Organized chaos Cosmetics mogul Andrey Trubnikov was admired for his lawless approach to business, but inheritance disputes now threaten to destroy the company he left behind

Andrey Trubnikov, who founded the cosmetics company Natura Siberica, was called a tyrant, a genius, a provocateur, and a visionary — all epithets that he eagerly embraced. Trubnikov frequently repeated that he couldn’t stand business plans, he didn’t make budgets, he didn’t work with marketing consultants, and he based all his decisions on his own intuition. “Chaos is the highest form of order,” he told Forbes, quoting Nietzche to describe his work style (in what turned out to be his last interview). In the months since his death in January of this year, it’s become apparent that Trubnikov was the only person capable of controlling this chaos; Natura Siberica is rapidly falling apart. Meduza special correspondent Anastasia Yakoreva takes a look at the people who inherited the company — and assesses its prospects for survival.

“I want to create a global Russian brand, do you get that? That’s my goal in life. I’m not trying to buy myself a Rolls-Royce, a yacht, an apartment in Cannes,” said Andrey Trubnikov in an interview on the YouTube channel “Russians Are Okay!” He did, however, own a number of luxury cars, including a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, and a Maybach.

Trubnikov spent two decades building one of Russia’s largest cosmetic companies — and one of the biggest names in cosmetics worldwide. In 2020, it generated 11 billion rubles ($153.6 million) in revenue; Natura Siberica products are sold in 65 countries — from the Netherlands to Argentina, according to The New York Times and the BBC.

In his perpetual quest to expand the company’s customer base, Trubnikov went after not only new territories but new generations, too. “Right now, I’m working on Gen Z, I’ve started making TikToks. I’m trying to understand them. I’ll never be one of them, so I’m trying to understand them — that way I can make something they’ll like,” he told Forbes.

On January 7, 2021, at 7 a.m., Moscow time, Andrey Trubnikov sent several friends and employees a text message saying “I’m a beast!” along with a link to a new TikTok he’d posted. “Beast” was one of Trubnikov’s favorite words; in his home in the Moscow suburbs, he had dogs, cats, goats, turkeys, frogs, and a number of other pets.

At 10 a.m. that same day, Natura Siberica co-owner Irina Trubnikova received a call from the company’s head of security, who told her Trubnikov had died in his home. The cause of death was later determined to be cirrhosis of the liver.

Andrey Trubnikov was buried on January 12. On the eve of the funeral, the first workday of 2021, dejected Natura Siberica employees met with Irina Trubnikova to find out what would happen to the company.

“She just works and works”

Irina Trubnikova has been Natura Siberica’s financial director for all 20 years of the company’s existence — she chose to stay in the position even after her divorce from Trubnikov. In an interview with “Russians are okay!” he called her the “perfect partner”: by taking charge of financial issues, she gave him more time for “creativity.”

Trubnikov trusted his ex-wife completely, but that didn’t stop him from talking about her in his signature style: “Even if, theoretically, she were to steal something, it would be something for my children. Because she doesn’t really need anything for herself; she’s a very ascetic person. She doesn’t need a yacht, an eight-room apartment, a house in Monte Carlo, she doesn’t need anything. She just works and works,” Trubnikov told Alexey Belyakov, author of the book “Business Against the Rules.”

At first glance, Trubnikova seems gentle and conflict-averse, her expression permanently concerned. She was married to Trubnikov for more than 20 years. They two met on a train as college students; Trubnikov was returning from a visit to his relatives in Uzbekistan; Irina was returning from Kazakhstan. Two years later, Trubnikov announced they were getting married.

Over the course of their marriage, Trubnikov tried selling alcohol, went bankrupt, and was getting ready to go into the live chicken business when Irina, who was having trouble finding a good dish soap, suggested he start a dish soap company instead. That company later evolved into Natura Siberica cosmetics.

When Trubnikov was 43, he was diagnosed with cancer. “He had one surgery, then another, and then the doctor called: come to the hospital immediately, tell him goodbye, this is the end. So I go there, and there’s a pregnant woman there (Note: Trubnikova is referring to Andrey Trubnikov’s second wife, Oksana). So he says, ‘listen, this is my child. Very soon, I won’t be around, so you need to help her.’ But it turned out that — thank God — he lived. That’s when I realized, what difference does it make? The important thing is he survived. He can fall in love, come back, leave, behave however he wants. And my whole attitude toward him changed. Suddenly, it was like he was my older brother,” Trubnikova said in an interview with RTVi.

