Large Gazprom contractors, as a rule, were associated with its leadership or with friends of Vladimir Putin (*international criminal). As “Important Stories” found out, one of the three largest Russian rentiers the Tashir group is no exception: a close associate of the head of Gazprom had a stake in its business Alexey Miller. And the financial scheme led to the custodian of his personal property, who in November of this year was subject to criminal prosecution for his connection with Miller. UK sanctions. Meanwhile, his company provided tens of millions of euros to the structure of the founder of Tashir Samvel Karapetyan. This money was needed by a company that owns one of the most expensive villas in the world. […]
“We have a common fence with Gazprom, hence the high prices,” one of the leaders of the Tashir group of companies was proud, talking about residential complex “Gazoil City” (changed name on “Rozmarin”), built directly opposite the central Gazprom office in Moscow. The headquarters of the gas concern on Nametkina Street was a point of attraction or a place of power for Tashir. In addition to Rozmarin, the group managed to push the Onyx Deluxe residential complex onto the fence shared with Gazprom and business center “Gazoil Plaza”whose tenants become Gazprom structures.
The owner and director of Tashir, billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, treated these projects with reverence: he often personally came to construction sites and held daily meetings on them.
His proximity to Gazprom has long been considered the key to a successful business. The Tashir group supplied the gas giant with equipment, repaired buildings and built gas pipelines. In 2015, for example, it had almost 39 billion rubles in such contracts – more than half of all its government contracts. And the next year “Tashir” ended up in top 10 Gazprom contractors.
Apartments with a view of Gazprom were built by a Moscow company MSM-invest company from the group “Tashir”. Her office on the 25th floor of Gazoil Plaza also faces Gazprom. But the closeness to the management of the concern was not limited to this. Since at least 2012, 49% of MSM-invest was owned by the Cypriot company Leocorp (reports for an earlier period could not be found, and MSM-invest did not publicly disclose the owners). In 2013, this share in the report of the Cypriot company was estimated at 196.4 million euros.
The owner of Leocorp (and, accordingly, 49% of MSM-Invest) was entrepreneur Vartan Vartanov, an old acquaintance of Gazprom Chairman of the Board Alexei Miller. They were brought together by their love of horses. Former banker Vartanov is a famous horse breeder; he owns the 711 Stud Farm in the Krasnodar Territory.
Vartanov’s thoroughbred horses compete together with Alexey Miller’s stallions. Miller and Vartanov also served on the board of directors of Russian Hippodromes and attended prestigious races for the prize of the President of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), where their horses took first place. And the stands were crowded with high-ranking officials, entrepreneurs and socialites.
The villa is considered one of the most expensive real estate in the world. And it has a rich history. Former owner of the villa, billionaire Shalva Chigirinsky sold it for $250 million to pay off debts. Before Chigirinsky, it belonged to the African dictator Mobutu, and after that to the structures of Gazprom Neft. Then the founder of Tashir, Karapetyan, bought it and mortgaged it to Gazprombank.
Colleagues from French edition of Le Mondewho studied “Secrets of Cyprus” with us, found that the French Service for Judicial Financial Investigations (SEJF) is investigating complex transactions and debt obligations associated with this villa on suspicion of money laundering.
Main house – 1600 sq. m with sea view, guest room – 800 sq. m, three swimming pools, a garden of several hectares and a helipad. The founder of Tashir Karapetyan, of course, could afford such luxury. He enters Forbes list with a net worth of $2.7 billion. But in February 2023 Chigirinsky confirmed to the publication “Project”that she spent time in the villa (after he sold it) more than once Alina Kabaeva. And this does not exclude that structures associated with Gazprom – and subsequently Karapetyan – could hold the villa in the interests of Vladimir Putin (*international criminal) and his relatives.
Indirect confirmation that this could be the case is the same 50 million euros that the custodian of Miller’s personal property provided to Karapetyan’s company, which owns the villa, in 2020. By that time, Gazprom structures had nothing to do with the villa.
“Usually these guys don’t give anything, but only take, unless, of course, we are talking about Putin (*international criminal)’s friends and relatives. But Karapetyan is neither one nor the other,” says an acquaintance of Gazprom’s management about this.
Karapetyan did not answer questions from Important Stories. Gazprom did not comment on the situation.
Complicated transactions around the villa
One of the most expensive private residences in the world – Villa Maria Irina on the French Riviera is owned by the French company Maritime Villa Holding, which belongs to the Cyprus Leyson Holdings.
