Co-owners of Profi.ru completed redomiciliation from Cyprus to Kaliningrad

Until 2025, Profi.ru LLC was owned by two companies registered in Cyprus with similar names.

The beneficial owner of the Russian Profi.ru participants after the redomiciliation was Eruditor Group Inc, registered in the British Virgin Islands, headed by Alexey Nyanenko. The shares of Profi.ru LLC were pledged to Sberbank Investments.

The new owners of Profi.ru also became co-owners of Tutorion LLC and Artificial Intelligence Programs LLC, which are associated with the company. The Profi.ru press service declined to comment on the change of jurisdiction.

Profi.ru is a service of interaction between clients and specialists, including tutors, driving teachers, plumbers and hairdressers. In total, according to the company’s own data, the platform has more than 3 million specialists in 900 types of services. The net loss of the Russian legal entity of the service in 2023 amounted to 119.6 million rubles, revenue to 2.5 billion rubles (+25%).

“Redomiciliation is definitely one of the main business trends of recent years. Under this scheme, the country of registration was recently changed by, for example, Fix Price, HeadHunter, Ozon, Rusagro, VK, Cyan, X5 Group, whose parent companies were registered in offshore jurisdictions or other foreign jurisdictions,” said the lawyer for AB. “KIAP” Nikita Lutski.

The head of the international management of the Regionservice Bar Association, Ksenia Kasyanenko, explained to RB.RU that companies are moving from offshore companies to the SAR due to sanctioning pressure from the EU and the US and, as result, restrictions on activities on the territory of other states.

According to Lutsky, the presence of a foreign element, especially one associated with a “hospitable” state, complicates or completely blocks intra-group transactions. For example, the “increase” of dividends to a holding company is limited to 10 million rubles per month. An intragroup loan can be repaid to a foreign lender for the same amount. This also complicates interaction with Russian counterparties, since transactions with shares or interests involving persons under the control of the owner of a “hospitable” state require special permission from the government commission for the control of foreign investments in Russia. .

At the same time, moving to the RAE offers a large number of benefits and preferences. This is due to the fact that a foreign company with Russian assets (or Russian beneficiaries, especially those subject to sanctions) becomes non grata for foreign consultants or faces many additional compliance checks at foreign banks, Lutsky added.

Maria Kukla, partner at FTL Advisers, believes that redomiciliation is advisable if there are financial obligations at the level of foreign companies or if there are corporate agreements that shareholders of Cypriot companies must keep unchanged, and this is not possible using only “instruments” Russian corporations. ”.