The two got divorced in the mid-2000s. Irina has neither been married nor dated since — she told RTVi that those things no longer interest her. She continued working at her ex-husband’s company.

Irina owns 40 percent of each of Andrey Trubnikov’s companies: Natura Siberica, First Solution (Natura Siberica’s main legal entity), and a number of smaller companies. The other 60 percent of each company belonged to Trubnikov himself. Currently vying to inherit the business are his three children: 37-year-old Dmitry and 23-year-old Yekaterina (his children with Irina) and 17-year-old Elizaveta (his daughter with Oksana), as well as his third wife, Anastasia Trubnikova.

Irina told Meduza’s correspondent that she spent the first few days after Andrey Trubnikov’s death “lost in the void.” “Other than my mother and my children, he was the one person I trusted in this life. All of the sudden, there’s nobody to ask for advice, I’m alone, whereas before, he was always there to protect me,” she said.

On January 11, when employees started asking her what would happen next, she told them, “Well, what can we do? Continue on.” She asked them to bring her all of the projects Trubnikov had been planning to release and said the company would try to release all of them.

That same day, Trubnikov’s third wife, Anastasia, went to notary Aigul Karnaukhova and became the first of Trubnikov’s heirs to open an inheritance dispute. It wasn’t until later that the effects of this step would become clear.

“We’re twice as stupid, but 12 times as fast”

The cosmetics world is ruled by traditional corporations, and it was only due to his speed and resourcefulness that Trubnikov was able to keep his business afloat. The wall in his office was decorated with the spraypainted words “we crazy Russians.”

“To get the brands like Babushka Agafia, you have to release a ton of brands. Because you don’t know if they’re going to make it or not. You can release a hundred or ten brands and only one will turn out to be Babushak Agafia — any that’s if you’re lucky,” said Trubnikov.

None of his competitors, including traditional corporations, worked with such gusto. “If Schwarzkopf release, say, 10-15 new shampoos in a year, First Solution put out 30-45,” Nikolay Krasheninnikov, sales director at the discount retailer Rainbow Smile, told the website RBC. “International manufacturers usually only have 300-400 products, while First Solution has three thousand.”

What Trubnikov liked most of all was creating new products; he would describe coming up with new types of sausage in his head as he walked around grocery stores. He loved chatting with customers, didn’t give credence to analytics or marketing research, and divided people into “biorobots” and “cosmonauts,” placing himself in the second category. “Cosmonauts are people prone to flying off into the stars and not returning, and it’s the biorobots who drag them back down to earth. Biorobots have budgets, plans, production, and sales,” he told the newspaper Vedomosti.

“Actually, all cosmetic companies are the same. We come up with stories, then we sell them to women,” Trubnikov once said. He went to international cosmetic expositions for the sole purpose of bringing home empty bottles and jars — he was interested in the packaging design, so he poured out the contents. On average, it would take about four months for a given product to be released. The company had a special development department whose office contained a poster that read, “Sure, we’re twice as stupid as the French, but we’re 12 times faster. What’s better?”

The company’s creative director was Yelena Palyul, who worked with Trubnikov for about 17 years. He often referred to her as his “creative heiress” and would say, “Lena, when I do, you’ll keep everything going,” according to former development department employee Irina Rypa.

After the death of its founder, the company has managed to keep releasing new products at the same rate. In the first two quarters of 2021, they released a line of professional hair cosmetics called Ice, a line of body care products called Sibirskaya Apoteka, and a line of children’s cosmetics decorated with children’s drawings collected at various chain stores.

As far as Trubnikov’s children go, he was open about the fact that he didn’t intend to leave them anything: “That would just spoil them, let them earn their own money.” After their father’s death, Dmitry and Elizaveta joined the company (both now work under Yelena Palyul in the development department).

Dmitry Trubnikov (37 years old) resembles his father so closely that other employees were startled at first. Before joining Natura Siberica, he was the owner of the modern art gallery Sold Out, and he wasn’t especially interested in cosmetics. “I always felt like I was useless in big companies, I preferred startups,” he told Meduza.

Dmitry helped launch the professional hair cosmetic line Ice, recruiting modern artists with whom he’d worked previously. Before long, there was high demand for the product not just in the company’s own stores, but in various specialty stores as well.

