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A Russian court has upheld a scandal-plagued merger involving the country’s biggest online retailer, potentially ending a bitter feud between the estranged couple who founded the business that drags the Kremlin and a Chechen warlord.

The dispute was sparked by Tatyana Kim’s decision last year to merge retailer Wildberries with billboard advertising group Russ Outdoor. Two people were killed and seven wounded in a shootout outside the Wildberries headquarters in September in an apparent escalation of tensions.

Kim’s co-founder Vladislav Bakalchuk asked the court to annul the deal that would have transferred Wildberries’ assets to RWB – the company created as a result of the merger – claiming it was intended to harm him and of Wildberries.

Kim, who last summer said she filed for divorce from Bakalchuk, was ranked by the local edition of Forbes as RussiaThe richest woman had an estimated fortune of $7.4bn before the dispute.

The merger will give Russ Outdoor a 35 percent stake in the joint venture even though its sales will be a fraction of Wildberries’ size.

The court ruled on Friday that “no evidence was presented that these transactions caused harm or were intended to harm Wildberries and the plaintiff”, according to a court document cited by the Russian news agency RIA.

Bakalchuk, who was left with a one percent stake in Wildberries, said on his Telegram channel that the decision was “outrageous, illegal and completely unsatisfactory”, adding that he plans to appeal.

The Kremlin said in July 2024 that the merger had won the approval of President Vladimir Putin, after Kim and Russ Robert Mirzoyan wrote to him claiming that the deal would create “the largest digital banking network and payment system for ruble settlements around the world”, with potential. to reach 5.8 billion customers.

Bakalchuk then shocked the Russian public by calling on Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov to help him block the deal.

Kadyrov pledged his support after Bakalchuk, who he said was an old friend, spoke to the Chechen leader in a video posted on social media, lamenting that Kim was trying to squeeze him out of the company.

Weeks later, Bakalchuk and his associates were involved in a shootout at the Wildberries headquarters, which led to the death of two security guards, according to media reports. Bakalchuk was later arrested on several felony charges, including murder. He was later released and said he was not charged.

Dozens of other people, including several mixed martial artists linked to Kadyrov and the deputy head of a Chechen national guard unit, are reportedly in jail awaiting trial in the shootout.

Western sanctions have prompted a brutal fight for elite assets inside Russia, not seen since the 1990s scramble for business that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Wildberries, founded by Kim and Bakalchuk in 2004, has grown over the past two decades from an online women’s clothing retailer to Russia’s second-largest technology company, selling everything from cars to of western goods brought into the country by the same imports.