"Lanta-Tour" found free boats

On May 5, the head of the Federal Agency for Tourism Alexander Radkov signed an order according to which more than 50 companies were included in the unified federal register of tour operators. Among them, under number 37 is LLC "Sea Cruises". The presence of the company in the register allows it to engage in tour operator activities: sell tour packages both through agencies and directly to consumers.

According to the USRUL, LLC "Sea Cruises" with the TIN and OGRN listed in the register was established on December 28, 2011 by Oksana Igorevna Puchkova (85%) and Konstantin Anatolyevich Puchkov (15%). Until April 11, Ms. Puchkova was the general director of the company, then she was replaced by Yevgeny Ryzhakova. Oksana Puchkova is the daughter of co-owners of Lanta-Tour Voyage Lyudmila and Igor Puchkov, Konstantin is Igor’s brother, the interlocutor of Kommersant who is close to Lanta said in the tourist market. Lyudmila Puchkova herself yesterday asked to contact her on issues related only to the "Lanta Tour Voyage".

Lanta announced its financial insolvency on January 28, after Master Bank refused to provide the tour operator with another loan. At that time, there were about 2,700 Lanta customers abroad, and many of them immediately had problems because the tour operator did not pay off hotels and host companies.

Vladimir Putin personally intervened in the situation, at that time the prime minister and presidential candidate of the Russian Federation: on January 31, he said that “one of the state banks” agreed to help Lanta, and the next day VTB allocated $7 million to the tour operator for payment with hoteliers under the personal guarantee of Lyudmila and Igor Puchkov. The total debt of the operator to all partners, as it turned out, reached $ 20 million.

The financial liability of Lanta was insured in Ingosstrakh for 100 million rubles, the maximum amount at that time (the collapse of the operator just accelerated the tightening of industry legislation). In total, Ingosstrakh received more than 2.7 thousand documents in the interests of 6.2 thousand people for a total amount of 192.8 million rubles - both from those who were forced to repay services abroad, and from those who have already paid, but never went on vacation. The guarantor is obliged to compensate all the victims only 100 million rubles, and, as reported by Ingosstrakh, each applicant can count on about half of the required amount. As of May 18, the insurer has already paid almost 82 million rubles. At the same time, Ingosstrakh acted as the guarantor of Lanta only until June, and the operator managed to sell tours for summer and autumn.

Signing a loan agreement with VTB, Lyudmila Puchkova said that she hoped for the restoration of business. But in late February, she wrote a letter to Vladimir Putin, where she admitted that the VTB loan without a major investor in the company’s shareholders only aggravated its financial condition. On February 29, Lanta-Tour Voyage CJSC was excluded from the register of operators, since it did not reissue the financial guarantee for a new term in time.

The specialization of the new company is indicated by its name. Cruises were one of the key destinations for Lanta - in Russia, she exclusively represented Royal Caribbean. The Sea Cruises website offers tours of this company, as well as MSC Cruises, Carnival, etc. "Sea cruises" work under a standard agency contract, told "Kommersant" sales manager of Norwegian Cruises Line in Eastern Europe Thilo Zimmerman. About the "kinship" ties of "Sea cruises" with "Lanta" Mr. Zimmerman learned from "Kommersant". “We have very strict payment requirements and we make sure that all partners comply with them,” the manager said.

The financial guarantor of "Sea Cruises" for 30 million rubles (as required by law for companies previously not engaged in tour operator activities) was the insurance company "Yugoria". When making a guarantee, the founders of the company were not checked, but the risks for this type of insurance are small, besides they are reinsured, Svetlana Shcherbakova, a spokeswoman for Yugoria, said.