Seventeen-year-old Elizaveta is the only one of Trubnikov’s children who’s wanted to work in cosmetics her entire life. Trubnikov himself even singled her out among his possible heirs: “Liza could do it [lead the business],” he says in the book “Business Against the Rules.” When Elizaveta was young, her father took her along with him to various exhibitions, where she helped him pour out the contents of the bottles he purchased into the bath.

After her parents’ divorce, Liza kept living with her mother, but she continued to spend a lot of time with her father, inheriting both his love for cosmetics and his love for animals. Over time, she began participating in brainstorm sessions and product launches as well as helping him figure out TikTok. She didn’t officially join the company as an employee, however, until this year.

In January, Elizaveta started coming to the Natura Siberica office after school to work on her very own cosmetic line — a line for “her generation,” which “values emotions more than anything else.”

“My dad always said, when you’re in a new place, observe the people around you and ask yourself what they’re lacking. And when you find an answer, that’s the thing that’ll take, the thing you can build a business on, because it’s something people need,” she told Meduza. That’s how Liza came up with the idea to create a line of gels for Kink: their smells are unusual, putting consumers in a “specific emotional state.”

One of the gels is called “Poisonous Love.” Elizaveta wrote the text on the labels herself. “I thought of a young woman with a broken heart going to the store, seeing this product, and thinking, now there’s someone who understands me, who gets my situation right now, because these texts feel like I wrote them myself,” she explained.

Yelena Palyul thought the product line had good potential, but the company’s in no hurry to release it. Five months after Andrey Trubnikov’s death, on July 7, his heirs would have received their inheritance, were it not for the conflict between Irina, Trubnikov’s children, and his third wife, Anastasia. The conflict had been brewing since May, but it wasn’t until the summer that it really exploded.

In July, Anastasia filed several lawsuits related to Andrey Trubnikov’s estate, and on August 13, a private security company blocked the entrances to the Natura Siberica office, preventing employees from going to work.

Anastasia’s golden ticket

According to both Natura Siberica employees and Andrey Trubnikov’s children, they all saw Anastasia Trubnikova rather rarely. An employee who had been to Trubnikov’s house described Anastasia as a “striking blonde” and “giggly and chatty” and also confirmed that Andrey was bothered by the fact that Anastasia lived in Moscow with her two children rather than with Andrey in the suburbs. “I won’t make her go to Tuva with me, but as for the Maldives — give me a break,” a source recounted Trubnikov saying.

Anastasia spent five minutes talking to Meduza’s correspondent on the phone; she answered all other questions either in writing or through her lawyer.

Andrey Trubnikov and Anastasia Trubnikova were married for three years, but Anastasia claimed in an interview with Izvestia that the couple’s relationship began in 2008, when Andrey was still married to his second wife. Andrey and Anastasia never had children together, but Anastasia had two: a daughter who was born before she met Trubnikov and a son who was born after they started dating. Anastasia explained that this was possible because they “weren’t always inseparable” and that, for the entire time they had been dating, Andrey Trubnikov “managed to find time to be officially married, while I managed to have my second child, but we still stayed close.”

According to one Natura Siberica employee and two of Trubnikov’s former acquaintances, Anastasia would often show up next to Trubnikov when “he went on one of his benders.” Indeed, Trubnikov never hid the fact that drinking was a big part of his life. “Well, I love drinking vodka,” he once told interviewers when asked about his hobbies. Irina Trubnikova was more ambivalent about his drinking. “I have a complicated relationship with drinking. But he always works as if he’s on a binge,” she told the author of the book “Business Without Rules.” Meanwhile, Anastasia Trubnikova said she found it unethical to comment on the topic.

Andrey Trubnikov and Anastasia Trubnikova spent his last New Year’s Eve in different places. “In no way does the fact that we happened not to see each other for the last few weeks before his tragic death mean we’d decided to separate,” Anastasia told Meduza.

However, the two were scheduled to get a divorce on February 2, 2021. When Meduza asked Anastasia about this, she wrote that their relationship “wasn’t always simple,” and that “in conditions like these, no one step can be considered final or decided until both parties take that path definitively; any other opinion is just inappropriate speculation.”

According to Irina Trubnikova’s lawyer Kirill Popov, under the terms of the couple’s marital agreement, Anastasia was unable to claim shares in the company, but all of the real estate acquired during the marriage was transferred to her. As an inheritor, however, Anastasia, alongside Trubnikov’s three children, is claiming a quarter of Trubnikov’s share of the company. He owned 60 percent of the company, so each heir should receive 15 percent.