Tashir founder Samvel Karapetyan bought the Cypriot Leyson in 2016 for not very significant money, since its subsidiary Maritime had large debts – about 112 million euros to the structures of Gazprom Neft (British Sibir Energy and Luxembourg Sibvil Holding).
In the same 2016, instead of Gazprom Neft structures, the company that owned the villa became the creditor Jones Resources from the British Virgin Islands, which was wholly owned by Gazprom
To repay her debt, Leyson Karapetyan took out a loan from Gazprombank for 115 million euros secured by the villa. And in 2020, she received 50 million euros in debt from the company of Vadim Tregub, the holder of the personal property of the head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller.
How Tashir became friends with Gazprom
“Don’t be born a minister, but be born a Guslist,” Russian government officials joked in the late nineties. At that time, the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom, Nikolai Guslisty, had resources and influence that some members of the government could envy: he oversaw the logistics of Gazprom.
Guslisty noticed the work of Tashir in the mid-nineties when he participated in the construction of a Gazprom cottage village in the Kaluga region. In Kaluga, in fact, the Tashir group was born. And when Guslisty became the third most important person in Gazprom, he helped Karapetyan make friends with the concern. After Alexey Miller’s team came to Gazprom, Karapetyan found a common language with them.
Companies associated with the Tashir group had contracts with Gazprom for billions of rubles: Gazstroy, Neftegazstroy, Spetsgazstroy and City Stroy Group, as reported by RBC. The peak of their total revenue occurred in 2015 – then it exceeded 25 billion rubles (according to SPARK).
In 2019, it became known that the Tashir group company received a subcontract for the interior decoration of the St. Petersburg headquarters of Gazprom. “Cascade-energo”about it Fontanka reported. And although she photographed workers in Cascade-Energo overalls at a construction site in the Lakhta Center, no one officially confirmed this data. Cascade-energo’s revenue in 2019 exceeded 10 billion rubles (in previous years it did not exceed 5–8 billion rubles).
And how did you break up?
The problems began after the head of Gazprom in 2020 was dissatisfied with the pace of work at the Lakhta Center and even took away the contract from Gazprom’s centralized contractor, Gazstroyprom. And that one in October 2023 sued against the subcontractor Cascade-Energo, demanding the return of 10.9 billion rubles.
Legal claims for various reasons were not one-sided: at the end of 2022, Neftegazstroy, associated with Tashir filed a lawsuit for a billion rubles to Achimgaz, a joint venture of Gazprom and the German Wintershall, demanding to collect from it the debt for indexing the cost of work performed under the 2018 contract.
What does all this mean for Tashir’s relationship with Gazprom?
The total revenue of companies associated with the Tashir group that received Gazprom contracts decreased more than three times after 2019 (Neftegazstroy, Gazstroy, Spetsgazstroy and City Stroy in 2022 showed a total revenue of 5.5 billion rubles, while in 2019 it exceeded 19 billion). The revenue of the subcontractor, Cascade-Energo, decreased almost by half (from more than 6 billion in 2019 to 3.9 billion in 2022).
The situation is reminiscent of a story of strong friendship and a complete break between Gazprom and its large contractor, the Stroygazconsulting group, which formerly belonged to billionaire Ziyad Manasir. He also curtsied to the Gazprom authorities for billions of rubles: relatives of Gazprom board members were co-owners of one of the contracting organizations of Stroygazconsulting, which built gas pipelines. Manasir also managed to build a swimming pool for Putin (*international criminal) in his residence Novo-Ogarevo and the palace for Miller is the same “Millerhof” in the Moscow region. But all this did not save him. Gazprom began to significantly cut its contracts. And when Manasir expressed dissatisfaction, the gas concern completely refused his services.
He never became the go-to guy for the management of Gazprom, and all his offerings to the big bosses, as it turned out, had no strategic significance, because he was never an old friend of Vladimir Putin (*international criminal), Manasir’s acquaintances reasoned. It seems that the founder of Tashir, Samvel Karapetyan, despite all the curtseys, did not become Gazprom’s boyfriend either.
The Tashir group, MSM-Invest and Gazprom did not answer the questions from Important Stories. Tregub and Vartanov did not comment on the situation.
With the participation of Dmitry Velikovsky and Abdelhak El-Idrissi (Le Monde)