The Polish interior ministry has placed a discount supermarket chain and its Russian owners on the sanctions list. According to Poland’s National Tax Administration (KAS), which filed the sanction request, the company “indirectly supports Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”.
Torgservis PL recently returned to Poland with its discount supermarket MyPrice, the first of which opened in late 2024. The chain previously operated in Europe under the name Mere but had to shut down after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The sanctions have been introduced against Torgservis PL and Sergey and Andrey Shnayder. The two men, who are brothers, have a total of 28,952 shares in the company that are worth over 13 million zloty (€3 million). According to KAS, they are already under sanctions in Ukraine.
Torgservis currently operates only one MyPrice store in Siedlce. Another store was opened in 2024 in Olszewo-Borki in eastern Poland but has since closed down, according to news website Wirtualna Polska.
The website also reported recently that another store, allegedly operated by the same company, has opened in Warsaw under the Polish name Moja Cena (My Price).
The owners of Torgservis, Sergey and Andrey Shnayder, are Russian citizens. They also own the Svetofor discount supermarket chain, which has over 2,000 stores in Russia, according to Forbes.
According to KAS, their company “has financial means and economic resources which indirectly support Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”. It said that the sanctions will “indirectly reduce the revenue of the budget of Russia, from which the aggression against Ukraine is financed”.
KAS also noted that the brothers were sanctioned by Ukraine in 2021 and 2022 because “they hold shares in numerous companies operating in Russia”.
