Details: U.S. prosecutors on Thursday charged Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska with circumventing sanctions that were imposed on him in 2018. Other defendants in the case are Olga Shriki, a naturalized US citizen who, according to the prosecution, helped Deripaska circumvent sanctions and conducted his business in the United States, billionaire’s assistant Natalia Bardakova, and Ekaterina Voronina (Lobanova), who is called the mother of the businessman‘s children.
In addition, the document states that Oleg Deripaska used the name Oleg Mukhamedshin. A person with that name worked in Deripaska’s En + Group companies as deputy general director and in Rusal as director of strategy and investor relations. On the page Oleg Mukhamedshin on LinkedIn says that he still holds the post of deputy general director at Rusal. Mukhamedshin actively talked to the media and participated in industry conferences. The “Agency” tried to get a comment from Oleg Mukhamedshin, but he hung up after the word “journalist”.
According to the indictment, Deripaska has been in an intimate relationship with Lobanova since 2015. In 2020, Lobanova flew to the United States on a private jet to give birth in the country to a child, the document says. Shriki and Bardakova helped her in this, Deripaska paid all the expenses, which is a violation of American sanctions. More than 300 thousand dollars were spent on childbirth. In the birth certificate, Lobanova did not indicate the father’s name, but the child received the patronymic Olegovich, and his mother chose “a variation of Deripaska’s surname with a couple of changed letters” as his surname, the document says.
In 2022, Lobanova attempted to re-enter the US to have another child, but she was not allowed into the country after interrogation. The document says that Lobanova gave false testimony to officers of the US Department of Homeland Security in order to hide the connection with Deripaska, as well as the role of Shrika and Bardakova in hundreds of thousands of dollars of financial transactions that violated the sanctions regime.
During interrogations, Lobanova claimed that her son’s father’s name was “Alek Deribasko” and that she did not know where he lived and worked, and, answering a question about Oleg Deripaska, called him a friend.
Olga Shriki, according to the document, From 2013 to 2018, she worked for Deripaska’s American investment company Basic Element. After the introduction of sanctions against the billionaire and the closure of the company, she continued to work for a businessman. She coordinated with Natalya Bardakova through Global Consulting, thus continuing to work for Deripaska and receiving money from him. The US Department of Justice cites excerpts from personal conversations with Shrika in which she claimed that some of her clients were in Moscow and she could not work with them due to sanctions. At the same time, according to the prosecution, she continued to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from Deripaska.
Shriki and Bardakova, including in the interests of Deripaska and on his behalf, sent gifts to American and Canadian politicians and journalists, as well as Lobanova, who came to the United States for childbirth, bought personal items for the businessman, including an iPhone and clothes, and also sold property, including a $3 million music studio in Los Angeles.
As evidence, the prosecution, among other things, cites fragments of correspondence between the four defendants and information about bank transfers.
Forbes.ru, 09/29/2022, “The United States accused Deripaska of violating sanctions and threatened him with up to 20 years”: According to the US Department of Justice, Deripaska and two women he hired, Natalya Bardakova and US citizen Olga Shriki, conspired to evade sanctions against the billionaire imposed in 2018. Shriki is also charged with obstruction of justice: according to the US, she deleted electronic records confirming her participation in the sanctions evasion after receiving a subpoena from the jury demanding to provide these records. For this, she also faces up to 20 years in prison. Chriqui was arrested on the morning of 29 September. The Justice Ministry’s report also mentions Russian citizen Ekaterina Voronina (aka Ekaterina Lobanova), whom the ministry calls Deripaska’s girlfriend and the mother of his child. Bardakova and Voronina are accused of lying to representatives of the US authorities, for which they face up to five years in prison.
According to the US Department of Justice, Shriki, under the leadership of Bardakova, helped Deripaska keep three elite properties in the US and use US financial institutions to provide services for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in favor of the billionaire. Around 2019, Shriki arranged for Deripaska to sell a music studio in California, through several billionaire-owned companies, for more than $3 million and tried to withdraw the money to a Russian account of a company, again linked to Deripaska, the report said. In addition, Shriki organized flowers and gifts for Deripaska to the businessman’s acquaintances in the United States and Canada, including Voronina, when she was in the United States, according to the country’s Ministry of Justice. — Inset K.ru
The mother of Deripaska’s children is the namesake of the model and blogger Ekaterina Lobanova (387,000 followers on Instagram). But her two children were born at a different time – in 2017 and 2021, follows from publications on her instagram.
Earlier, The Insider wrote that in March 2018, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Japan with the oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who traveled accompanied by model Ekaterina Lobanova. According to the publication, she could earn extra money as an escort.
At the time of publication of the note, the Agency was unable to obtain a comment from the representative of Oleg Deripaska.
Context. Washington imposed sanctions against Deripaska in 2018 as part of a package of restrictions due to interference in the 2016 elections. Prior to that, companies that were then controlled by the businessman, including En + Group and Rusal, were subject to restrictions. Later, Deripaska lost control in them, after which the companies were excluded from the sanctions lists.
Deripaska has been married to Polina Yumasheva, granddaughter of Boris Yeltsin. In 2019, she announced that divorced a businessman. Her representative then told Vedomosti that the divorce took place “more than a year ago,” but did not specify exactly when.
In 2017 Yumasheva received a 6.9% stake in En+. The package was valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Lawyers in a conversation with Vedomosti noted that she could get a stake in the company before the upcoming divorce proceedings. Yumasheva sold a 2.6% stake in En+ Group to a UAE fund last year. The value of this package at the time of the sale was estimated at approximately $200 million.
