Causes of corruption center for the study of organized crime. Corruption Investigation Center: "We will publish more stories soon." occrp results

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has published the full text of its investigation, containing .

The Russian translation of the article is posted on the OCCRP website.

“OCCRP explained that the main investigation was carried out by their center, which then transferred part of the information to Reuters. The authors of the investigation repeatedly tried to contact Mr. Baevsky, but they were never successful. The persons involved in the published investigation did not comment on it on Thursday. A representative of Mr. Rotenberg said that the businessman does not have information about real estate transactions of Grigory Baevsky and that he does not work “in any of the companies or structures of Arkady Rotenberg,” they write in the Kommersant publication, commenting on the publication. They note that Alisa Kharcheva, according to According to journalists, she is now in Africa. “Earlier, she told Reuters that she does not know Mr. Baevsky, she bought the house with a mortgage and is still paying it off,” the publication adds.

Here is the full text of the investigation according to OCCRP. The publication is called " Russia: businessman manages houses of close associates".

“A mysterious Russian businessman, formerly the head of a state property management company, bought apartments in Moscow and the Moscow region for a number of women from the entourage of Russian President Vladimir Putin, including his daughter, Alina Kabaeva; and a girl who published a playful message online in her blog “Pussy for Putin” (translated as “Kitty for Putin”), in which she gives the Russian leader a kitten and praises his talent as a leader.

Grigory Bayevsky, 47, worked for Arkady Rotenberg, a well-connected man in the Kremlin and a longtime friend and sparring partner of Putin in judo. According to the documents, Baevsky not only helped Putin resolve several very personal and sensitive issues, but also made a fortune from dubious transactions with the state.

Photo from the blog of student Alisa Kharcheva offering Putin a kitten

Cover for family

Putin has always tried to build an impenetrable wall around his family to protect them from the scrutiny directed at him and from the risks associated with his professional activities. Thus, despite speculation about the past of Putin’s children expressed by the world media over the past few years, the Kremlin has never confirmed their identities.

But last year the first cracks appeared in the impenetrable wall when Ekaterina Tikhonova, a young and then unknown woman, suddenly took charge of a prestigious and ambitious project to expand the territory of Moscow State University (MSU). The project budget is estimated at 110 billion rubles. ($1.7 billion). Investigations by Russian daily RBC, Reuters and OCCRP confirm that Tikhonova is indeed the Russian leader's youngest daughter.

Much of Tikhonova’s research at the university was funded by Russia’s largest state-owned companies, led by Putin’s closest supporters.

One of Russia's best-kept secrets is where Putin's family lives. This information is rarely indicated even in official documents. Nevertheless, in 2012, when creating a company related to her work, Tikhonova indicated her official address. OCCRP was able to verify the address provided. Officially, Tikhonova lives in a modest one-room apartment in the Moscow region, not far from Novo-Ogaryovo, where her father usually lives and works. Due to security concerns, OCCRP is not publishing the address of Tikhonova's apartment.

Since 2007, the owner of the apartment in which Tikhonova is registered is Baevsky, until recently a little-known businessman from St. Petersburg.

In the mid-2000s, Baevsky headed the Directorate for Investment Activities (DIA), a state enterprise within the Federal Agency for State Property Management (Rosimushchestvo).

The main function of the BIT is the effective management of state property. Therefore, after leaving his position at the Foreign Foreign Ministry in 2009, Baevsky did not even have to retrain: he moved from managing state property to managing the private property of people from Putin’s entourage.

Connections with Putin

According to information from open sources, even during his service in the Foreign Relations Department, Baevsky was already closely associated with Arkady Rotenberg, one of Putin’s longtime friends. Rotenberg is among the individuals subject to personal sanctions by the United States and the European Union (EU) in connection with the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

According to the Council of the European Union, Rotenberg prospered under Putin's patronage.

"He made his fortune during Putin's reign. Russian decision-makers and executives gave him preference when concluding important contracts with the Government of the Russian Federation or with state-owned companies. His companies received several extremely profitable contracts in preparation for the Olympic Games in Sochi," the statement said. Council of the EU.

In its ranking “Kings of Government Contracts – 2016,” the Russian edition of Forbes magazine gave Rotenberg first place, citing more than half a trillion rubles (US $7.4 billion) as the amount of government contracts he received. Many, if not most, of the contracts received by Rotenberg's companies were awarded to them without competition.

Baevsky has been associated with Rotenberg for a long time. In 2004, Baevsky re-decorated an extremely expensive apartment in the center of Moscow, on Bolshaya Ordynka, for Rotenberg’s daughter Lilia. Since 2006, Baevsky, together with Arkady Rotenberg and his brother Boris, are the founders of the dacha cooperative "Fatherland", located near St. Petersburg.

After leaving DID, Baevsky joined Rotenberg’s business activities: he was included in the official list of affiliates of SMP Bank, controlled by the Rotenberg brothers. From 2011 to 2014, Baevsky was also the general director of the Russian Holding Company (RHC), of which Rotenberg is a beneficiary.

RHC owns a number of valuable Russian assets, including being one of the shareholders of the National Chemical Group (NHG), one of the largest players in the Russian mineral fertilizer market. RHC is also involved in a $6 billion project to build a highway from the borders of Belarus to Kazakhstan, which could become part of the so-called new “Silk Road” - a fast land route between Western Europe and China.

Live large

Baevsky is not just a hired employee. He also developed his own business, and, as in the case of Arkady Rotenberg, Baevsky’s company received most of its income from Russian taxpayers’ money. According to OCCRP estimates, Baevsky's companies have won government tenders worth more than 6 billion rubles ($88 million at current exchange rates) over the past two years.

The largest contract of 2.7 billion rubles ($82 million) was received by Baevsky in 2013 to prepare the area for the construction of a ring road around St. Petersburg (signed on June 21, 2013).

Baevsky likes to spend the money he receives from Russian taxpayers on luxury items. He owns a string of properties worth millions of dollars, from St. Petersburg to Moscow and Gelendzhik in southern Russia, near Sochi, where the so-called “Putin Palace” is located. His apartment in one of the most expensive areas of Moscow, on Prechistinka, is estimated at no less than 50 million rubles ($740,000). Baevsky also owns the glamorous 65-meter superyacht Rahil, built in 2011 by the Italian shipbuilding company Benetti. Rahil, previously sailing under the name Nataly, won the prestigious Nautical Design Award in 2011 as the best motor yacht (in the category of vessels over 40 meters).

Photo occrp.org

Ladies from the inner circle

Tikhonova is not the only woman from Putin’s circle with real estate ties to Baevsky. According to the real estate register, in 2009 Baevsky refurbished the apartment with an area of ​​228 square meters. m. on the street Veresaeva in Moscow in the name of Leysan Kabaeva, sister of Alina Kabaeva.

Alina Kabaeva is an Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics and chairman of the board of directors of the National Media Group, one of the largest media holdings in Russia. The holding is controlled by Putin's longtime friend Yuri Kovalchuk. Over the years, Kabaeva has been called Putin's "sweetheart," but Putin has sharply denied such speculation, as well as other attempts to ferret out details of his personal life. These rumors were never confirmed.