“Anastasia, from a property relationships perspective, won a golden ticket after Andrey Vadimovich’s death,” said Popov.

On January 7, Anastasia became the first of Trubnikov’s relatives to go to his house, and on January 11, she went to notary Aigul Karnaukhova and became the first to open an inheritance dispute. According to Russian law, the notary approached by the first potential heir is the one who handles the entire case.

Karnaukhova has been a notary for 20 years, during which time she was convicted of using violence against a government official, put under investigation for abuse of authority, temporarily lost her notary status, and regained it. Anastasia Trubnikova told Meduza that she chose Karnaukhova because of her being “conveniently located” and for her good reviews.

In February, when the question arose of who would manage Trubnikov’s share of Natura Siberica until it was distributed to his heirs, three of the heirs — Dmitry, Yekaterina, and a representative for the younger Elizaveta (Trubnikov’s second wife Oksana) — voted for Irina Trubnikova. Anastasia was against the idea (she was worried it would give Irina’s children “extra opportunities”). She suggested she be the manager instead.

The heirs were ultimately unable to agree on a manager; as a result, Karnaukhova ended up nominating one herself, which only made things worse. “Notaries very rarely go as far as nominating an independent manager themselves,” said Yulia Mikhalchuk, a lawyer and advisor for Saveliev, Batanov, and Partners.

“Trubnikova doesn’t show up at work”

The first entity to manage the shares was the law firm Sezar Consulting and its director, Boris Lyuboshits. He initially tried to conduct an audit of the company, but he soon announced that neither he nor other Sezar employees were being let into the office or being given the necessary documents — although it’s a common practice worldwide for a company to “start actively spending funds and withdrawing assets” after the death of its owner. “We don’t know whether that’s happening at Natura Siberica, but their behavior leads us to think it is,” Lyuboshits told Forbes.

On July 7, six months after Trubnikov’s death, his heirs were slated to receive their inheritance. If everything had gone as planned, they would no longer need either a notary or a trustee. Several days earlier, however, Anastasia Trubnikova filed lawsuits against the other heirs, demanding her two minor children be acknowledged as Trubnikov’s former dependents and given their own shares of his estate. In other words, while Anastasia was originally slated to receive 15 percent of the company, she was now trying to get 30.99 percent.

Anastasia Trubnikova also filed a motion challenging the terms of the marriage agreement and her reinstatement at the company. Until Trubnikov’s death, she was on the payroll in Natura Siberica’s marketing department as a marketing expert, but after the dispute over who would be trust manager, Irina Trubnikova fired her for missing too much work.

As an interim measure in Anastasia’s action to have her children included as heirs, the Kuzminsky Regional Court seized Andrey Trubnikov’s shares of Natura Siberica. As a result, the lawyers appointed by notary Aigul Karnaukhova would manage the shares until the end of the proceedings.

At the end of July, Karnaukhova gave management rights to another party. Instead of Lyuboshits, who was fond of giving interviews about his life goals and business mission, the shares would be managed by Grigory Zhdanov, a partner at a law firm called Zhdanov, Koida, Rubalsky, and Partners. Judging from the firm’s website, it deals mainly with corporate conflicts. Zhdanov appointed Dmitry Ganzer as Natura Siberica’s new general director.

Very little is known about Ganzer. In the mid-2000s, he owned a confectionary company in Nizhny Novgorod; the last available figures put its earnings at 700,000 rubles ($9,825). It’s since been liquidated at the federal tax service’s behest.

Now, Ganzer has found himself at the helm of a nine-figure company — though employees report never having seen him. This is likely in part because Ganzer immediately nominated Sergey Builov as the company’s president.

On August 13, Ganzer, Zhdanov, and Builov arrived at the Natura Siberica office along with private security guards. Company employees claim the guards even brought mattresses so they could sleep in the office. The boxes of cosmetics that always filled the office “started to disappear,” according to a former employee. Someone also ate the shrimp that was meant to be used to feed the fish in the office aquariums. “Me and the other women there, we would walk through the hallway, and we’d heard them cracking jokes behind us. Today someone was sawing open a safe in the bathroom with a power saw. It’s just a scary place to be right now,” said another employee.

