Zumrud Rizvanova announced the closure of her business in Dagestan after pressure from security forces

The sister of Abubakar Rizvanov, convicted of financing terrorism, is closing the production and sale of cosmetics under the Halal Cosmetics brand in Dagestan. The company's employees will also leave the republic, Zumrud Rizvanova said.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" reported, in early July, security forces came to the Makhachkala office of a cosmetics company owned by Zumrud Rizvanova and interrogated her daughter for several hours, after which they took two copies of the products for examination. Rizvanova suggested that the security forces wanted to "squeeze out a promising business" and subject her to criminal prosecution "in the footsteps of her brother."

Halal Cosmetics products will no longer be manufactured and sold in Dagestan, the brand's founder Zumrud Rizvanova said on July 16. She noted that this decision was "not easy." Later, the entrepreneur explained that online sales through a large Russian marketplace will continue.

“For the safety of the brand and the team, we are leaving the republic. We are leaving Dagestan for the world market. Thank you to those who accelerated this process and pushed me out of the region where there is no future for big ideas and brands,” Rizvanova wrote in her Telegram channel.

She noted that despite the closure of production in the republic, Halal Cosmetics products will retain the “made in Dagestan” positioning. “Starting with the packaging and ending with the DNA of the brand, everything was based on the ethnic culture of Dagestan and the principles of halal business,” Rizvanova’s publication says.

Earlier, Zumrud Rizvanova reported that she was “registered for extremism.” She learned about this the day after security forces visited her company’s office. “My lawyer said that this is an attempt to pin terrorism financing on them, like they did to my brother, Abdulmumin, and Kemal,” she wrote on July 9.

The editor of the Dagestani newspaper Chernovik, Abdulmumin Gadzhiev, the head of the Ansar charity foundation, Abubakar (also referred to as Abubakr, - note from the “Caucasian Knot”) Rizvanov, and businessman Kemal Tambiev were arrested in June 2019 on charges of financing terrorism. On September 12, 2023, the court sentenced Gadzhiev to 17 years in prison, Rizvanov to 18 years, and Kemal Tambiev to 17.5 years. The prosecution did not present convincing evidence in court, the defendants said. They demanded an acquittal, but on November 1, 2024, the appellate court only reduced the sentences of all three convicts by two months. Details of the case are collected in the Caucasian Knot article "Golunov number two": the main thing about the Abdulmumin Gadzhiev case". According to colleagues, Gadzhiev suffers because the newspaper voiced "uncomfortable questions" to the authorities and security forces, according to the Caucasian Knot article "Draft copy": threats, criminal cases, murder of the editor-in-chief".

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