In 2013, Baevsky re-registered a plot of land and a house located in the prestigious village of Uspenskoye in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region in the name of 81-year-old pensioner Anna Zatsepina. Uspenskoye is one of the most expensive areas of Russia: one hundred square meters of land here can cost about $100,000. This village is popular among the richest Russians: oligarchs, high-ranking officials and celebrities. Uspenskoye is located just a 15-minute drive from Putin’s official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo.

An elderly woman named Anna Zatsepina was mentioned in a documentary about Alina Kabaeva produced by the Russian state-run Channel One in 2013, as well as in a number of media reports from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Anna Zatsepina is the grandmother of Alina Kabaeva.

State real estate records do not include transaction details, so OCCRP was unable to determine whether the properties were sold to their current owners or simply donated.

Kitties

Baevsky owned several apartments, but most of them were transferred or sold to people allegedly close to Putin. But one apartment went to a girl who was not so directly related to the President of Russia. In 2015, 23-year-old Alisa Kharcheva received from Baevsky an apartment and an underground parking space in a building on Minskaya Street.

In 2010, Kharcheva, who had just graduated from school at that time, became the “April Girl” in an erotic calendar dedicated to Putin’s birthday. Later, Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov admitted that the Russian leader liked the calendar. “The girls are cute,” Peskov said.

After the publication of the calendar, Kharcheva became a student at the Faculty of Journalism at the Moscow State University of International Relations. In 2012, she sent another birthday greeting to the Russian President. On her blog, Alisa published an entry with the title “Pussy for Putin” (“Kitty for Putin”). As illustrations, Alice uses photographs of herself in which she poses in playful poses, with a photograph of Putin and a cat, which, according to her, is a gift for the president.

“I believe that he (Putin) is a gorgeous man, a strong leader and an ideal leader of the country... I found a wonderful cat as a gift for the president. I believe that she will bring Putin only good luck... Until Vladimir Vladimirovich wants pick up your gift, the cat will live with me,” Kharcheva wrote.

In response to questions from an OCCRP journalist, Kharcheva said that she bought the apartment from Baevsky through a real estate agent and that she did not know Baevsky personally.

When asked if she was in any way connected with Putin and if the apartment was given to her, she laughed and said: “Stupidity... Of course not. Everyone has long forgotten about that calendar.”

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) has released a new investigation into the withdrawal of about $21 billion from Russia. This is how the criminal scheme worked, affecting 732 banks in 96 countries.

As reported by RBC, on March 20, the international Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) and Novaya Gazeta published a new journalistic investigation into an alleged Russian money laundering scheme through Moldova and Latvia, which they called “Laundromat” (English: “laundry”). The scheme operated from at least 2011 to 2014, and during this time, according to OCCRP, about $21 billion was withdrawn from Russia (700 billion rubles at the average exchange rate of those years).

When did you learn about this scheme?

Back in 2014, OCCRP and Novaya Gazeta wrote about Laundromat, calling it the largest money laundering operation in the history of the CIS. At the same time, journalists revealed the amount laundered over four years ($20 billion), outlined the scheme by which the alleged fraudsters worked (fictitious loan agreements between foreign shell companies, Russian and Moldovan guarantors, “forced” to repay a non-existent loan), and named the main participants in the fraud - Moldovan Moldindconbank and Latvian Trasta Komercbanka.

What new did the journalists learn?

Laundromat received money from various sources: government contracts in Russia (corruption through inflated prices), theft of assets in Russian banks with revoked licenses, possible tax evasion, investigators say. Money passed through the laundromat could be used to purchase goods and services from companies such as Samsung and Ericsson, and even to finance pro-Russian organizations in Eastern Europe. The money withdrawn from Russia went to accounts in 732 banks in 96 countries, and was received by more than 5 thousand companies from various jurisdictions - from the USA and South Africa to China and Australia, Novaya Gazeta writes.

The publication also claims that it has even identified several real beneficiaries of the “Moldovan scheme” - the final recipients of the money (although in reality the users of the scheme could be hundreds of people and companies). These are businessman Alexey Krapivin, whose companies are contractors of Russian Railways (he did not respond to Novaya Gazeta’s request), owner of the Lanit IT group Georgy Gens and co-owner of the Marvel IT holding Sergey Girdin. A Lanit representative said that Gens had nothing to do with the “Moldovan scheme,” and a Marvel representative said that the company had not seen any documents referred to by Novaya Gazeta and for this reason could not comment on anything.

The companies of Krapivin and his partners are the largest contractors of Russian Railways, Novaya Gazeta claims; Krapivin’s father was previously an adviser to the former head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. The procurement activities of Russian Railways are carried out in strict accordance with current legislation, a representative of the monopoly said in response to a request, most of the tenders are held on electronic platforms and published on the Russian Railways website, competitive procedures always undergo multi-level verification and have been audited many times.

Where did they get the new information?

An anonymous source provided OCCRP with two sets of bank transactions: the first details transfers of money to and from the Moldovan Moldindconbank, the second contains data on transfers of the Latvian Trasta Komercbanka, through which two-thirds of all laundered Russian money passed through Moldova. Based on data provided by an anonymous source, investigators examined more than 75 thousand bank transactions.

How did the scheme work?

OCCRP describes the scheme as follows: two foreign shell companies, secretly controlled by Russian money launderers, enter into a fictitious loan agreement (in reality, no money is transferred to the borrower). The guarantors for the debt are a Russian company and necessarily a citizen of Moldova. One of the parties to the contract cannot pay the debt, and the “creditor” makes demands on the guarantor. Since a Moldovan citizen is involved in the transaction, the case is transferred to a Moldovan court, where a “corrupt judge” issues an official order obliging the Russian company to pay the debt. The court appoints a bailiff, who is also part of the fraudulent scheme, and he opens an account in Moldindconbank, where the Russian company transfers money to pay off a non-existent debt.

Novaya Gazeta gives an example from the investigation: in January 2011, a company from the UK, Valemont Properties Ltd, allegedly purchased a promissory note with a face value of $400 million from another company from the UK, Goldbridge Trading Ltd. The guarantors for the bill were several companies from Russia (including Legat LLC with a nominal director - a pensioner from Moscow) and a citizen of Moldova Maxim Mishchechikhin. When the time came to pay off the bill, all the payers reported that they recognized the debt, but they had no money. And then the Valemont Properties company went to the Chisinau court in April 2012. The entire role of a Moldovan citizen was to ensure Moldovan jurisdiction, where the organizers of the scheme had good connections. The main goal was to obtain legal justification for withdrawing money from Russia, the publication notes.

Where did the money go?

Journalists from 32 countries took part in the study of the “Moldavian scheme”. Each publication, in addition to describing the operating principle of the Laundromat, talked about the participation of corporations from their country in the scheme.

For example, in Germany, journalists from the Süddeutsche Zeitung counted $66.5 million in dirty money that passed through German banks. Almost 80% of this amount went through the accounts of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank - the country's largest banks, which were previously involved in the Panama Files scandal.

In neighboring Austria, Dossier journalists found 32 recipients of “suspicious transactions” in the Laundromat database, into whose accounts $5.4 million was transferred over several years. Among them, in addition to hotels, private schools and factories, there is also an elderly couple living in village near Vienna. In 2013, they received €52.7 thousand for some “consulting services”.

