Russia’s richest woman, Tatyana Bakalchuk, accused her estranged husband of attempting to seize the Moscow headquarters of the country’s biggest e-commerce platform, which she owns.
“I am publicly appealing to law enforcement agencies to take control of this situation,” Bakalchuk said in a Telegram post on Wednesday. She said three people were injured, and named Vladislav Bakalchuk, a co-founder of Wildberries whom Tatyana announced she was divorcing in July, as among those who led the people attempting to enter the building in central Moscow, not far from the Kremlin.
Police later said one person was killed in a shooting near the company headquarters and about 30 people were detained, according to the Interfax news service.
Tension between the couple unexpectedly spilled into public view in July. The notorious head of Russia’s Chechnya region, Ramzan Kadyrov, posted a video statement on his Telegram channel with Vladislav sitting beside him and alleging that his wife “is doing business with a strange company under the guise of a merger that takes the business away and withdraws assets.”
Vladislav said in a post on Telegram on Wednesday that he came to the Wildberries headquarters for planned negotiations, but was stopped by security and other “unknown people” who “provoked an armed conflict.” He said that one of his colleagues was wounded.
Tatyana is worth $8.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. She holds a 99 per cent stake in Wildberries while her husband controls the remaining one per cent.
The company in June announced a venture with Russ Group, the nation’s biggest outdoor advertiser, to build a digital market for small and medium-sized businesses to promote and export their products. Vladislav opposed the deal, saying it wasn’t beneficial to his family. Under Russian law, divorcing spouses should equally split assets that were acquired during the marriage.
Tatyana started Wildberries while on maternity leave from her job as a teacher in 2004.
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