscation, though the practical effect is that the original owners lose control of their own assets.

Nestle and Auchan both continued operating in Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, a decision that has now put their remaining holdings within reach of a decree and a shell company with no visible owner.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Calling it temporary management is a nice bit of paperwork when the people who used to run the place can no longer walk in the door. A company with an unlisted owner taking over foreign retailers' assets by presidential signature is not exactly a subtle arrangement, it is just one dressed up in a legal costume nobody expects to fit for long. Anybody who kept doing business there banking on the rules staying put has learned what that bet was actually worth.

Source: Read the original at NV → Scored: The Path of the Goblin King · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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