Journalists from the Polish Newsweek drew attention to the fact that one of the recipients of payments under the Laundromat was the Polish analytical organization European Center for Geopolitical Analysis (ECAG). In May 2013, she received €21 thousand from a Cypriot shell company for “consulting services.” ECAG is headed by far-right politician Mateusz Piskorski. It was previously reported that he is one of many European radicals who take an openly pro-Russian position. Piskorsky visited Crimea several times, worked as an observer at the Crimean referendum in March 2014, and acted as an expert on the RT television channel. In May 2016, he was arrested by Polish counterintelligence as a “Russian spy” and remains in custody.

British banks were one of the most important participants in the scheme. Moreover, only about $30 million of “suspicious transactions” passed through branches in the UK itself, while in total British banks were involved in laundering at least $738 million, The Guardian emphasizes. For example, over $545 million passed through HSBC, the bulk of this amount through its Hong Kong branch.

Not all national publications collaborating with OCCRP on investigations have already made their materials public. For example, Finnish Yle and Latvian Re: Baltica have not yet written about the investigation. “We don’t interfere with editorial policy, each publication publishes material when it sees fit, we simply give it to them,” explained OCCRP executive director Paul Radu, a Romanian investigative journalist. According to Radu, more publications on corruption schemes in China and Hong Kong can be expected in the near future. Over $900 million of “suspicious transactions” passed through each of these countries (Hong Kong has broad financial and economic autonomy from Beijing) as part of the Laundromat. In total, this is even more than the leader of the list, Estonia ($1.5 billion in laundered money).

Which Russian banks are involved in the investigation?

According to participants in the Novaya Gazeta investigation, 18 Russian banks participated in the scheme to transfer criminal funds abroad, 15 of which had their license revoked between 2013 and 2016. As Novaya Gazeta journalist Roman Anin said, in particular, Strategy Bank, Intercapital-Bank, First Czech-Russian Bank, Incredbank, European Express, MBFI, Unicore, etc. were noticed transferring money to Moldindconbank. Rublevsky", "Russian Financial Alliance", Smartbank (until the fall of 2011 ZATO-Bank) and Mast-Bank. According to the publication, the largest amount of money was transferred to Moldova through two banks - the Russian Land Bank and the Zapadny Bank, which at the time of the dubious transactions belonged to the banker Alexander Grigoriev. He was subsequently detained on suspicion of organizing a criminal community for the illegal cashing and withdrawal of funds abroad amounting to about $50 billion, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated.

Another Russian bank appears in the international investigation - RosEvroBank, which, unlike those listed above, acted as a receiving bank, that is, through it the funds were returned to Russia after the completion of the offshore scheme. In response to an official request, a representative of the bank, which is in the top 50 by assets, denied information about participation in the “Moldovan scheme.” “The mention of our bank in the publication of Novaya Gazeta came as a complete surprise to us; we do not understand how all this relates to us. RosEvroBank operates in strict accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation and the requirements of the Bank of Russia,” said a representative of RosEvroBank.

The Central Bank and Rosfinmonitoring did not respond to the request.

What role did imports of goods play in Russia?

Most of the funds withdrawn from Russia are money received from gray imports, writes Novaya Gazeta. The publication confirms this theory with examples obtained through bank transactions and the words of unnamed businessmen “who imported various goods to Russia.” The scheme, as follows from the publication, is as follows: customs officials create impossible conditions for importing goods into Russia, which is why businessmen have to import goods through forwarding companies, which are often associated with the officials themselves. For their services, intermediaries take 30-40% of the cost of the cargo, the publication notes, while “all import transactions were carried out through fictitious companies that did not pay taxes and customs duties” (these same companies received money through fictitious decisions of Moldovan judges).

The problem of gray imports is even broader, points out the chairman of the State Duma Coordination Council for optimizing foreign trade cargo flows, former deputy Mikhail Bryachak. The Customs Service consistently contributes 2.5 trillion rubles to the budget. per year is less than it should be, he is sure, this can be seen when comparing data from the Federal Customs Service, the Central Bank and the UN. “It is quite obvious that such a volume of losses could not have occurred without the participation of the senior management of the service; it is impossible to hide such a volume of goods from customs control in backpacks at night,” he says. “As a result of this, the money that appeared in the hands of corrupt officials and unscrupulous participants in foreign economic activity was naturally withdrawn [from Russia].”

Schemes forcing companies to cooperate with forwarders exist, confirms the President of the Russian Grain Union Arkady Zlochevsky. “I have received information more than once over the past years, from different sources, that importers are extracting huge commissions from these schemes. The schemes are corrupt,” he says. However, now the scale of undervaluation of imports has decreased significantly - if previously the share of gray imports could well be 25-30%, now it has dropped to 5%, says Sergei Pukhov, a leading expert at the Development Center Institute of the Higher School of Economics.

The editors have sent a request to the FCS press service and are awaiting a response.

Where are the investigations taking place?

Public statements about the investigation of this scheme were made only by Moldovan, Latvian and Estonian officials, in particular, the President of Moldova Igor Dodon, representatives of the economic police of Latvia and the criminal police of Estonia. The authorities of Russia and Great Britain, whose banks are linked to money laundering, did not confirm information about the investigations.

“These are serious allegations and we will investigate all information that comes to our attention,” a spokesperson for the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said in a statement. The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) did not confirm or deny information about interest in this case in response to the request. According to the SFO spokesman, such statements are made in three cases: when a company receives notice of the commencement of an investigation and considers it necessary to notify the market; when the investigation seeks to obtain information from victims; when a company is formally charged.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), together with several publications, including the Russian Novaya Gazeta, on Sunday, April 3, published the results of an investigation based on a large-scale data leak from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co, the fourth largest in the world of offshore legal organization.

The publications provide data on the offshore companies of 12 world leaders, hundreds of officials and celebrities from around the world, including football player Leonel Messi and actor Jackie Chan. Much material is devoted to Putin’s inner circle: one of his friends, the “guardian” cellist Sergei Roldugin controls offshore companies through which at least $2 billion passed.

Founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Drew Sullivan, answered questions from Present Time about how this investigation was conducted.

How long did the investigation last? How many people were involved in the project? If I'm not mistaken, more than 400 journalists took part in it.

Not just journalists. When you think about all the people who worked on this project, you realize that the number is at least twice as large. This investigation took us almost a year, more than a hundred news organizations participated in it, that is, this is a large group of people within which it was necessary to establish communication, whose actions needed to be coordinated. And the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists helped us a lot by building a unified structure for this huge work.

As I understand it, today's stories are the tip of the iceberg. What else is planned to be published in the coming days?

Thirty stories were being worked on - they will be published over the next two weeks. In addition, there are projects that we have not even started working on yet. We will understand them, look for the missing information, that is, all this can continue for another six months, and the data we collect will be used for many more years.

-Can you at least give us a hint of what we should expect?

I'm afraid not. These people are interested all over the world. We work with other news organizations and have a busy publication schedule. You already see big names in these investigations, but when you start to understand it all, much more interesting people will appear - even though these names will not tell you anything at first. Today we have a story about the grandson of the President of Kazakhstan Nazarbayev. In Kazakhstan, of course, they know him - but only in Kazakhstan, although he is a very interesting character.

