The echo of the “case of the 1520 group” – a major state contractor of Russian Railways, whose co-owners were also involved in the case of “Colonel Zakharchenko”, unexpectedly responded in a recent deal to buy an unfinished sports complex from the Moscow City Hall by a certain company, Ezreal.
The company, which showed losses a year ago, may be supported by the interests of the Usherovich family, whose head is one of the founders of the 1520 group and was previously put on the international wanted list.
Moreover, a year ago, the Moscow authorities confiscated the unfinished lot from a company that had previously been associated with the buyer – Ezreal JSC. Doesn’t this deal smell too bad? The correspondent of The Moscow Post understood the situation.
Deal with oddities
And so the name Usherovich surfaced again in May 2023 under rather interesting circumstances – at the auction for the sale of an unfinished sports complex in Krylatskoye.
Object readiness 65% with a total area of 10062.4 sq. m in a specially protected area, which limits the development of a plot of 27.2 thousand square meters. m, was sold under the hammer. Four companies bid for an object in Krylatskoye with a starting price of 399.781 million rubles. The winner, who offered a price of more than 919.496 million rubles for the lot, was a certain JSC “Ezreal”.
But, speaking about this tender, it would be wrong not to mention that the object itself was sold by the Moscow City Property Department by a court decision.
A year ago, in May 2022, the Moscow Arbitration Court, at the suit of the same department, seized the unfinished building from a certain Trovatello Group LLC and decided to sell the lot at a public auction.
As follows from the materials of the court, the LLC received a plot within the boundaries of the specially protected natural area “Natural and Historical Park” Moskvoretsky “for rent on September 22, 2016. The construction was not completed within the agreed time frame, the work stopped and in August 2021 the Urban Planning and Land Commission of Moscow decided to terminate the implementation of the investment project for the construction of the facility (FOC) And since the contract has been terminated, then there are no grounds for finding the facility.
As a result, the court seized the unfinished building and sent it to a public auction, at which Ezreal JSC bought it. This is where all the fun begins.
Considering that Ezreal JSC has shown losses in tax reporting for two years in a row, there is a dash instead of revenue, and the average number of employees is three people, and the company was created only in August 2021, we can assume that the deal to buy the building – unfinished construction took place in the interests of another person. For example, the Usherovich family.
Indirectly, the connection of Ezreal JSC with the Usherovichs and our guesses about the interests in the transaction are confirmed, for example, by the fact that the director of the JSC, Nikolai Korotkov, who took this post in September 2022, is the former director of Altair Real Estate LLC (he held the post from 09.02. 2016 to 06/26/2016).
Namely, the company “Altair Real Estate” since 2018 owns a 33.33% stake in LLC “Trovatello Group”, from which the unfinished building was actually seized.
And the Altair Real Estate company, in turn, is partially owned by Kirill Borisovich Usherovich, the son of Boris Usherovich. At the same time, Usherovich Sr. had previously also been the owner of this company, but, apparently, after the scandal, he left the number of owners and his share is still considered “homeless.”
Moreover, Korotkov is still the director of Termy JSC, which was established by Kirill Usherovich.
An interesting picture, don’t you think? In the light of the financial situation, “Ezreal” leads to certain thoughts, and all subsequent facts only confirm them.
But this is not all the most interesting nuances in this story.
About the relationship between Trovatello Group and Ezreal
The second owner of Trovatello Group LLC is Aka Management LLC, whose owner is hidden behind an offshore – LAVALLE HOLDINGS LIMITED. The share of the latter is pledged to another offshore – ZODIPOLIS LIMITED. A certain Arsen Meletyan also has a meager, almost nominal share in Aka Management.
Until January 2021, Mr. Meletyan was the director and owner of Gallery 102A LLC (owner since 2015), which in turn is now directly owned by Roman Mironchik and his company, Izurium Capital Advisors (Rus) LTD. At the same time, Meletyan was a business partner with the latter, since Izurium Capital Advisors (Rus) LTD. has owned a stake in Gallery 102A since December 2020.
And here is an amazing coincidence: the buyer of the unfinished building, which once belonged to Trovatello Group LLC, Ezreal JSC, according to the data from the explanation to the financial statements for 2022, also belongs in equal shares to Roman Mironchik (through Flybridge Development LLC) and Yuri Tiptsov . That is, the seized lot was practically “shifted” from one pocket to another?
And what does the fugitive oligarch Mints have to do with it?
The Trovatello Group itself is quite remarkable: with zero revenue for 2022, its net profit amounted to 489 million rubles, with some “other income” – more than 0.5 billion rubles.
