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Le Monde
Le Monde
19 Sep 2024


Images Le Monde.fr

On Wednesday, September 18 some 40,000 Wildberries collection points across Russia were busy as usual with their daily deliveries. Even in the villages, the Russian e-commerce giant is part of the urban landscape and part of Russians' new shopping habits, with more than 10 million orders a day in Russia and several former Soviet republics, 20 years after its creation. But on the same day, in the afternoon, a shootout caused panic in the lobby of the Moscow headquarters of Wildberries, a company that symbolizes the boom in e-commerce and the country's new economy.

Launched in 2004 by Tatyana Bakalchuk, a dynamic teacher turned businesswoman, Wildberries began far removed from political circles and oligarch clans. Today, the company is caught up in the reality of political-economic conflicts of interest and rapacious appetites surrounding a group that has become too powerful to be left simply in the hands of its founder, now the richest woman in the country. Her fortune is estimated at over $8 billion (€7.2 billion).

Wildberries, whose value of products sold has risen by 50% in one year to reach the equivalent of $28 billion in 2023, is also caught up in the conflict between Tatyana Bakalchuk, 48, and her husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk, 47. After 20 years of life and business together, the birth of seven children and the emergence of one of Russia's finest business success stories, the couple are tearing each other apart.

The husband and wife, who have been going through a divorce since summer, published radically opposed versions of the events that led to the heavy toll of Wednesday's shooting: two dead security guards, seven wounded and some 30 arrests, including that of the husband. The latter was charged on Thursday, September 19 with "murder," "attempted murder" and "endangering the life" of a member of law enforcement, his lawyers said.

The affair was ignored by the state television networks, but the independent media were enthralled, relegating the huge explosion of a military missile and ammunition depot targeted by Ukrainian forces near Moscow on the same day to the status of a mere news item. The shooting at Wildberries is all the more surprising in that it took place in the business center opposite the Kremlin, in the heart of one of the capital's most secure districts.

Vladislav Bakalchuk asserts that he went to the group's headquarters for a planned meeting on the construction of new warehouses. Tatyana Bakalchuk claims that no meeting was scheduled and accuses her husband of "a hostile takeover, or rather, an unsuccessful attempt." In tears, in a video posted on social media, she called him out: "Armed people burst into our office, they opened fire. Young people died. What are you doing? How will you look into the eyes of your parents and our children? How could you bring the situation to such absurdity?"

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