- How did the investigation go? How did you verify information received from an anonymous source?

As soon as we received the information, it became clear that it would be difficult to verify it, because we did not have the opportunity to contact Mossack Fonseca with a direct question: “Guys, are these really your documents?” So we tried to put it all into context. We cannot publish a story based on one source of information, so when we saw from Mossack Fonseca documents that some kind of transaction was taking place, we found out whether it really took place, tried to find out everything about the companies that were involved in it, looked , where and by whom they are registered, etc.

Once the context is formed around all this, it becomes clear that all this is true, because it would be impossible to fake such a large amount of different data. That is, we have good evidence of the truth of the data on which the investigations were based. This data is very detailed, they do not contradict each other internally: the emails match, all the dates correspond to each other, and so on.

This also indirectly confirms the authenticity of the documents. The information that we initially received was only part of a larger mystery - starting from it, we independently collected a lot of other information. We ended up being able to put it all together to show what happened.

How difficult was it to organize such a large-scale investigation? Is this the first time that so many people have worked on one project?

Not only did they cooperate, they remained silent for an entire year! Real professionals. Nobody gave any comments. The international consortium of investigative journalists was at its best: the software they used allowed journalists to communicate with each other without hindrance. That is why Sueddeutsche Zeitung attracted them to cooperation. They have assembled a great international team of journalists and news organizations, and we are happy to have been invited too.

I think that this is truly the first global research project in history in the true sense of the word.

Present Tense

Roman Anin presents the first international project to investigate global corruption. Your hair will stand on end when you finish reading this massive study and understand how the world works, ruled by a shadowy, corrupt elite.

Transnational investigation by Novaya Gazeta and the International Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP)*

— Russian officials, Ukrainian politicians, Mexican drug cartels, Asian triads, international arms dealers use the same offshore companies, the same operators and the same banks to legalize their income.

— How a UK company with an account in Latvia laundered money stolen from the Russian budget as a result of the theft that Sergei Magnitsky was investigating, and at the same time “washed” money from Vietnamese triads involved in smuggling in Romania.

— Russian firms transferred millions of dollars to the accounts of a company from New Zealand, which laundered money for the largest Mexican drug cartel, Sinaloa.

— The nominal directors of the largest laundering companies with a turnover of billions of dollars are citizens of Russia who are unaware of this.

— In just a few months, shell companies transferred about $300 million from Russian state banks to offshore accounts, the activities of which are being investigated by the intelligence services of the United States and Europe.

*Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project - Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime, uniting investigative journalists from Eastern Europe.

This investigation lasted more than a year, and involved dozens of investigative journalists from Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Latvia, Great Britain, Serbia and other countries around the world. But we still consider it unfinished. Despite hundreds of exclusive documents - bank transactions, criminal case materials, court decisions obtained in different countries of the world - we understand that we are only at the beginning of the journey and today's story is only the first attempt to explain how the global money laundering laundry works.

Our investigation focuses on several offshore companies with turnover exceeding a billion dollars.

The bank transactions we received show that money was transferred to the accounts of these offshore companies from Russia, the USA, Great Britain, New Zealand, China, Ukraine... Each of these transactions is most likely a separate story, and each of these dollars most likely has a unique origin : it could have been stolen from the Russian budget, could have been obtained from smuggling in Romania, drug trafficking in the USA or weapons from North Korea... We explain these relationships by the fact that criminals from different parts of the world use the same technologies, and therefore there is nothing surprising in that the same platforms can work in the interests of different beneficiaries.

But still, all these individual stories have one thing in common - these are the operators of laundering platforms, those who have access to bank accounts and know whose money is washed in these common cauldrons and to whom it should ultimately go. These are the people we have yet to find.

NOMIREX

The path of money to Vladlen Stepanov’s accounts

In January 2011, Hermitage Capital Management lawyers wrote a message to the Swiss prosecutor's office about suspicion of money laundering. We were talking about an already well-known story - how millions of dollars were received into the Swiss accounts at Credite Suisse, owned by the offshore companies of Vladlen Stepanov, the ex-husband of Olga Stepanova (at that time the head of the 28th tax inspectorate), which were then spent for the purchase of real estate in Dubai and Montenegro. The same Swiss account was used to pay for the real estate of Olga Tsareva and Elena Anisimova, whose names coincide with the names of Stepanova’s former deputies in the 28th Inspectorate.

Hermitage Capital Management lawyers suggested in their statement that this money is part of the 5.4 billion rubles stolen from the Russian budget in 2007 through the use of fraudulent tax refund schemes. Let us remember that this crime was investigated by lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was brought to death in a pre-trial detention center two years ago. Vladlen Stepanov insisted that he earned the money that came into his account on his own.

Before arriving at Vladlen Stepanov’s Swiss account, the money traveled an extremely difficult path. Most of them were transferred from accounts in the Latvian bank Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV, owned by Nomirex (UK) and Bristoll Export (New Zealand). The money for these companies, in turn, came from the account of the Moldovan company Bunicon-Impex SRL. All of these companies and their financial transactions are currently under close scrutiny by Swiss law enforcement authorities who are investigating Hermitage Capital Management's allegations.

The British company Nomirex was registered in August 2006 by a company specializing in the registration and management of companies and asset protection - Meridian Companies House Limited. The director of Meridian Companies House, Russian-speaking Erez Maharal, told Novaya and OCCRP that his company is engaged in registering companies “on the shelf”, which are then sold wholesale to intermediaries, who, in turn, sell them to someone else - “to whom , may be unknown even to them.”

Therefore, Maharal, according to him, does not know who the beneficiary of Nomirex is, where this company had accounts opened and where the money went. As he believes, the task of control is assigned to banks, but even the bank is not able to verify most of the information that the client provides to it. “Especially if the client is an attacker and deliberately misleads the bank with the help of a well-prepared document flow. After all, honest people have nothing to hide. And dishonest people always substitute someone else instead of themselves. So I feel like I was set up.”

From 2007 to 2009, Nomirex filed nil annual reports with UK regulators, meaning the company did not carry on any economic activity. However, Nomirex's participation in the transit of money to Vladlen Stepanov's Swiss accounts shows that Nomirex's annual reports were not true. Moreover, Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP managed to obtain bank transactions indicating that over two years, dozens of companies from all over the world transferred more than $365 million to the Nomirex account in the Latvian Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV! The leaders of this list are dubious Russian companies with accounts in Russian state banks - Sberbank and VTB.

Russian state banks

Construction Company Trade LLC from St. Petersburg transferred $234 million to the Latvian Nomirex account from its account in Sberbank. On January 30, 2007, Trade Construction Company LLC made the first payment to Nomirex in the amount of $7.5 million. The next day, the St. Petersburg company made three more transactions in favor of Nomirex for the same total amount - $7.5 million. Thus, making daily transfers, the St. Petersburg company transferred $234 million to Nomirex in just two months.

In accordance with the Russian Law “On Combating the Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime and the Financing of Terrorism,” such frequent transactions to a foreign company describing its business as inactive (and this fact could be easily verified), and also holding a bank account an account in Latvia (a jurisdiction that, according to international classifications, is considered prone to money laundering) - so, all these transactions had to be carefully checked by the Sberbank security service.

