How the “oil purse” of the Belarusian President Lukashenko disappeared from the documents of his companies and conducts business bypassing sanctions

Anatoly Ternavsky – Belarusian businessman of Ukrainian origin with a Russian passport, owner of several largest companies in Belarus, holder of the Order of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is probably the largest “oil purse” Alexandra Lukashenko. And at the same time one of the most non-public. The businessman prefers to remain incognito in his own companies. This has helped him evade sanctions for years and transfer profits from trading Belarusian oil products abroad.

This investigation is part of the Cyprus Confidential project organized by ICIJ and Paper Trail Media. More than 270 journalists from different countries worked to uncover the secrets of tax havens. They spent eight months studying 3.6 million confidential documents (1.31 terabytes of data) that were leaked from offshore providers running shell companies in Cyprus. The material was prepared with the support of OCCRP and CyberPartisan.

In 2012, businessman Anatoly Ternavsky and his company Univest-M found themselves in EU blacklist because of connections with Lukashenko. Then the EU imposed sanctions after the presidential elections in Belarus in 2010. The OSCE did not recognize them legitimateand the Council of Europe called falsified.

“Ternavsky’s activities are related to oil and oil products, which indicates his close relationship with the regime, given the state monopoly in the oil refining sector and the fact that only a few people are allowed to work in the oil sector,” the EU decision said.

The businessman simultaneously challenged the restrictions through the courtAnd tried to get around them. Two and a half years later, in 2014, he crossed out from the sanctions list.

Since then, Ternavsky has continued to earn money both in Belarus and in Europe. The businessman, with the help of Swiss citizen Stefan Brunner, moved money between his companies. All this while remaining invisible to Western regulators.

British and American media mentioned her as a nominal shareholder of companies of Russian oligarchs Konstantin Malofeeva And Roman Abramovich. She got rid of Medesoil Trading shares on the day the company was founded.

This can be explained by the fact that Finservus is owned by a large Cypriot corporate services provider, MeritServus, which uses it to hold shares in hundreds of companies on behalf of its clients. That is, most likely, Finservus was the nominal owner of Medesoil Trading.

This can be explained by the fact that Finservus is owned by a large Cypriot corporate services provider, MeritServus, which uses it to hold shares in hundreds of companies on behalf of its clients. That is, most likely, Finservus was the nominal owner of Medesoil Trading.

Swiss Stefan Brunner became the new owner of Medesoil Trading. He was the sole owner of the company’s shares until 2015. In April of that year, most of the shares passed to Ternavsky’s daughter Natalya, and in February 2016 she became the sole owner.

In those years, the line “Remuneration of directors – as executive” appeared in the financial statements of Medesoil Trading. In 2013 and 2014, these remunerations amounted to $590 thousand and $623 thousand, respectively.
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This line probably refers to the fee of Stefan Brunner, who at that time was the nominal owner of the company.
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“The accountable professionals involved here, lawyers, accountants and entity formation agents, must conduct an even more thorough due diligence assessment of these companies to ensure that there is no circumvention of sanctions at the time. There appears to be a conflict of interest here when a person is paid to act as a nominee director,” suggested Ben Caudock, head of investigations at Transparency International UK, in a conversation with BRC.
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The conflict of interest may be that Brunner, as an agent, should have conducted an audit and discovered that Ternavsky was under sanctions, and companies in which he or his family were beneficiaries could be used to circumvent the restrictions. Instead, the Swiss probably helps hide the real owners of companies and makes money from it.
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According to Ben Caudoc, if a trust agreement was entered into with Brunner to control Medesoil Trading, then someone else owns or controls the company. BRC does not have information whether such an agreement exists. However, the fact that Brunner is listed as a director in other companies associated with the Ternavsky family suggests that in the case of Medesoil Trading he appears nominally in the company’s documents.

In total, from its founding in 2012 to 2021, Medesoil Trading’s revenue exceeded two billion dollars. Net profit of the company for these years amounted to about $10 million.

The cost of the contract, based on prices for petroleum products at the time of signing the contract, can be estimated at approximately €100 million. BRC learned about this from documents thanks to a leak from the archives of offshore providers managing Cypriot companies. This agreement is also notable for the fact that we were unable to find BNK website a suitable tender. It is likely that the national oil company could provide Medesoil Trading with access to the product under special conditions.