On the first day under the new management, security guards deactivated the electric passes of Irina Trubnikova, Dmitry Trubnikov, and several other heads including that of the accounting department, the supply department, the international department, and the company’s security service.

Sergey Builov, on the other hand, claimed that he didn’t block anyone’s pass and that they all work during work hours. “I don’t know why Irina Trubnikova and the other employees aren’t coming to work,” he wrote to Meduza on September 28.

The next day, September 29, Natura Siberica terminated its contract with Trubnikova, saying in the statement that, “Deputy General Director of First Solution LLC and Natura Siberika LLC Irina Trubnikova has not shown up at work since August 12, 2021.”

“Why does Builov refer to it as ‘our’ company?”

President Sergey Builov is no stranger to Natura Siberica: three years ago, he was its general director (Trubnikov didn’t like managerial positions and preferred the titles ‘founder’ and ‘major shareholder.’) The author of the book ‘Business Against the Rules described Builov as follows: “A smart-looking gentlemen in a suit and tie, smiling and quick-witted, like a successful European manager.” Previously, Builov had been the director of commerce for L’Oreal’s Russian division.

Trubnikov took issue with employees of multinational companies and constantly took issue with their methods, which are based on market research and analytical reports rather than on the kinds of direct conversations with customers he loved to conduct. “If you used the phrase ‘according to Nielsen’s statistics,’ he would kill you,” recalled Palyul. “He always said, ‘you know how they get those statistics? A guy goes into the metro and asks people, do you use this? And the person says, yeah, go to hell, man. And the guy marks him down for yes.’”

Trubnikov loved contrasting Natura Siberica’s speed with other corporations’ delays and inefficiency. “For example, if there’s some kind of change in the market, I change my strategy. I’m not L’Oreal, which has to go to its board of directors and spend eight months figuring out a new strategy. I can change ours in ten minutes,” he said in an interview with “Russians are okay!”

In fact, L’Oreal was the subject of one of his favorite sayings: “Those guys work in their damn L’oreals and then think they can sell me everything but the kitchen sink,” he told “Business Against the Rules” author Alexey Belyakov.

Still, it was Trubnikov himself who hired L’Oreal alumnus Builov.

Despite calling Natura Siberica “organized chaos,” he did try to systematize the chaos from time to time. One of his goals, for example, was to make it simpler to find an investor to enter new international markets.

“I need specialists. The people working for me are enthusiasts with no experience,” he said in an interview with RBC. “The people who come to work for us from Yves Rocher, for example, they have a completely different approach; they design their window displays down to the centimeter. I don’t do that, my brain doesn’t work that way. I want to attract specialists to regulate the process, to create some instructions.”

It was for this kind of “process regulation” that Trubnikov hired Builov in 2018, Builov himself told Meduza.

In reality, Builov focused mainly on sales in national chain stores like Magnit and Ashan, according to Irina Trubnikova. She suspects Builov promised Trubnikov a significant profit increase (the goal of various reforms he instituted). “[Builov] compiled a list of the top sellers from our three thousand products and suggested selling only them. But nothing came of it: we don’t have a multinational corporation that can invest huge amounts of money in advertising in order to collect huge dividends; each of our products has its own supply and demand, and altogether they make up our revenue. So Builov just ended up clogging the warehouses, and that was it,” recalled Yelena Palyul.

At the same time, according to Irina Trubnikova, in an effort to increase reported earnings in 2018’s first quarter, Builov started shifts deliveries scheduled for April back to March. The company closed the first quarter reporting 30-percent growth, but April was bleak. Employees started using the phrase “Builov April” to refer to the steep drop in sales, according to Palyul. All of this displeased Trubnikov — and after a year, when his contract was up, Builov left Natura Siberica.

Builov gave a different version of these events. “I left the company of my own accord because we revised our plans for international expansion, and Andrey Vadimovich [Trubnikov] was managing the company brilliantly on his own. Any talk of Andrey Vadimovich, who had been calling for me to join the company for so long, firing me for some kind of failure is just not true,” he wrote to Meduza.

Builov described the goal of his current return to the company as follows: “I believe I can help Natura Siberica reach its rightful place in the international market. In addition to improving its position in the Russian market.”

