An email domain not visible to the public — LLCInvest.ru — helped reporters uncover a group of interconnected companies that hold palaces, resorts, yachts, jets, and bank accounts full of cash.
Key Findings
- Reporters found dozens of interconnected companies and nonprofits that are tied to Bank Rossiya and use the LLCInvest.ru domain.
- They hold assets worth at least $4.5 billion. Many of these, including an enormous palace on the Black Sea, have been connected to Putin in previous reporting. But they have not been known to be connected to each other.
- Though the companies operate in very different spheres, leaked emails show their employees discussing common business, as if they were part of a single system.
- These companies have a variety of owners, including wealthy bankers and oligarchs — but also the children of Putin’s friends and even his alleged mistress.
- “[The group] looks most of all like a cooperative, or an association, in which its members can exchange benefits and property,” an expert on corruption in Russia says.
Journalists
have struggled for years to establish what Vladimir Putin owns.
The
Russian president, who cultivates a public image of abstemious patriotism, has
been linked to a number of luxurious properties, including a vast palace on the
Black Sea, acres of surrounding vineyards, a ski resort, and a villa north of
St. Petersburg.
But
tying the ownership of these assets directly to Putin through a paper trail has
always been impossible. Instead, his friends have often stepped forward to
claim them as their own.
The
Black Sea palace has been claimed by an old friend and former judo sparring
partner of Putin’s, Arkady Rotenberg. The surrounding vineyards are split
between two other Putin associates: the son of one of his childhood friends and
a well-known oligarch, Gennady Timchenko. The villa north of St. Petersburg
belongs to Sergei Rudnov, the son of another old friend who died in 2015.
But all
these assets, seemingly held by many different people, have something in
common: They are owned through companies and nonprofits that are connected to
each other by an underlying technical infrastructure visible through an email
domain: LLCInvest.ru.
Every
major asset that has been publicly attributed to Putin shares this connection.
BANK
ROSSIYA
A few years after Putin was elected
president in 2000, this previously little-known bank began amassing a business
empire with interests in media, real estate, and tourism. Reporting from the
Panama Papers revealed its many ties to financial schemes involving Putin’s
friends and allies. The U.S. invoked these ties when it sanctioned the bank in
2014.
The
“LLCInvest” companies also hold dozens of other valuable properties and
businesses. Some are associated with Bank
Rossiya , a lender widely known as “Putin’s bank,” while others
ultimately belong to members of his inner circle.
Reporters
first noticed LLCInvest.ru after a 2017 investigation in the weekly Russian
newspaper Sobesednik pointed out that it was used by a
network of nonprofits founded by Putin’s friends. Following this
clue, OCCRP and Meduza found dozens of other companies and nonprofits whose
staff and owners use email addresses on this domain, and which appear to be
interconnected.
The
LLCInvest.ru domain turns out to be hosted by an IT company called Moskomsvyaz
that is closely linked to Bank Rossiya. A large cache of Moskomsvyaz email
metadata was leaked to reporters by a source last year, revealing that the
managers, owners, and employees of these outwardly unrelated LLCInvest
companies frequently communicated among themselves in ways you would only
expect from people working together.
For
example, Rudnov, the son of Putin’s old friend, is the owner of a company
called Volna that uses the LLCInvest.ru domain. Leaked emails show the
co-founder of a completely different LLCInvest company discussing Volna’s
financials with another man using an LLCInvest.ru address. Neither of them have
any public connection to Volna. (Rudnov did not respond to requests for
comment.)