At the same time, the company participated in competitions of the national oil trader: BRC discovered two agreements to participate in tenders between Medesoil Trading and BNK from 2014 and 2015.

With the support of CyberPartisans, we learned that Medesoil Trading purchased petroleum products from BNK in 2019: it purchased more than three thousand tons of fuel oil from the Mozyr Oil Refinery for almost a million euros.

In the same year, the company received a record net profit at least until 2021 – $3.9 million (a year earlier – $3.4 million).

Medesoil Trading also sold petroleum products, it traded with the world’s leading traders. Among them were: Global Energy And Trading SA, Petraco Oil Company LLP, Vitol SA and Totsa Total Oil Trading SA.

The company’s revenue from $53 million in 2013 in 2020 increased approximately fivefold – to $269.6 million, and in 2021 (the last year for which BRC was able to obtain the company’s financial report) exceeded $333 million.

Medesoil Trading still exists, and Natalya Ternavskaya still remains its beneficiary and, at least in 2020 and 2021, received dividends amounting to $540 thousand.

We called the office of Anatoly Ternavsky, but he refused to answer our questions about Medesoil Trading’s cooperation with BNK. We were given the number of his assistant Sergei Valerievich. According to CyberPartisan, this number belongs to Ternavsky’s company Univest-M. He’s probably using it now Sergey Kapitanov, previously held the position of Deputy Director of Univest-M. The interlocutor was aware of the activities of Medesoil Trading, but did not want to answer questions over the phone.

Who are you, Mr. Ternavsky?
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Anatoly Ternavsky was born in Kerch, a city in the eastern part of Crimea. [*] He appeared in Belarusian business in 1998, when he became Vice President of Slavneft – initially a joint Russian-Belarusian company, which bought it out almost half of the Mozyr oil refinery. In January 2000, the company was headed by a Russian billionaire, at that time vice speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) Mikhail Gutseriev.
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Ternavsky is a member of the board of trustees of the Russian Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra along with people from Vladimir Putin (*international criminal)’s inner circle – the head of Rostec Sergei Chemezov, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and First Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko. In 2021, Anatoly Ternavsky received the Order of St. Seraphim of Sarov, III degree, from the monastery.
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“People there do charity work… and maintain business connections,” Ternavsky told Forbes about the Lavra in early 2016.
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Ternavsky is married and has two daughters, Anna and Natalya. The father of Natalya’s children is Tamerlan Marzoev (we don’t know if they are officially married). He was listed in the Panama Papers as the owner of shares in Haycraft Overseas Trading Ltd in the British Virgin Islands.

The company was also known as sponsor Presidential Sports Club (PSC), led by Dmitry Lukashenko. Until April 2023, she was listed among the partners on PSK website.

Net profit in 2022 “Univest-M” amounted to 8.6 million rubles (about $3.3 million), and its investments in real estate by the end of last year reached 36 million rubles (about $13.7 million).

Ternavsky – still beneficiary of Univest-M. He owns the company through Unis Oil LLC and the Russian U-Consulting LLC, which owns 97.5% of Univest-M.

With him she erected private school in Drozdywhich was founded by my mother Nikolai Lukashenko Irina Abelskaya. Ternavsky’s longtime colleague, Mikhail Gutseriev, planned to invest $12 million in the project. BRC journalists called Abelskaya with a question about her relationship with Ternavsky, but she did not talk and hung up.

According to BRC sourcesit was in this school that Nikolai Lukashenko studied after in August 2020 took the documents from the Lyceum of BSU. Three daughters of Dmitry Lukashenko and the children of some officials also studied there.

“Yu-Stroy” was engaged reconstruction Vankovich estate. As a result, it turned into a restaurant owned by the Ternavsky family through the Cyprus company Perfectamia Enterprises.

This company took loans from Medesoil Trading when Ternavsky was under EU sanctions in 2013 and was investing in restaurants in Belarus.

In 2016, the Usadba restaurant began feeding officials and security forces. The company has repeatedly provided catering services to the State Customs Committee, the Investigative Committee, the Main Directorate of the Commander of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Control Committee and the Department of Execution of Punishments.

In 2022, this business brought 227 thousand rubles of net profit. Perfectamia Enterprises also owned other restaurants in Minsk: until July 2021 – Bella Rosa and until August 2017 – Limoncello.