“Why does Builov keep calling it ‘our’ company? Especially if three of the heirs oppose what you’re doing, how can you be doing it on our behalf?” said Irina Trubnikova. As her lawyer, Kirill Popov noted, Builov himself “exists in a legal vacuum” and effectively isn’t responsible for anything: “He’s technically the president of the company, but it’s the general director — Nizhny Novgorod businessman Dmitry Ganzer — who’s responsible for what goes on in the company, according to Natura Siberica’s board and according to the law.”

Builov told Meduza that his responsibility “comes from the fact that I occupy an official position in the company.”

Three of Andrey Trubnikov’s four heirs — Yekaterina Trubnikova, Dmitry Trubnikova, and Elizaveta Trubnikova — claimed not to know anything that’s going on in the company and that, despite their legal right to receive reports through a notary, they’re having to go through the court instead.

“I seemed like easy prey — the weak link”

Sergey Builov’s first act as Natura Siberica’s new president was to send the development department a 60-question-long survey about market shares, which Trubnikov always preferred not to calculate. He didn’t hear back.

Builov has tried to get employees on his side, stressing to them the difficulty of his position. He’s even claimed to be taking Novopassit, an anti-anxiety drug, according to one employee. But the employees remained unconvinced. The majority of the employees in the company’s main office have quit: on August 13, 164 of the office’s 259 employees signed a mass resignation letter (if you include both stores and production facilities, the company has a total of about 1,300 employees). One of the resignees was creative director Yelena Palyul, and the list also includes almost the entire development department, the team responsible for coming up with the hundreds of new products responsible for the company’s growth every year. Technological director Alexander Stukalin, who developed Daur Body Oil, Agafia’s Black Soap, and many other popular products, resigned as well.

Once again, Builov sees things differently. In his view, the more than half of the central office employees who resigned is “not really so much,” not more than 10% of the entire company (if you count salespeople and production facility employees). “There’s absolutely no mass exodus from the company. Most of the people who left did it because retail stores are closed. A number of office managers have resigned. Compared to the entire company, that’s a very insignificant number, less than 10 percent,” he wrote to Meduza.

“We asked Builov who we would transfer all this work to. He didn’t answer. Then it comes out that nobody needs the stuff we’ve been working on for all these years,” said former development office employee Irina Rypa. In Builov’s telling, it’s the employees themselves who didn’t want to transfer the work.

Irina Trubnikova admitted that she was completely unprepared for such a sharp turn of events. “Andrey Vadimovich [Trubnikov] always protected me from everything… I wasn’t familiar with this side of business, which is now coming at me stronger than ever. I can’t imagine anyone doing that to him,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much I miss him… It was like he could cope with absolutely anything. Apparently, I seemed like easy prey, the weak link, I don’t even know… But I’m learning to adapt.”

After getting a taste of the “other side” of business, Irina Trubnikova (who remains the owner of 40 percent of what were Trubnikov’s business assets) began to act.

In 2020, the rights to the majority of Natura Siberica’s trademarks were transferred to an Estonian company; the company’s only owner was Irina Trubnikova. She’s since put the trademarks to use: on August 31, 2021, she terminated her contract with Natura Siberica and First Solution, which were then managed by Zhdanov, Ganzer, and Builov. This means the company can no longer produce or sell cosmetics under the brand names Natura Siberica, “Babushka Agafia’s recipes,” Organic Kitchen, and several others. As a result, the company’s stores have started closing — all of the Natura Siberica stores have shut down, while there are only several Organic Shop stores left open. The company is only able to sell 500 of the last 2,000 products that were created, Builov told Meduza.

Two days before the stores started closing, Irina Trubnikova went to the main Natura Siberica store in Dmitrov, which was damaged by a fire in 2020 (in August 2021, the Babushkinsky Regional Court found Natura Siberica employees guilty for their role in causing the fire). Even during the investigation stage, the court appointed Trubnikova responsible for the safety of the plant’s property; on those grounds, she had Sergey Builov’s guards removed (with the help of police) and replaced them with her own private security officers.

“Production has stopped. The company is losing money. Irina Trubnikova decided to take active, physical measures,” said Builov.

These aren’t the only losses this particular facility has caused the company. On September 14, 2021, Moscow’s Arbitration Court recovered 2.9 billion rubles ($40.9 million) from First Solution in favor of Dmitrov’s DOZAKL plant and the Ingosstrakh insurance company. That’s a lot of money for Natura Siberica, especially under the current circumstances: in 2020, the company experienced a net loss of 460 million rubles, with a revenue of about 11 billion rubles.