🔗More
Leaked LLCInvest Discussions
The Moskomsvyaz
leak does not contain the actual text of the emails, but it does include
subject lines that provide clues about what is being discussed. Reporters found
several other striking examples of people from seemingly unrelated LLCInvest
companies discussing common business matters:
“Coordination Of
Passage Of Water Conduit”
FROM: i.kirshina@vmtnp.ru
TO: o.markova@llcinvest.ru, a.samosyuk@llcinvest.ru, Kondratieva
Olesya Alexandrovna
SUBJECT: RE: KBG/1810-21 from 29.07.2021 “On coordination of
passage of water conduit route” - reply from 23.08.21
DATE: 08.09.2021 12:16
A woman with the last name Kirshina, employed by an LLCInvest organization
called Revival of Marine Traditions, sends an email that refers to the
construction of plumbing infrastructure. Among the recipients are two people
with llcinvest.ru addresses, including Alexander Samosyuk, the co-owner of an
organization called Traditions of Russian Aviation. Other than the
superficially similar names, the two organizations have no apparent connection
— except for LLCInvest.
“Expenses For
Corporation Employees”
“For Signature,
Additional Agreements”
“Bonus For Klimova”
A
separate leak provides additional evidence that the LLCInvest companies work
together.
Emails
from a construction company that built a villa northwest of Saint Petersburg
known locally as “Putin’s dacha” show that three different LLCInvest companies
own different parcels of land around the complex, while a fourth LLCInvest
entity — a nonprofit ostensibly dedicated to the “revival of marine traditions”
— managed the construction.
“The
only explanation I see is that these companies are united by a common
management system,” said an expert on corruption in Russia who reviewed OCCRP’s
findings. (He is not identified because engaging with OCCRP, deemed
“undesirable” by Russian authorities, can now mean severe legal sanction,
including jail time.)
Many owners of LLCInvest companies come from a group of friends and associates that coalesced around Putin when he was a senior St. Petersburg official in the 1990s, he noted.
“[LLCInvest]
looks most of all like a cooperative, or an association, in which its members
can exchange benefits and property,” he said.
In
total, journalists were able to identify 86 companies and nonprofits that
appear to be part of this loose network. Together, they hold assets worth at
least $4.5 billion, including mansions, business jets, yachts, and bank
accounts filled with cash. All of them are interconnected, sharing the same
corporate directors, registration addresses, and service providers such as
auditors and registrars.
A
handful are owned directly by Bank Rossiya, while several dozen more belong to
the bank’s board members or shareholders, including billionaire businessman
Yuri Kovalchuk and Putin’s rumored mistress Svetlana Krivonogikh. About 18 of
the companies seem to have no connection to the bank at first glance, but in
fact belong to lower-level bank employees. Most of the others are owned by
Putin’s friends and associates, like Rotenberg and Rudnov.
In an
attempt to understand more about the LLCInvest setup, reporters emailed over
100 LLCInvest email addresses discovered during the course of this
investigation, including company directors and shareholders. An email tracker
showed that dozens were opened, and some sent automatic “out of office”
replies, but not a single person responded to questions.
"I’m a humble employee and mind my own business. I only
sign papers. You know how sometimes homeless people are registered as directors
of a company? I’m not homeless but I sign the papers, like they do, without going
into the details."
– Director of multiple
LLCInvest companies
Reporters
also reached out by phone to five representatives of LLCInvest companies. Four
hung up without providing comment. A man listed as director of four different
companies confirmed he uses an LLCinvest.ru address assigned to him after he
was hired, but said he didn’t know who owned the companies. “I’m a humble
employee and mind my own business. I only sign papers,” he said. “You know how
sometimes homeless people are registered as directors of a company? I’m not
homeless but I sign the papers, like they do, without going into the details.”
Moskomsvyaz,
the company that hosts the LLCInvest domain, did not respond to requests for
comment. When a reporter called, posing as a potential client, to see if it was
possible for anyone to use Moskomsvyaz’s IT services, she was directed to a
technical support staffer who asked for further requests to be sent by email
and said that the company’s “policy” was not to take on “private clients.”
Repeated emails went unanswered.
Asked
to respond to a detailed description of reporters’ findings, the Kremlin
answered only: “The President of the Russian Federation is not linked or
affiliated in any way with the assets and organizations you mentioned.”
Bank
Rossiya did not respond to a request for comment.