A representative of Resurs and Co., in a telephone conversation with a BRC journalist, confirmed that the company is the owner of these premises: “Yes, yes, we are not intermediaries, we are the owners. These are our buildings on both Gikalo and Kalvariyskaya, so it’s all ours. We give up ours.”

Resurs and Co., at the time of publication, is the only company in Belarus that Ternavsky owns directly and not through other companies. He and his wife Olga each own 45% of the company’s shares. Heads Resource and Co. Anna Melkonyan, who was also a director at Unis Oil from 2016 to 2019. The remaining 10% of Resurs and Co belongs to UkeyDevelopment LLC. Her beneficiary is the second daughter of a businessman Anna Ternavskaya. UkeyDevelopment is also owner business center “Cascade Alpha”. The company’s revenue in 2022 amounted to 2 million rubles.

We know from Medesoil Trading’s financial statements that it is associated with Perfectamia Enterprises.
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As of October 2023, the shareholder of the latter is Maurice Taylor, who was the director of Medesoil Trading and other Ternavsky companies.
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In 2016, he also headed the Swiss branch of Medesoil Trading.
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The beneficiaries of the two British companies Uni-Trade Ltd and Unex Trading Ltd, which participated in the credit carousel, were also the Ternavsky family. Natalia Ternavskaya owned 75% or more of the shares of Unex Trading Ltd in at least 2016, and Uni-Trade Ltd in 2016 and 2017.

According to the head of investigations at Transparency International UK, Ben Kaudok, this scheme of transferring money through jurisdictions that imposed sanctions against Ternavsky looks like a classic case of circumventing restrictions.

“This money flow pattern contains many risk factors. One of them is the use of companies registered in different jurisdictions associated with the sanctioned person. So, whether it belongs to the daughter of a sanctioned person or a person who previously provided services to a sanctioned person, it definitely raises suspicions – it could be a way to circumvent sanctions,” BRC Caudoc said.

The expert added that such a scheme allows you to move money between related companies and finance their activities. In this way, it is possible to bypass sanctions, because the name of a person from the sanctions list is not in the documents, he explained.

It is clear from the agreement that “Ternavsky’s company” was called Arco Trading Ltd, since it was the company that acquired the shares of Steeleron Investments. The agreement was signed by Arco Trading by Stefan Brunner, whom we mentioned when talking about the sanctions circumvention scheme. He served as a director of Steeleron Investments.

Arco Trading featured in our previous investigation in cooperation with OCCRP as the owner of the Panamanian company Santarina Management SA, she issued a $68.5 million loan to Natalia Ternavskaya’s company Unex Trading.

Other details indicate the Ternavskys’ connection with Steeleron Investments. For example, the fact that Meritservus employees sent invoices for company services Anatoly Ternavsky. In addition, in November 2011, Petr Vasca informed the provider that further work on Steeleron should be carried out with a representative of Anatoly Ternavsky – “Natalia Ternavsky as a shareholder/beneficiary of the Steeleron company.” BRC also discovered another company that could have connections with the Ternavskys. In 2011, the Cypriot Mainship Limited and Steeleron Investments agreed that the former would transfer to the latter the right to claim the debt from the Belarusian Mainship Realty. The amount of debt is €500 thousand. Six months later, the companies canceled this agreement.

Based on the results of the analysis of Mainship Realty documents, it can be assumed that from 2011 to 2013 its beneficiaries were the Ternavskys, since at that time the owner of the company was the businessman’s lawyer, Petr Vasca, whom we mentioned earlier.

In 2022, Mainship Realty’s assets included investment property worth 4.4 million rubles.

In this investigation, we mentioned him as the person who was the owner of the Cypriot Medesoil Trading until sanctions were lifted from Ternavsky. Until 2016, Brunner also managed another British company of the businessman’s daughter – Unex Trading Limited. Two BRC investigations revealed that Brunner spent years helping the Ternavsky family continue to do business in Europe despite sanctions.

In the course of working on the investigation, BRC sent requests to people and companies that were mentioned in the material: Anatoly and Natalia Ternavsky, Maurice Taylor, Stefan Brunner, Petr Vasca, the European Council, BNK, Mainship Realty, Resurs and Co., Unis Oil”, “U-Stroy”, “Univest-M”, “UkeyDevelopment”, “U-Rest”, Meritservus, Bio-Venta. At the time of publication, we had not received a single response. […]