Maxim spread the net

It became known that the operator of Wi-Fi services in public transport and the provider of digital services for the public sector, MaximaTelecom, restructured its ownership: 50.97% of the shares were transferred from the Cypriot Jeromel Trade Limited to the Russian Investmir Sergey Aslanyan.

The latter is the ex-president of the Sitronics IT concern. He was called the main beneficiary of MaximaTelecom back in 2020. But before that, the former colleagues of Moscow Vice Mayor Sergei Liksutov had a direct relationship to the asset.

What is behind the change of ownership and what does the “transport” deputy of Sergei Sobyanin have to do with it, the correspondent of The Moscow Post figured out.

Under the wing of Sergei Semyonovich

The market assumes that the withdrawal of the asset from the offshore zone is caused, first of all, by the unwillingness to fall under Western sanctions with the risk of freezing shares.

Aslanyan is considered by many to be a figurehead, but real control over the asset is attributed to people close to the current “transport” vice-mayor of Moscow, head of the Moscow Department of Transport and Road Infrastructure Development Maxim Liksutov.

The chief of the latter, Sergei Sobyanin, has long been under the restrictions of the United States, Great Britain and most EU countries. It is easy to guess that one of the richest people in the Moscow mayor’s office, Liksutov, is trying to be presented as a “purse” of the capital’s mayor.

Rumor has it that, thanks to the wise and influential boss, Maxim Liksutov never had problems with the law.

The MaximaTelecom company was established in 2004 and until 2013 was part of the NVision Group, from which Sergey Aslanyan and his partners bought it.

In 2013, the offshore Jeromel Trade Limited appears and acquires 100% of the shares of MaximaTelecom. And suddenly, as they say, “flooded”.

Wi-Fi Budget

The company began to receive large contracts with the structures of the capital’s mayor’s office almost on a regular basis. These are billions of rubles. As a result, in just a few years, the company almost monopolizes the telecommunications market in the capital’s transport.

In the same year, the State Unitary Enterprise “Moscow Metro” held a tender to launch a free Wi-Fi network in the metropolitan subway, the only participant in which was the same “MaximaTelecom”. She came out the winner, and after more than once received large, multi-billion dollar government contracts.

In 2020, the structure received a new contract with the mayor’s office to maintain the city’s Wi-Fi network. This time, the cost of the agreement has more than doubled in price compared to the previous two-year period: up to 434 million rubles.

A year before, MaximaTelecom won a competition for the provision of services of a single operator of urban Wi-Fi – it pledged to introduce systems for deep analysis of DPI traffic for 150 million rubles.

The total amount of government contracts received by MaximaTelecom JSC from various government agencies for the summer of 2022 is almost 19 billion rubles.

Most of them, 9.4 billion, are received from the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow, which is headed by an old friend and colleague of Liksutov, Eduard Lysenko.

Like the vice-mayor, Lysenko has been repeatedly mentioned in the context of various corruption scandals – the cases of Technoserv, I-Teco and others. The Moscow Post wrote about this.

Also, the Department of Information Technologies includes 4 state contracts “MaximaTelecom” for 1.6 billion rubles. But not directly, but through Infogorod, which is subordinate to the Department of the GKU.

A photo: Rusprofile.en

But this is only the fourth place from the top of the customers of Maximatelecom JSC. In the second and third places are the structures that Liksutov oversees personally. These are State Unitary Enterprise Metropolitan (3.1 billion) and the Center for Organization of Traffic (GKU TsODD, 1.6 billion).

Wouldn’t it be “fat” for one company – for all that huge Moscow?

Express for your

Personally, Liksutov, of course, has nothing to do with it. But people close to him, whom it is difficult to suspect of disloyalty to the vice-mayor – very much so.

In the middle of the tenth years, Alexey Krivoruchko disposed of significant shares of the structure through several levels of ownership. RBC wrote about this.

He, Krivoruchko, was previously the general director of the capital’s Aeroexpress, one of Liksutov’s most profitable assets. In addition, until 2018, Krivoruchko was a co-founder of the structure, that is, a partner of the current vice mayor.

After Krivoruchko left for the civil service, the Estonian Urmo Vallner began to own the Maxima shares through offshore “laying”. At that time, he was an adviser to the chairman of the board of directors of Aeroexpress. Wallner was credited with a long-standing acquaintance with the head of the capital’s Department of Transport – since the days of the Estonian SSR.

A photo: Rusprofile.en

In October 2013, there were rumors that Liksutov allegedly transferred his shares in this business to his wife Tatyana. Suddenly it turned out that she became the richest woman in Estonia (both were born there, had citizenship). Gazeta.ru wrote about it.

At the same time, it turned out that Liksutova also owns a 50% stake in Transgroup Invest. This holding is registered in Estonia and is engaged in a transport and forwarding business, at that time its assets were estimated at 200 million euros.

But just three months later, it turned out that Tatyana Liksutova was no longer the wife of the vice-mayor. And he allegedly sold the entire business back in 2012. Of course, detractors suggested that the divorce could be fictitious – a classic of the genre for Russian officials.

Let’s not forget Liksutov’s other former Aeroexpress partners – influential oligarchs, UMMC beneficiaries Iskander Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev. They should also control Transmashholding, another “beloved wife” of the Moscow mayor’s office, a supplier of subway cars.

In any case, according to the results of 2021, JSC Aeroexpress made a profit of 799 million rubles, the amount of state contracts as a supplier exceeded one billion, and as a customer – over 14 billion rubles.

A photo: Rusprofile.en

Going back a little, from 2011 to 2014 Krivoruchko was on the board of directors of the Latvian railway company L-Ekspresis, and in 2014 the same Wallner was on its board of directors. Until 2011, Liksutov owned shares in this company.

It turns out that Maxim’s connection with “Maxima” through former partners and colleagues is not difficult to trace. Even if you do not know anything from the above, except for the name of the vice-mayor and the name of the structure, they are suspiciously similar.

Today, this joint-stock company is almost a monopolist of all Wi-Fi networks in the huge, sprawling, like spider networks, Moscow “subway”.

Maxim Liksutov is rightfully considered one of the most influential and wealthy Moscow officials. Photo: Anton Belitsky / Global Look Press

So the business networks behind which Deputy Mayor Maxim Liksutov looms as a shadow cannot fail to impress. There is no official data that the official is engaged in commerce, but it’s impossible not to notice too many incredible coincidences …