The press service of North-West Sberbank told Novaya and OCCRP: “Sberbank operates in full compliance with the legislation of the Russian Federation. For all operations, as part of the implementation of the Federal Law “On Combating the Legalization (Laundering) of Criminal Proceeds and the Financing of Terrorism,” the bank promptly sends information to Rosfinmonitoring.” They refused to comment on specific transactions, citing the provisions of this law that prohibit the bank from informing clients and other persons about measures taken to combat money laundering.

The authorized capital of the Trade Construction Company, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is only 10 thousand rubles, the only founder and director is 31-year-old resident of St. Petersburg Vladimir Voronov. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP managed to contact Voronov. He told us that in 2006 he could not find a job for a long time until he saw an advertisement that a certain “Regional Legal Center “Northern Capital” was looking for people to serve as nominee directors. The agreement signed between Voronov and the Northern Capital Center (available to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP) directly states: Voronov will “repeatedly act” as the founder and director of legal entities in Russia. Thus, 27 companies were registered in his name, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

According to Voronov, he was promised that after each company nominally registered in his name was sold to the final buyer, he would receive his share of it. However, Voronov, according to him, never received any share; he was only paid 100-300 rubles for signing the necessary documents at the notary and traveling to the tax inspectorates.

LLC Regional Legal Center Northern Capital, which signed an agreement with Vladimir Voronov, was established in September 2004. In March 2007, this company was liquidated. The only founder and director of this company was Igor Blinnikov. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP managed to obtain a court decision from 2010, which states that Igor Blinnikov was questioned by tax authorities as the founder and director of a company that, according to tax officials, was used for tax evasion. Blinnikov, according to the text of the court decision, informed the tax authorities that he had registered a number of legal entities for himself for a monetary reward.

In 2005, another LLC was established with the identical name “Regional Legal Center “Northern Capital”. In 2010, this company was liquidated.

And finally, in 2006, a third company appeared with the identical name “Regional Legal Center “Northern Capital”. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, it still exists, but it seems that its only founder and general director is a man who died five years ago. The third legal center “Northern Capital” is registered to Sergei Lubnin from St. Petersburg. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP have a court decision in which tax authorities checked the activities of a number of shell companies used in tax evasion schemes. The director and founder of one of them was Sergei Lubnin. The tax authorities, trying to interview Lubnin, sent a request to St. Petersburg at the place of registration and received a response from the registry office: Sergei Lubnin died on March 27, 2007. At the same time, according to the SKRIN database of Russian companies, Lubnin continues to be listed as the general director of 97 companies.

Vladimir Voronov, the “owner” of the Trade Construction Company company, which transferred $234 million from Sberbank to the Latvian Nomirex account, told Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP that he was not the only one whom the Northern Capital legal center used as a nominee director: “Every day they hired at least 10 new people.” We were unable to find any real people who managed the Northern Capital center.

...The second “leader” in the list of companies that transferred $365 million to the Latvian bank Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV to the account of the British Nomirex is the Moscow company Style LLC, which held an account in the state bank VTB-24. The first payment from Style's account at VTB-24 to the Nomirex account occurred in July 2008. Then, within one month, Style transferred $53 million to the British company! The basis for payments in all cases was the alleged purchase of construction materials.

The legality of these payments is highly questionable because Nomirex described its business in its reports as “inactive” (and this information should have been available to the VTB-24 security service), and therefore could not sell any goods to Style.

VTB-24 representative Artem Bochkarev confirmed to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP that “during the specified period, the bank actually served a client - a legal entity with such details. All identification and study measures required by law were carried out in relation to the client. The nature and volume of settlements carried out by the bank's client were assessed by the bank from the point of view of compliance with legal requirements. As a result of the measures taken by the bank, the client’s payments were stopped.” According to Bochkarev, the bank cannot provide further information “due to the need to maintain bank secrecy.”

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Style LLC was founded in January 2008. The founder of the company is Ekaterina Simchenko, the general director is Alexey Volodkin. A person with the same name as Ekaterina Simchenko was appointed to the board of directors of Magadansky Bank in July 2007, according to the minutes of the bank’s general meeting of shareholders. A few months later, at the end of 2007, the Central Bank of Russia (CB) revoked the license of Magadansky Bank: due to repeated violations from July to August 2007 of the Law “On Combating the Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime, and financing of terrorism."

In June 2011, Style LLC, which sent the British company Nomirex $53 million, ceased to exist - it was reorganized and, together with four other companies, according to the Federal Tax Service (FTS), merged into a certain Mercy LLC from Vladivostok. It was not possible to contact the people associated with Style - Ekaterina Simchenko and Alexey Volodkin: the available phones do not answer.

The Latvian account of the British company Nomirex was replenished not only through transfers from the largest Russian state-owned banks, but also from banks owned by private individuals.

From January to March 2007, the company Ziteron Ltd, registered in the USA, Oregon, transferred approximately $10 million from its account in the Moscow Nefteprombank to the correspondent account of VTB Bank AG (the German branch of the Russian VTB), from where the money then went to the Latvian Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV to Nomirex account. According to the Oregon business register, Ziteron Ltd lists its principal place of business in the Ukrainian city of Lvov, and the company's president is listed as one Oscar Augusto Cedeño, a 45-year-old lawyer from Panama who once worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of that republic.

Cedeño, in an official letter to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP, said that “our law firm, which I run in Panama City as a practicing lawyer, has never established, managed or been the resident agent of Ziteron Ltd.”

Our Moscow client Oleg Vol, a former employee of the Russian Legal Company, appointed me as a nominee director in this company. As nominee director of Ziteron Ltd. I signed three powers of attorney at the request of Mr. Oleg. Therefore, I declare that I never knew about the existence of bank accounts, I never managed them or had access to these accounts and I do not know what transactions this company carried out.”

Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP were able to contact Oleg Vol, a Moscow lawyer who worked for a number of medium-sized law firms. Wohl told us that he also played the role of intermediary in the establishment of the American company Ziteron Ltd, which in 2007 sent about $10 million from the Moscow Nefteprombank to the Latvian account of Nomirex. Wohl said that several years ago he was approached by a person who asked for help in establishing an offshore company. “His name was Maxim. I didn’t ask for his last name and I still don’t know it. Ziteron Ltd was set up for him and I don't know for what purpose he needed the company." According to Vol, he met Maxim by chance, through mutual friends, “as is usually the case.” Later, Vol tried to contact Maxim again, but his phones were no longer answered. Vol provided Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP with five mobile numbers allegedly belonging to Maxim, but none of them are working anymore. Among Maxim’s other contacts there was also the corporate email address of Nefteprombank, from which transfers were made in favor of Nomirex.

Nefteprombank President Ivan Gubenko said in a letter to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP that the bank “understands and respects the activities of national and international organizations in the fight against corruption and organized crime. The Bank shares and fully supports your active civic position in investigating transactions where there are suspicions of money laundering." Gubenko also emphasized that the bank is implementing measures provided for by the Law “On Combating the Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds from Crime and the Financing of Terrorism,” and also carries out the procedures provided for by the internal control rules. But the bank has no right to comment on specific transactions of Ziteron Ltd to Nomirex in accordance with the provisions of this law.