Much is
still unknown about the LLCInvest companies, including whether they represent a
kind of informal holding structure or are simply sharing technical
infrastructure. Even the full scope of the LLCInvest universe is unknown, with
86 companies and nonprofits representing a conservative estimate. But taken
together, these findings offer an intriguing picture of how Bank Rossiya
connects billions in assets, sourced from Putin’s inner circle, in a way that
appears to benefit the president himself.
🔗The
‘LLCInvest’ Universe
Because LLCInvest
is not a distinct legal entity, determining which companies to include is
partly a matter of editorial judgment. Reporters used the following criteria to
identify 86 LLCInvest companies and nonprofits. They also found a smaller set
of associated companies that don’t appear to use the LLCInvest.ru domain, but
hold massive assets.
Official Email
Addresses From Public Records (24 Companies)
Using public records, reporters found 24 companies that, between
them, used 20 LLCInvest email addresses for business purposes.
IP Addresses (19
Companies)
Subsidiaries And
Parent Companies (34 Companies)
Additional Research (9
Companies)
Affiliated Companies Hold Billions More
Villas,
Yachts, and Cash
In
northwestern Russia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, lies a handsome brick
mansion known as Villa Sellgren. Designed by a celebrated Finnish architect
before the Russian revolution, it was used to film a beloved Soviet film about
Sherlock Holmes.
In
2017, the house became famous for a second time. Citing sources within the local
administration and local residents, the independent TV channel Dozhd reported
that the villa had turned into a vacation destination for
Putin. Dozhd also found that the villa was owned by Rudnov, the son of Putin’s
old friend.
Rudnov
uses an LLCInvest email address, and so does the director of the company he
owns it through, called Sever. The property is managed by someone with no
outward connection to Sever, a man named Pavel Zaitsev who also owns several
other LLCInvest companies, leaked emails show.
And
it’s not just Villa Sellgren. Almost every other property that previous
journalistic investigations have associated with Putin, including the infamous
Black Sea palace, is owned by a company in the LLCInvest universe. They include
the Igora Ski Resort, where his daughter celebrated her wedding; multiple
vacation homes allegedly used by Putin; and a house in a ritzy area near Moscow
that once belonged to Putin’s daughter and her husband.
Companies in the network also own several luxurious yachts, two of which have been spotted traveling between different properties linked to Putin. A third is owned by his alleged mistress, Krivonogikh.
🔗The
Yachts
Shellest
This 46-meter, 1.5-billion-ruble ($23,145,000) yacht with five
decks and 10 bedrooms was built in 2015 by Sanlorenzo, an Italian luxury
shipbuilder. According to the vessel tracking site MarineTraffic, the Shellest
often travels between Gelendzhik, the resort town near Putin’s Black Sea
palace, and the port of Sochi. It is owned by a non-profit organization called
Revival of Marine Traditions and has been identified by the U.S. Treasury as
being linked to Putin.
Nega
Aldoga
Brizo 46
At
least one of these vessels appears to be jointly managed by multiple LLCInvest
companies.
A
14-meter-long aluminum yacht tender called the Brizo 46, was purchased by a
company called Unison for 1.2 million euros in 2015. Unison’s sole shareholder
and former director, Vladimir Avramenko, uses an LLCInvest.ru email address.
But
leaked emails show that managers associated with an entirely different
LLCInvest entity — a non-profit organization meant to promote “Russian aviation
traditions” — organized the yacht’s import into Russia.
These
managers, Larisa Isaeva and Alexander Samosyuk , have no connection
to Unison on paper, but they strategized together on how to lower the tax
payments for the yacht when it was imported.
According
to customs records, the yachts that belong to LLCInvest companies often spend
the winter in a yacht storage facility near the Finnish city of Kotka, not far
from St. Petersburg. This is the same facility where former president and prime
minister Dmitry Medvedev’s alleged yacht Fotinia was recently discovered by Finnish journalists.
And the
facility, too, has a connection to Putin’s friends: Dmitry Gorelov, a former
Bank Rossiya shareholder who allegedly helped finance the construction of Putin’s
palace on the Black Sea, provided an interest-free loan to the company that
owns it.
