Source A new participant in the Panama dossier may be oligarch Alexey Bogachev. It is possible that Ildar Samiyev and Sergei Govyadin’s money was laundered through him. As part of the bankruptcy of former State Duma deputy Ildar Samiyev, a court invalidated the sale of his share in Cyprus-based Selby Holdings Ltd. It was acquired in 2018 by Labini Investments Ltd. Alexey Bogachev.
The Moscow Post has found out that these entrepreneurs may be involved in the biggest scams. See The Moscow Post for details.
Heroes without laurels, but with connections
To recap, Samiyev was declared bankrupt in the summer of 2021. He was a partner of Sergei Govyadin and Albert Khudoyan. The latter was sentenced to six years in November 2021 on claims from Samiyev and Govyadin for manipulation with the land on which Aviaciti is building Prime Park Residential Complex. As The Moscow Post suspects, Khudoyan may simply have been set up.
As for Mr Bogachyov, he is a billionaire shareholder in the Magnit grocery chain, a former cheese-making partner of Vadim Moshkovich in the Tambov region, and the owner of Sistema Bank. By the way, even though Moshkovich and Bogachev worked together, it was the latter who forced the former to increase sixfold the amount of money Moshkovich spent last year to buy the bankrupt Solnechnye Produkty plant.
“The Panama dossier and what it has to do with Bogachev
Bogachev’s share, as a founder of Sistema Bank, is pledged to TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED, a British Virgin Islands offshore.
This offshore appears in the Panama Papers, a notorious investigation based on documents from Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm that registers and escorts offshore companies. The material mentions current and former world leaders, high-ranking officials and celebrities and reveals their ownership of various types of property.
Among those featured are billionaire brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, Oleg Deripaska, former Chelyabinsk Region Governor Boris Dubrovsky, Senator Andrei Turchak, the sons of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov, former Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukaev, Deputy Transport Minister Maxim Liksutov, the company of BAM construction contractor Alexei Krapivin – son of a close associate of former Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin and others.
Not a single case has been opened in Russia over the Panama dossier.
Self-made mortgages, Eurofinance bankruptcy and “star disease”
But back to TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED. This company is involved in a court case concerning the purchase of real estate in Moscow on Prechistenskaya embankment in the luxury housing estate Barkli Plaza, where Telman Ismailov, owner of Cherkizovsky market who was arrested for murder and arms trafficking but is now in hiding in Montenegro, gave a flat to Nikolai Baskov.
“TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED intended to buy three of these on the 5th, 6th and 7th floors of the building on mortgage. But the Moscow office of Federal Service of State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography refused to register it. TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED then filed a lawsuit.
According to the text of the court ruling, the borrower’s rights were represented by another offshore company, Faricia Limited. Also linked to Bogachev. Leonid Vasiliki acted for Farisia Limited and Katina Papanikolaou acted for TANGIR. Both appear to be purely nominal figures.
The lender is named TROFENCE HOLDING LIMITED. According to court records of this offshore company, it is mentioned alongside Bogachev, Samiyev and Govyadin in the bankruptcy case of Eurofinance LLC, a real estate company. They were brought up on the company’s liabilities totalling 1.7 billion roubles. In addition, as part of the bankruptcy, the transfer agreement on two land plots from Eurofinance to Bogachyov was annulled.
According to cadastral maps, both plots are located in the neighbouring village of Zhukovka, Moscow Region, and are intended for individual housing construction. Their total size is more than 14,000 square metres and their price is approximately 150 million roubles.
The village is considered a prestigious area, where stars of national show business live. Mr. Bogachev seems to have a passion for buying real estate in the neighbourhood of celebrities.
It turns out that all three offshore companies – TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED, TROFENCE HOLDINGS LIMITED and Farisia Limited may be linked to Mr. Bogachev.
So the scheme to buy and sell flats to the Bogachev structure with a loan from a company controlled by him looks, to put it mildly, unreliable. If not fraudulent. The whole fraternity has failed to buy the flats – the court ruled that TANGIR HOLDINGS LIMITED will not be able to provide the payments. Apparently, it had no intention of doing so.
And it is likely that Bogachev can do business with Samiyev and Govyadin for a long time. If Bogachev is not averse to offshore scams like the one we described above: it is possible that if investigators start looking into the story of Samiev selling Selby Holdings Ltd to Bogachev, they may find something similar there. If they haven’t already – the deal was cancelled after all.
What about Sistema?
One might also speculate that Sistema Bank is being used as a conduit, to clear the assets of expensive acquisitions? A look at the financial position of the monetary institution over the past month reveals that the bank has 72% less cash and most of its balance sheet is in the red.
By 92%, the assets of the bank consist of loans, i.e. the so-called loan portfolio. In other words, the bank is living off loans, which can essentially serve as a “collateral” asset used by Bogachev to “rehabilitate” the property of his clients?
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