Vietnamese smugglers

Unfortunately, our investigation into the above transactions from Russian banks (Sberbank, VTB-24, Nefteprombank) to the British company Nomirex does not show the true beneficiaries of this money and their origin: in all cases we ran into a high wall consisting of several levels of nominal intermediaries , who know nothing or do not want to disclose the names of the true owners of the companies and the money passing through their accounts. However, we have suspicions about the dubiousness of these transactions, and we believe that the fact that $300 million was withdrawn from Russia on the eve of or at the height of the financial crisis from the accounts of companies with signs of one-day operations to an inactive British company is sufficient grounds for launching an investigation by law enforcement agencies with a much larger set of powers to obtain information.

The need for such an investigation is strengthened not only by the fact that Nomirex was involved in the transit of money to the accounts of Vladlen Stepanov, from which the real estate was subsequently paid, but also by the fact that Nomirex was used in the financial interests of a powerful Asian group involved in smuggling in Romania.

Members of this group, which is suspected of laundering $600 million and organizing criminal activities in Romania, are currently undergoing legal proceedings (investigation materials are available to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP). During the searches, computers were seized that contained information that members of this group transferred money to the accounts of the same company, Nomirex.

According to the indictment, the group imported goods from China, Hong Kong and Vietnam into Romania from 2006 to 2010 without paying any taxes or customs duties. These goods were subsequently sold in Romania, and the money received was transported by car to the territory of Moldova, from where they were then transported again to Ukraine, and from Ukraine the money was transferred to the accounts of offshore companies, among which was the British Nomirex with an account in the Latvian Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV .

One of the group's members, Hoa Le Duc, agreed to meet with an OCCRP reporter in August of this year in Bucharest. He told us that several years ago he met Ngo Trong Tu and another Vietnamese living in Russia, Chu Hai Ha. “They have their own food production business in Russia. They are both graduates of Russian institutes and live in Russia. I met them through other members of the Vietnamese community.” We were unable to contact Ngo Trong Tu and Chu Hai Ha.

When it comes to the group's financial transactions, Hoa Le Duc is not particularly talkative: “The trial in this case is still ongoing, so I don’t want to comment. Let's just say that the partners asked us to transfer money from one place to another. We helped them, but we don't know where this money is now. It's none of our business. We just did them a favor." According to the indictment of Romanian prosecutors, Hoa Le Duc's group specialized in moving large sums of money through offshore networks for two percent of the money.

Bulk carrier "Faina" and T-72 tanks, swine flu vaccine, European Football Championship 2012

People associated with the British company Nomirex and bank transactions lead us not only to Russian tax authorities involved in the Magnitsky case and Asian smugglers, but also to corruption and weapons scandals in Ukraine.

In July 2009, yoga instructor from Cyprus Lana Zamba was appointed director of Nomirex. It is impossible to count the exact number of companies around the world in which the humble yoga instructor from Cyprus is listed as a director: there seem to be hundreds of them. For example, Lana Zamba was the director of the British company Eurobalt Limited, which, in turn, owns 56% in the Donetsk company Road Construction Altcom LLC. Another 43% of Donetsk Altcom belongs to another British company - Sorena Export Limited. Both British companies, in turn, have the same owner - a company from Belize, Trinitron Investments Limited.

The Ukrayinska Pravda newspaper, investigating the activities of the Altcom Road Construction company, noted that this company receives many contracts without competition worth billions of hryvnia. Moreover, as Ukrainskaya Pravda noted, these contracts happily fell on Altcom after the current President Viktor Yanukovych and his Donetsk team came to power in Ukraine. In April-May 2010, Altcom became the general contractor for the reconstruction of the runway at Lviv airport; in June 2010, the director of Altcom said that his company was ready to use 2.5 billion hryvnia at Euro 2012 sites; in October 2010, Altcom won a tender with one participant for the construction of the Lviv-Krakovets highway for 1.4 billion hryvnia...

As Ukrayinska Pravda wrote, all decisions on the selection of contractors for projects within the framework of Euro 2012 depend on “Boris Kolesnikov and the National Agency for Euro 2012, subordinate to him.” Commenting on the choice of contractors for the construction of facilities for the European Championship to the newspaper, Deputy Prime Minister Kolesnikov said that Altcom was appointed as the general contractor due to the lack of time to conduct a competitive selection. They become winners of single-bidder tenders for those projects that require immediate construction. When we got into time trouble on the topic of Euro 2012, we immediately said: “We will select contractors ourselves,” Kolesnikov explained to Ukrayinska Pravda.

In addition to the facilities for Euro 2012, the British company Nomirex is also associated with other dubious Ukrainian projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Along with Russian companies that donated $300 million to Nomirex, we discovered a number of other companies with interesting connections from other countries of the world. In 2006, a company from Panama, Miller Industrial Inc. transferred 650 thousand dollars to Trasta Komercbanka Riga LV to the Nomirex account. In 2007, a company from New Zealand - ScaNex Limited - transferred about $6 million to Nomirex's account. In the same year, another New Zealand company, Dominus Limited, also transferred about $6 million to Nomirex. These transactions of three seemingly different companies from New Zealand and Panama have one thing in common: they had common directors and owners - Latvian citizens Stan Gorin and Erik Vanagels, who were involved in huge scandals about arms trafficking and the supply of swine flu vaccines to Ukraine.

One of the most scandalous seizures of ships by Somali pirates can be considered the seizure of the Faina ship in September 2008, when 33 T-72 tanks, heavy weapons and ammunition were found on board. Officially, the ship was traveling from Odessa to the Kenyan port of Mumbasa. However, witnesses to history have suggested that the Faina's true port of destination could be Juba in southern Sudan. The official owner of Faina was the Panamanian company Waterlux AG, which, in turn, was managed by two more Panamanian companies - Cascado AG and Systemo AG. So, both companies - Cascado and Systemo, in turn, were managed by the same Latvians Erik Vanagels and Stan Gorin, who led the New Zealand companies that made payments to Nomirex.

And finally, in May 2011, the Oregon District Court ruled against the American company Olden Group LLC, which from 2008 to 2009 supplied the Ukrainian state-owned enterprise Ukrvaccina with swine flu vaccine. The court found that the supplies were carried out at inflated prices and through a network of offshore companies, some of which were related to the same Latvians Erik Vanagels and Stan Gorin, who led firms from New Zealand and Panama that transferred millions of dollars to Nomirex.

Tormex

Moldavian scammers

Tormex Banking Transactions

Tormex (New Zealand) is the second offshore company that can be considered part of the financial money laundering platform we are investigating. There is no doubt that Tormex and Nomirex are parts of the same whole. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP have bank records showing that in 2008, a $1 million transfer was made from a Nomirex account to Tormex.

We were able to obtain a complete statement of the movement of money in the Tormex account, thanks to a seemingly insignificant case being investigated in Moldova. In 2008, Moldovan investigators were unraveling the story of how a Romanian businessman was approached by people from Chisinau who offered to supply him with tires for trucks. The buyer was satisfied with the price, and he transferred 437 thousand dollars to the account specified by the “sellers”. This account was in the Latvian bank Baltic International Bank and belonged to the New Zealand company Tormex. The money was gone, but the Romanian businessman was never supplied with any tires, and he wrote a statement to the Chisinau police. Moldovan police asked the Latvian bank for a statement of the movement of money on the Tormex account, and the documents received probably surprised ordinary Chisinau investigators: bank transactions showed that the cash flow on the Tormex account in just a few years exceeded $700 million! And among the contractors of this New Zealand company were companies from all over the world.