It’s
not just yachts and vacation homes — the latest available records show
LLCInvest entities holding over half a billion dollars’ worth of cash in their
accounts, reporters found.
🔗LLCInvest
Nonprofits and Vast Cash Holdings
There
are a handful of non-profit organizations using the LLCInvest domain, dedicated
to causes including “revival of marine traditions,” “development of
agricultural initiatives,” and “development of Russian aviation traditions.”
But none appear to spend more than a nominal amount of money on projects in
these fields, and reporters found no public record of their work. Their
financial reports show they largely spent money on their own administrative
costs — even as several of them have held huge amounts of cash:
- Development
of Agrarian Initiatives, a non-profit co-founded by multi-billionaire Gennady
Timchenko and Vladimir Kolbin, the son of a childhood friend of Putin, had
17 billion rubles ($222 million) in its deposit accounts at the end of
2020. This is equivalent to half the annual budget of Kazan, one of
Russia’s largest cities. Neither Timchenko nor Kolbin responded to
requests for comment.
- Another
non-profit founded by Timchenko and Kolbin, which goes by the unwieldy
name Development of an Effective Investment Market, held
over 20 billion rubles ($262 million) in long-term
deposits and almost 5 billion rubles ($65 million) in
short-term deposits at the end of 2020.
- Although not a
non-profit, another LLCInvest organization, Venture Investment
Company, co-owned by Bank Rossiya and a Bank Rossiya manager, also
fits the pattern of having a seemingly inexplicable amount of cash on its
books. It took a 7.8 billion ruble ($102 million) loan
from an unknown source and put the money into its deposit accounts. The
interest the company pays on its loan is less than the interest it earns
on its deposits. This is the only “venture capital investment” the company
undertakes.
‘Flight
Area — Entire World’
The
LLCInvest companies are mostly private firms that maintain a minimal public
presence. Russair is an exception. Although it uses the same technical
infrastructure as the others, it also has a working website that advertises a
range of aircraft-related services.
Describing
itself as a “dynamically developing carrier,” Russair claims to offer charter
flights that it can organize anytime, day or night. “Flight area: Entire
world!” the website proclaims.
Russair’s website touts round-the-clock charter flight services, but a reporter who tried to book a flight never received an answer.
But
when an OCCRP reporter called the company to book a charter flight, the woman
who answered did not seem eager to seal the deal. She refused to answer
questions about Russair’s services and asked for an inquiry to be sent by
email. It never received a response.
In
fact, records maintained by Russia’s civil aviation agency show that Russair
would have trouble carrying customers. It has no airplanes, and just two
helicopters, registered for commercial transport. Another four helicopters and
two Falcon 7X business jets are registered for its own use, but can’t carry
commercial clients.
A
number of clues suggest that Russair may be tied to Putin.
According
to flight tracking site FlightRadar, the company’s planes fly routes between
St. Petersburg, Crimea, and the Black Sea resort town of Gelendzhik. These areas
host some of the most significant Putin-connected assets held by LLCInvest
companies.
The
most expensive aircraft in Russair’s fleet, valued at 3 billion rubles (almost
$40 million), is a newer Falcon 7X that flies under the tail number RA-09009.
The same number was once used by a different Falcon 7X that once belonged to
the presidential administration.
Using
data from FlightRadar, OCCRP was able to corroborate the claims of several
industry sources that Russair carries high-profile passengers protected by the
Federal Security Service: On several occasions, some as recently as last July,
its Falcon 7X flew under the flight number RSD09009.
According
to the international system of airline codes, the letters RSD refer to the
Special Flight Detachment, a state airline that carries the president and other
top officials. According to industry sources, this designation indicates that
the flight carried specially protected passengers. Only Putin and seven other
top officials are entitled to such protection, though the president can choose
to grant it to others at his discretion.