The company’s managers hope to recover some of the money by suing Irina Trubnikova: on September 17, Natura Siberica trustee Grigory Zhdanov filed a lawsuit against Trubnikova for 1.7 billion rubles ($24 million), accusing her of causing damages to the company by withdrawing its trademarks. In another lawsuit, he’s demanding she lose her stake in Natura Siberica.

Meanwhile, several courts are still considering Anastasia’s claims — and until they come to a decision, the inheritance can’t be distributed. “[Anastasia’s] goal is obvious — she wants to keep the money from being given out because as soon as the certificates are issued, they’ll choose a new director who’s more amenable to the other heirs and to Irina Trubnikova,” said lawyer Kirill Popov.

In his view, Anastasia is “strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs.” He’s also called her actions a “takeover of the company for some unclear purpose.” If she wants to increase her share, he said, she should “get her 15 percent before going after more.”

“They want to deprive me of everything, to squeeze me for my 30 percent,” Anastasia Trubnikova told Meduza. She considers Irina Trubnikova, who barred the company from using its trademarks, to have doomed the company to “ruin”: “It’s the most direct way you could sabotage the company, you see?”

Anastasia would be happy for the company to remain under the management of Zhdanov, Ganzer and Builov — at least until the courts manage to consider all of her lawsuits. “Independent management should be able to stabilize the situation and establish normal work practices. The court needs to be the one to make the decisions on the inheritance cases,” she explained.

According to Irina Trubnikova, she hasn’t heard from Sergey Builov since August 11 and doesn’t currently know what’s happening internally at the company.

Current and former employees, meanwhile, receive updates about the company from a Telegram channel created by the new management.

Recently, there was a post about bark collection at the company’s remote tree farms. “In the winter, very few people stay on the farms — only enough to do the necessary maintenance and collect whatever can be collected in the winter. For example, tree bark,” the message said. “We’re already so used to living in a state of constant panic due to what’s happening in the company that it actually feels a little strange to be able to say this: everything’s fine on the farms. Everything will be back to normal very soon. We hope you’re looking forward to this as much as we are.”

On Friday, October 1, Moscow’s Arbitration Court appointed a new temporary trust manager for Natura Siberica: economist Ruslan Grinberg. His candidacy came from another party in the conflict: Dmitry Trubnikov and Irina Trubnikova. Zhdanov, Ganzer, and Builov intend to contest the appointment.

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What is Natura Siberica these days? Most of its stores have closed. Its main production facility has stopped operating. The courts have approved claims for amounts roughly equal to a quarter of the company’s annual revenue. Company leaders sit in its ghost town of a main office and try to conduct business as usual, but the company’s main plant is controlled by fired shareholder Irina Trubnikova. Most of the company’s intellectual property belongs to her Estonian organization. Many of its key employees have resigned. Andrey Trubnikov’s heirs are fighting amongst themselves and can’t come to an agreement.

A year ago, Andrey Trubnikov predicted that his company would last two years without him — “and then shut down.” But so far, Natura Siberica seems to be rocketing towards closure with Trubnikov’s trademark speed.

Trubnikov’s heirs are already considering other ways to end the dispute. Business outlet The Bell wrote that Irina Trubnikova and her children, Dmitry and Yekaterina, are currently in talks to sell their Natura Siberica shares (sources even named a potential buyer: the investment company AFK Sistema). If the deal goes through, the three will no longer be involved in managing the business, The Bell noted. It’s currently unclear, however, whether anyone is actually interested in buying the shares in such chaotic circumstances.

Irina Trubnikova told Meduza’s correspondent that she’s theoretically prepared to start a new business from scratch. “I’ll negotiate, search for people to help me. I really want to gather everyone together again, like after a hurricane. We’ll pick up all the pieces, we’ll make it even better,” she said. “With support from a team and some partners, it’s possible to start from zero, so I’m considering a total restart. We have a plan. But I can’t speak about it in detail right now.”

Trubnikova acknowledged that she’ll “receive some help from partners” in executing her new plan — though she didn’t say exactly who these partners would be. Her son Dmitry says he’s prepared to do whatever’s necessary to support his mother. Her daughter Yekaterina is currently in Japan, where she’s studying psychology.

Yelizaveta Trubnikova, who never got the chance to release her own cosmetic line at her dad’s company, now dreams of starting her own business. Just not in Russia.