"White collar" against the Sinaloa drug cartel

In 2005, Liverpool resident Martin Woods joined the London branch of one of the largest American banks, Wachovia, as a senior anti-money laundering officer. Previously, Woods worked in the British police's anti-narcotics unit. From day one, Woods began doing what was his job: monitoring suspicious transactions going through Wachovia Bank. Woods immediately noticed that the bank did not have sufficient information for many clients - information about beneficiaries, the purpose of payments, which raised concerns about the possibility of money laundering. And since 2006, Martin Woods began writing so-called “suspicious activity reports” one after another to Wachovia’s head office and the British authorities, in which he described suspicious clients and their transactions. These reports are available to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP, some of which concern Russian clients and banks.

Let us quote excerpts from some of the reports: “...Wachovia identified similar transactions carried out by companies from the UK and New Zealand through banks in Latvia and Raiffeisen Bank. In a number of cases, Latvian banks responded to our inquiries and reported that the companies' current addresses were in Eastern Europe... In all cases, nominee directors were used from distant parts of the world, including Panama, British Virgin Islands, New Zealand, Seychelles, Vanuatu, Belize and others . As a former police officer with experience investigating Russian money laundering (the Bank of New York case - 1996-2001), the characteristics of these companies and the techniques used - nominee directors, inaccurate, false reports, dollar transfers, opaque transactions - are all familiar to me "

But what is most curious: Martin Woods’ reports mentioned both the company we were interested in, Tormex, and another New Zealand company, Keronol, which was also noticed by Hermitage Capital Management lawyers in the dubious transit of money that could have been stolen from the Russian budget as a result of fraudulent tax refunds.

But to Woods' surprise, his bosses at Wachovia showed little interest in the reports, and Woods was soon fired. But Scotland Yard and the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) became very interested in his work. It turned out that many of the companies that Woods targeted were suspected by the DEA of laundering money from Mexico's largest drug cartel, Sinaloa.

Martin Woods later became one of the key witnesses and his reports the most important pieces of evidence in the major investigation, which ended last year. DEA officers established that with the help of offshore companies, whose payments were made through the American bank Wachovia, money was laundered from the sale of cocaine to the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel (the court decision is available to Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP). The bank, which admitted the charges, had to pay one of the heaviest fines in US history—$160 million—as a pre-trial agreement. But the most interesting thing for us is that one of the companies participating in the money laundering chain of the Sinaloa drug cartel was the New Zealand Tormex.

Weapons from North Korea

Tormex was founded in New Zealand in February 2007 by an international company specializing in the registration of offshore companies with nominee directors - GT Group. In June 2011, New Zealand authorities were forced to close this company due to scandals in which companies established by the GT Group were used to launder money from major international criminal groups and terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah.

The biggest scandal occurred at the end of 2009, when Bangkok police arrested a plane that was carrying 35 tons of explosives and anti-aircraft missiles from North Korea to Iran (the crew of the plane consisted of citizens of Kazakhstan and Belarus). The plane was chartered by SP Trading, which was located at the same address as the Tormex company we were interested in; both companies had a common founder - GT Group.

Russian trace

Thanks to the case of the Moldovan scammers, Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP were able to obtain not only Tormex’s bank transactions amounting to more than $700 million, but also internal documents pointing to those who ran this company.

On the day of registration, the director of Tormex (a 32-year-old resident of the Seychelles) signed a power of attorney to manage the company to a resident of Moscow, Albert M. (we deliberately omit his last name for security reasons). Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP managed to meet with M. He is over 40, works as a driver and leads a modest lifestyle, completely incomparable with the hundreds of millions of dollars that passed through the accounts of the company he “managed.” At the beginning, M. couldn’t even understand what was going on. Then he began to remember that several years ago a man, whose last name he did not remember, approached him and offered to work abroad - in Canada or New Zealand. “I asked what needed to be done,” M. recalls. “He replied that it was nothing. Just sign a couple of papers, kind of like a resume. The papers were in English, I didn’t understand anything about them, but I signed them.” So M. became the manager of a company with a turnover of $700 million, which participated in money laundering for the Sinaloa drug cartel.

The Russian trace in the history of Tormex does not end there: thanks to banking transactions, we were able to discover a number of Russian companies with signs of one-day shells that transferred millions of dollars from Russian banks to Tormex accounts.

During January 2008, the Moscow company Kom Stroy LLC transferred more than $1 million to the Tormex account. The founder of Kom Stroy LLC is 25-year-old Moscow resident Daniil Makogon. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, more than 15 companies are registered under it. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP managed to contact Makogon. He told us that in 2006 he worked as a courier for a law company (he doesn’t remember the name), which was engaged in registering ready-made companies. “When I got a job there, they asked me for my passport. Like, it was insurance so that I wouldn’t disappear with documents or money. I was naive and didn’t pay attention to it,” says Makogon. After he resigned from this company, his passport was returned, but calls from law enforcement agencies immediately began to pour in. “I’m tired of going to interrogations and giving explanations about some kind of fraud with companies that are registered in my name. I realized that people from this law firm were using my passport.”

From July to August 2007, Yukon LLC from Moscow transferred more than $10 million to the Tormex account. According to bank transactions, the money was allegedly paid for parts of some electronic equipment. Yukon LLC was founded in April 2007 (three months before the first payment) by Natalya Kletsko. Novaya Gazeta and OCCRP have a court decision at their disposal, according to which Kletsko was interrogated by the detective of the Department for Tax Crimes (UNC) of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, Alexei Droganov (he is on Senator Cardin’s list of Russian officials involved in the death of Sergei Magnitsky and theft 5, 4 billion rubles from the budget). Kletsko explained during interrogation that in January 2007 she met a man named Mikhail, who took her to a notary to certify documents, and then to the tax office to register companies in her name. “For her actions she received 500 rubles from Mikhail. — for a visit to the bank, 1000 rubles. — for a trip to the tax office,” the court decision says. We were unable to contact Kletsko.

Yukon LLC transferred money to Tormex from its account at Investsberbank (today OTP Bank). A representative of OTP Bank told us that information about transactions and customer accounts is a banking secret, and emphasized that there are no claims against the bank from supervisory and law enforcement agencies.

In July 2007, within just 10 days, another Moscow company, Metal-Inkom LLC, transferred about $8 million to Tormex’s account. Metal-Inkom used the Credit-Moscow bank. The same bank was mentioned in Martin Woods' reports: “By the end of July, I had discovered suspicious transactions totaling $500 million. Among them were transactions carried out through London by the Russian bank Credit Moscow,” Woods wrote.

Director of the Legal Department of Credit-Moscow Bank Irina Nikolaeva answered us that the information we requested relates to bank secrecy.