Given
these findings, it’s noteworthy that a Russian blogger previously tied the plane to Alina Kabaeva,
an Olympic champion in rhythmic gymnastics who is reportedly Putin’s mistress.
The author provided no documentary evidence that she was on board, but pointed
to public sources showing that the aircraft was present in cities she is known
to have visited.
Despite
coordinating all these flights, Russair’s accounting records show that it does
not actually own any of the aircraft it operates. Instead, they are all leased
from an insurance company called Sogaz, which was owned by state gas giant
Gazprom until it was sold in 2004 as part of a restructuring.
To the
surprise of many market players, it was acquired by structures affiliated with
Bank Rossiya, which was little known at the time.
From
Ski Resorts to Southern Shores
Though
LLCInvest companies own palaces, residences, and yachts that appear to be
private assets, many of them seem to function more like investment vehicles,
maintaining large stakes in functioning businesses.
Some of
these enterprises have long been known to be linked to Bank Rossiya. Others
belong to a seemingly disparate group of owners who, until now, had no obvious
connection to the bank or to each other.
🔗Business
Interests Held by LLCInvest Companies
Some
well-known Russian businesses are owned by companies that use the LLCInvest
technical infrastructure.
Bank Rossiya Group
Since the mid-2000s, Bank Rossiya has become a business empire,
with investments in media, telecommunications, real estate, and tourism along
with more traditional financial interests.
Some of these investments — including the Igora Ski Resort, the Leningrad
Center performing arts venue, and a boutique hotel chain called Tochka Na Karte
— are advertised by Bank Rossiya as being part of the “Bank Rossiya Group.”
Other assets sometimes mentioned by bank officials as being part of Bank
Rossiya Group include a major stake in the insurance company Sogaz, which in
turn, owns a big stake in major Russian media companies including National
Media Group and Channel One.
In fact, none of these assets belong to Bank Rossiya directly. Instead they are
owned personally by the bank’s shareholders and senior managers, who exercise
their ownership through long chains of LLCInvest companies and nonprofits.
“Southern Project” Wineries And Hotel
Inkerman Winery
Agronova
Blue
Waves Resort
One of
the most striking investments is held by an LLCInvest company called Altituda.
In 2019
Altituda was given a 51-percent share of a company called Rusgazdobycha with
assets worth 25 billion rubles ($380 million).
The
valuable stake appears to have been transferred by Putin’s old friend Arkady
Rotenberg, who had previously held Rusgazdobycha through opaque corporate
structures based in Russia and Cyprus. The other 49-percent stake was moved
into two private equity funds whose owners are unknown. It’s unclear why
Rotenberg might have done this, especially considering that he uses his own
management structures for his other assets.
Аnother
close ally of Putin, Gennady Timchenko, also moved valuable investments into
two obscure companies with a shared director who appears to have ties to the
LLCInvest universe.
In
2017, Timchenko transferred his 17-percent share in petrochemical giant Sibur
to a company associated with LLCInvest called Delta. The following year, he
transferred 19 percent of Russian natural gas producer Novatek to another
associated company, Ena-Invest.
While
the precise value of these stakes is difficult to calculate, Sibur and Novatek
are two of the biggest companies in Russia.
As a
result, Delta and Ena-Invest have assets worth a staggering 881 billion rubles
(almost $12 billion) according to their latest available financial reports —
more than twice as much as all other assets held by the LLCInvest companies
combined. However, Delta and Ena-Invest are not as clearly associated with the
group, so reporters did not include this figure in the total asset count.
Neither
Rotenberg nor Timchenko responded to requests for comment.
🔗LLCInvest
Connections
Reporters did not count Delta or Ena-Invest as LLCInvest
companies because reporters did not find their directors using LLCInvest.ru
addresses. However, they do have visible connections to LLCInvest companies.
Both
are headed by Leonty Ivanov, who previously managed the construction of a
convention center in St. Petersburg next to Putin’s official residence in the
city. According to media reports, the convention center was financed by Bank
Rossiya.
