Russia’s Federal Bailiff Service, acting at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, has frozen assets belonging to the country’s largest bearing producer, the European Bearing Corporation (EPK), according to a report by the business newspaper Kommersant. The interim measures were imposed on June 15.
The freeze applies to EPK — New Technologies LLC, EPK Volzhsky JSC, EPK Samara JSC, EPK Kuznitsa LLC, EPK Saratov JSC and EPK Trading House LLC. According to Kommersant, officials from the Prosecutor General’s Office seized documents at EPK Samara JSC (the former Aviation Bearing Plant), and EPK Kuznitsa LLC. EPK neither confirmed nor denied the information when asked by the newspaper.
A Kommersant source in the oversight agency said the account freeze could be linked to a possible seizure of assets in favor of the state over alleged serious violations at the enterprises. The Samara region prosecutor’s office has not commented publicly.
In the spring of 2023, reports confirmed that businessman Alexander Moskalenko had sold EPK’s key Russian assets to the Industrial Innovation Fund. It is not known who now stands behind the fund, as industry outlets noting that the closed-end nature of the fund’s setup “strongly protects information about an organization’s ultimate beneficiaries.” Moskalenko retained the plant in Stepnogorsk and Kazakhstan, along with a stake in EPK-Brenko, which produces cartridge bearings. Moskalenko is a business partner of former EPK beneficiary Oleg Savchenko, who resigned as a State Duma MP on May 22, 2025.
The Insider previously reported that Russia’s bearing market remains heavily dependent on imports and reexport schemes. Chinese bearings are often sold as Russian-made, while sanctions have driven up prices for Western-made bearings by an average factor of 2.5 and extended delivery times to between six and nine months.
Russia produced more than 700 million bearings a year in 1991, but output was fewer than 100 million in 2024. Only about 20 million bearings a year are made through a full domestic production cycle. The Union of Bearing Manufacturers says Russian-made products account for about 23% of the domestic market.
Bearings are critical for railways, machine building, and the defense industry. Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, industry specialists warned that a break with Western suppliers could leave Russia short of several types of high-load bearings.
The assets of another manufacturer, SPZ-4 LLC, had previously been frozen in Samara. State investigators said the company’s owners supplied defense enterprises with cheap counterfeit Chinese goods passed off as their own bearings.