As for the Metal-Inkom company, it was founded in April 2007, its director and founder was a resident of Rostov-on-Don, Elmira Kuzeeva. It is difficult to calculate the total number of companies “owned” by her: according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, there seem to be about 200 of them. We have at our disposal a court decision, according to which Elmira Kuzeeva was interrogated by law enforcement agencies and admitted that she registered companies at someone’s request. The name of this person is not specified in the decision.

Authorities' reaction

Due to the fact that a huge part of the money laundered through the financial platform we are investigating is of Russian origin, we contacted the supervisory authorities with a request to comment on the situation. Deputy Head of the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring Alexander Klimenchenok told us that “operations related to transfers by resident legal entities from their accounts in authorized banks of significant amounts of money to non-resident accounts opened in banks outside the territory of the Russian Federation have long been the subject of interest from Rosfinmonitoring.” Klimenchenok also emphasized that Rosfinmonitoring, together with the Central Bank, sent a number of letters to banks about the need to pay special attention to such operations. To our question whether Rosfinmonitoring has the technical means to monitor suspicious transactions, Klimenchenok replied that the service has the necessary “specialized analytical tools for processing information.” Klimenchenok did not comment on specific transactions, citing legal provisions.

The Central Bank gave a more specific answer. We sent there (as well as to Rosfinmonitoring) examples of specific transactions, as well as the names of companies that made the largest transfers to offshore companies that were involved in international money laundering scandals.

Vladimir Khrustov, Deputy Director of the Department of External and Public Relations of the Central Bank, responded: “The ascertaining part of the request mentions three Russian companies (Style LLC, Trade Construction Company LLC, Yukon LLC) and two foreign companies (“Nomirex” , "Tormex"). In 2007-2011, these companies were repeatedly “noticed” to carry out dubious transactions related to the withdrawal of funds from the country. Information about such operations was regularly sent by the Bank of Russia to Rosfinmonitoring.” Khrustov also emphasized that the management of the Central Bank was aware of the facts of the implementation of the transactions listed in our request.

It is difficult for us to imagine why the supervisory authorities, following their answers, knew about the transactions we cited from Russia totaling approximately half a billion dollars, knew about the dubiousness of these transactions and, having all the tools to track them, nevertheless could not for at least four years to stop them. At the same time, we repeat, colossal sums were sent from Russia to the accounts of offshore companies that laundered money from Asian criminal groups, Mexican drug cartels and arms dealers.

At the same time, we must understand that the transactions we have cited are only a small part of the huge amount that is annually withdrawn from Russia through dubious transactions. In 2011, the Central Bank said that about 250,000 Russian firms paid no taxes in 2010 and filed zero annual reports, describing their businesses as inactive. At the same time, according to the Central Bank, the cash turnover of these firms amounted to 4.2 trillion rubles, or almost half of Russia’s annual budget.

Tax and financial experts suggest that most of these firms are shell companies that were used to launder money. According to unofficial statistics, of the 4.5 million Russian companies, more than half may be one-day companies, and the turnover of funds laundered with their help may greatly exceed the annual budget of the countries. Much of this money is of criminal or corruption origin. And the fact that subsequently the money of Russian officials is “washed” abroad in the same cauldrons with the money of smugglers, arms or drug dealers is not surprising. They use the same tools and there is no difference between them.

Participating in the project: Mihai Munteanu(OCCRP, Romania), Paul Radu(OCCRP, Romania), Arta Giga(TV3 channel, Latvia), Inga Springe(Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism, Latvia), Vlad Lavrov(newspaper “Kyiv Post”, Ukraine), Valerie Hopkins(OCCRP, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Stefan Dozcinovic(Serbian Center for Investigative Journalism), Graham Stack(freelancer, Ukraine, UK) and others.

Text of Mr. Oscar Augusto Cedeño's response to the publication.

The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) links Russian President Vladimir Putin to about $24 billion, which is controlled by people from his “inner circle.” This is stated in the investigation “Putin and the Proxies”, published late on Tuesday, October 24. A separate article is dedicated to the president’s cousin Mikhail Shelomov: after talking with him, journalists concluded that he himself is not aware of some of the assets owned by his company, Accept LLC.

OCCRP writes that the investigation was prepared jointly with Novaya Gazeta, but there is no information about it on the website of the Russian publication at the time of writing.

OCCRP estimated the wealth of Putin's inner circle - "family members, old friends and friends-turned-family" - at $24 billion. Most have businesses related to oil and gas assets or the activities of state-owned companies (Yuri Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg). However, OCCRP singles out three from the inner circle, suspecting that these are Putin’s “wallets.” These are Mikhail Shelomov, Sergey Roldugin and Petr Kolbin. Cellist Roldugin was linked to Putin after the publication of the Panama Papers. Kolbin was mentioned in connection with the sale of luxury real estate to the grandmother of former gymnast Alina Kabaeva.

OCCRP says the trio have one thing in common: their companies control assets of enormous value, with the owners often unaware of what they are but taking considerable pains to explain their wealth. Given their connections to the president, this raises questions about whose money they control, the organization says.

Vedomosti wrote about Shelomov’s assets in St. Petersburg in 2014 in the article “Is it easy to be Putin” under the heading “Related Business”. The material said that it was not possible to contact Shelomov.

OCCRP reports that he still works in a junior position as a "senior specialist" at Sovcomflot. Based on similar job offers, Shelomov's income can be estimated at less than $10,000 a year. However, journalists found $573 million in assets from his Accept LLC.

OCCRP writes that during their first conversation - this spring - Shelomov was surprised to hear questions about the Igora ski resort near St. Petersburg. "Accept" owns half of the company that is building the race track in Igora. In Igora, according to Reuters, the wedding of Ekaterina Tikhonova, who is called the president’s daughter, took place. Shelomov himself picked up the phone and was polite during the dialogue, but at the same time he was surprised: “Why are you asking me?” When he was reminded of the connection with Igora, he replied: “I heard about it, but nothing more.” He stated that his project is “still on paper”, and the construction site is still a “wasteland”.

According to OCCRP, the activities of Accept LLC, related to the companies of Putin’s friends, began in 2004, when the company received a loan of $18 million from the Panamanian offshore Santal Trading Corporation at 5% per annum without any collateral. This year, Acceptance became a shareholder of Rossiya Bank, eventually increasing its share to 6.1%. He also bought a stake in the Sogaz insurance company. In 2013, this share was estimated at almost $200 million.

Accept LLC controls more than 320 million through the Platina company, which it acquired in November 2009. OCCRP associates this company with Arkady and Boris Rotenberg - people who earn billions from major government contracts. The other day, Bloomberg reported that Arkady Rotenberg's Stroygazmontazh will build a bridge to Sakhalin. The project is estimated at almost 300 billion rubles; it will be officially announced at the beginning of 2018. Now the main project of Stroygazmontazh is the construction of a bridge to Crimea.

Putin has repeatedly denied that he has untold wealth. In an interview with director Oliver Stone, he said: “There are no pockets in a coffin.”

For its investigation, OCCRP interviewed William Browder, head and co-founder of Hermitage Capital. He was arrested in absentia in Russia on charges of illegally acquiring 200 million shares of Gazprom. Browder has repeatedly called Putin the richest man in the world. In a commentary to the Corruption Research Center, he pointed out that “not a cent (of assets) is registered in Putin’s name” because he understands that otherwise he would be vulnerable to blackmail.