Journalists
were unable to find an LLCIinvest.ru email address used by Ivanov, but leaked
email records show him using an email address associated with an LLCInvest
company called Malakhit.
The
records show that he communicates with people who do use the LLCInvest.ru
domain, and that he is involved in LLCInvest business projects. For example, he
received regular emails about the Igora Hotel and a boutique hotel chain owned
by an LLCInvest company. Both assets are part of Bank Rossiya Group and are
held by LLCInvest structures.
Old
Patterns and New Red Flags
In some
ways, LLCInvest looks like a more secretive and less formal version of a vision
described 10 years ago by Sergey Kolesnikov, a businessman who fled Russia
after he blew the whistle — on himself.
In an
explosive open letter, he outlined a corrupt scheme he had devised that allowed
a group of Russia’s top oligarchs to pool billions of rubles into a kind of
“investment fund” for the benefit of Putin, who was then serving as prime
minister.
The
money, Kolesnikov said, had been siphoned out of a charitable project to buy
medical equipment for Russian hospitals. It was then channeled into a company
called Rosinvest that was supposed to invest it in Russian businesses under
Putin’s supervision.
But
Putin soon instructed the group to cancel the business projects and direct the
money to the construction of a luxurious palace on the Black Sea, evidently for
his use. A frustrated Kolesnikov fled Russia and told all.
Rosinvest
was dissolved after Kolesnikov’s revelations, and since then little more has
been heard about how Putin and his friends structure their assets.
The
anti-corruption expert who spoke with reporters said that the LLCInvest set-up
had some key similarities to Rosinvest, but was less centralized — so not as
vulnerable to another whistleblower.
“It
reduces the chance of a ‘new Kolesnikov’ revealing it, since there is no front
office, no uniting point for all these businesses,” he said.
This is
borne out by the LLCInvest company director interviewed by OCCRP. He said he
was not aware — or even interested — in what LLCInvest meant, or whether there
were other companies linked to his.
“If my
company was part of a big holding, I wouldn’t know,” he said.
"It reduces the chance of a ‘new Kolesnikov’ revealing it,
since there is no front office, no uniting point for all these
businesses."
– Expert on corruption in Russia
Another
expert, a Russian financial consultant, said that even setting aside the
question of who ultimately owns the assets held by the LLCInvest companies, it
might be unlawful to obscure Bank Rossiya’s connection to many of them.
Registering
assets under low-profile employees or other proxies are techniques Russian
banks have used to get around restrictions on giving loans to affiliated
parties, he explained.
“Dozens
of banks who have had problems with the Central Bank have been punished for
such practices, with their licenses revoked by the Central Bank,” he said.
In the
case of Bank Rossiya, hiding the true owners of its assets may be serving the
interests of some of the country’s most powerful people.
Reporters
spoke with a former U.S. Treasury official who worked for OFAC, the office that
enforces financial sanctions. After reviewing their findings, he described the
LLCInvest setup as “extremely suspicious.”
“It’s
hard to come up with an innocent explanation for the things you’ve described,”
he said. “Given that Bank Rossiya is publicly said to be where Putin and his
cronies hold their assets, this raises a lot of legal questions.
He
noted that many oligarchs connected to LLCInvest companies, as well as Bank
Rossiya itself, had been sanctioned by the U.S. and EU.
“I
wouldn’t speculate about who the end beneficiary owner is, but there are clear
indicators of a sanctions evasion scheme,” he said.
The
Russian corruption expert added that the opacity of some of the LLCInvest
holdings alone should be cause for greater scrutiny. To fight money laundering,
banks are supposed to know the true beneficiary of the assets they deal with.
“[Such]
opaque ways of holding assets, connected to politically influential people,
indicate a heightened risk of corruption and money laundering,” he said.
“Establishing the real beneficiary owner [of an asset] is a key part of
anti-money-laundering practices.”
https://www.occrp.org/en/asset-tracker/mysterious-group-of-companies-tied-to-bank-rossiya-unites-billions-of-dollars-in-assets-connected-to-vladimir-putin
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