State nationalizes army’s bearings supplier

Russia’s authorities continue to nationalize enterprises whose owners have served as lawmakers in the State Duma on corruption allegations. The latest victim is Russia’s biggest bearings manufacturer, the European Bearings Corporation (EBC).

• Moscow’s Lefortovo court on June 15 ordered the seizure of the assets of the European Bearings Company, based on a lawsuit from the Prosecutor General’s office. The defendants in the case included EBC owner and ex-Duma deputy Oleg Savchenko, his son Georgy, and several others.
• The prosecution’s case is typical for this kind of trial. Savchenko, a former lawmaker, was engaged in politics while simultaneously managing a business, they say. The prosecutor alleged that Savchenko spoke in the Duma in 2009 about unfair competition from Ukrainian manufacturers which had caused three factories “to practically grind to a halt”. The prosecution regards this claim as inaccurate and an attempt to boost his business. They also point to Savchenko in 2005-06 pushing for an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese manufacturers, with tariffs subsequently imposed in 2011 and since extended, most recently through 2029.
• With factories in Saratov, Volzhsk and Samara that employ about 8,500 people, EBC is Russia’s largest bearings manufacturer. It offers around 10,000 different products and is the only private company in the sector that fulfils defense orders. Another military bearings manufacturer, KIMP Holding, was nationalized back in Feb. 2026 on allegations of price gouging on state contracts.
• Even before the nationalizations, the bearings industry was in a poor state. Domestic producers have been losing market share since 2022 – from 25% in 2020 to 23% in 2023, with Chinese rivals taking an ever more active role, Vedomosti calculated.
• According to The Bell’s source in the industry, Russian factories make quality products, but not in sufficient volume, while China produces a lot at poor quality. Reserves of German, Swiss and Italian bearings that were built up before 2022 have now been exhausted. Contraband European products are still getting through — “like heroin” according to The Bell’s source. Meanwhile, Chinese companies are labelling their products “Made in Russia” to sell them at higher prices. Nobody is faking “Made in Germany” tags anymore — there are so few genuine German products on the market that this label would raise awkward questions immediately.
• Including EBC, at least 10 major assets with a combined value of at least 1 trillion rubles ($13 billion) have been nationalized on similar grounds since the start of the war on Ukraine. These include the Kaliningrad Commercial Sea Port (2023), TGK-2 energy (2023), auto dealer Rolf (2023), pasta manufacturer Makfa (2024), PVC producer Sayanskhimplast (2025), gold miner Yuzhuralzoloto (2025) and agro-holding Rusagro (2026) — the biggest single nationalization to date under this scheme. According to law firm Nektorov, Saveliev & Partners, which tracks nationalization cases, in 2025 alone assets worth 1.1 trillion rubles ($14 billion) were seized on corruption allegations.

Why the world should care

The EBC case is different from its predecessors in one way: this is the sole supplier of bearings for state defense contracts during a time of war. Combining being a lawmaker with running a private business has been the norm for decades — a significant chunk of those on the Forbes list of richest Russians fall into this new risk zone. They have almost no effective defenses against such a suit should the state decide to come after them.