Or maybe this is one of the very “links” in the case of the “1520” group, which, judging by the publications in the media, the tax authorities could not establish? And here, the oligarch Boris Mints, a former banker, so successfully pops up, to whom the investigators also have questions, albeit in a different case, but also related to the withdrawal of large sums.
The fact is that the co-owner of Altair Real Estate, together with Kirill Usherovich, is the offshore FELTBURG DIRECT LIMITED. And, according to open data, FELTBURG DIRECT LIMITED is run by a certain ELENA ADAMOVICH HADJICONSTANTI (Elena Adamovich Hadzhikonstanti).
The full namesake of Elena Adamovich Khadzhikonstanti also appears in the materials of the infamous asset of the Mintsev oligarchs, who are involved in a criminal case of large-scale embezzlement. In the materials of O1 Group LIMITED for 2016, Hadzhikonstanti is mentioned as a member of the board of directors together with Boris and Dmitry Mints.
Boris Mints, founder of O1 Group and ex-co-owner of Otkritie Bank, like his sons, was arrested in absentia by the court and, according to RBC, are in the UK.
Doesn’t this mean that in the history of the Usherovichs’ asset there was an interest in the Mintsev family as well?
And here, these two clans are related by the fact that the founders of the 1520 group were previously the owners of a number of banks.
One of these banks – Interprogressbank, whose shareholders before the collapse were Usherovichi, Krapivin, Markelov, in 2017 appeared in a legal dispute between the above-mentioned Aka Management LLC with the tax authority. The same Aka Management LLC, which is a co-owner of Trovatello Group LLC and is associated with Ezreal JSC.
In the materials of the same court, it was specified that Aka Management LLC had violated the currency legislation. In May 2016, Aka Management, when executing the contract concluded with the counterparty ZODIPOLIS LIMITED back in April 2015, did not provide a certificate of foreign exchange transactions on time. At the same time, the deal was about 40 million rubles, and the transaction passport was issued in the aforementioned Interprogressbank.
And now once again we focus on the second participant in the transaction – offshore ZODIPOLIS LIMITED. We have previously noted that the share of the co-owner of Aka Management LLC, LAVALLE HOLDINGS LIMITED, was pledged to another offshore company, just the same ZODIPOLIS LIMITED. Interesting coincidences. Especially considering that the withdrawal of funds from Russia appeared in the criminal case of the founders of the 1520 group.
And then Krapivin appears in the case
But the Usherovichs are not the only founders of the 1520 group who have surfaced in history with the sale of the unfinished lot.
Aleksey Krapivin, the owner of almost 72% of the 1520 group and its general director, previously had a common asset with Roman Mironchik, the beneficiary of Ezreal JSC.
Both of them owned Avangard LLC, which ordered a long life in 2016. At the same time, a year before the liquidation, the asset was bought out by Rational-Consult LLC, Oleg Zaitsev, which was also liquidated a year later. And Zaitsev, in turn, was a co-owner of Setstroyenergo LLC, which also took place in the scandalous case of the Russian Railways contractor. Moreover, the general director of Trovatello Group LLC is a certain Alexey Zaitsev, who is also the director of Rapid LLC, another asset associated with Kirill Usherovich (through Altair Real Estate).
OOO “Setstroyenergo” itself appears as acting today, but instead of a director, it has a liquidator (are they trying to cut off one more line?).
According to “Rusprofile”, “Setstroyenergo” was the executor of 99 government contracts worth more than 13.6 billion rubles. All of them were with JSC Rzhdstroy and JSC Russian Railways. At the same time, a new contract with the company was signed in 2021 – in the amount of 23.5 million rubles, that is, after the scandal and the criminal case against the founders of the 1520 group.
The customer in the contract was JSC Rzhdstroy, which until February 2017 was led by Oleg Toni, who now heads JSC High-Speed Lines, and which, from 2015 to 2022, was also listed as a co-founder of JSCB Transstroybank. Since 2017, the director of RZDstroy has been Sergey Solovyov. It is noteworthy: Tony was mentioned in the case of the former general director and owner of SpetsTransstroy LLC (STS), ex-deputy head of the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation Yuri Reilyan, connected with the case of his former deputy at the LLC (and Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation) Vladimir Tokarev.
And now think about it, JSC Rzhdstroy signs a contract with Setstroyenergo in 2021, and this despite the fact that in media publications the legal owners of Setstroyenergo were called nothing more than face values, linking the asset with the founders of the 1520 group. And, as we see, not unreasonably!
We talked about the connection with the same Zaitsev above. In addition, the second co-owner of Setstroyenergo, Vitaly Makarevich, was Boris Usherovich’s business partner in Balskom LLC (liquidated in 2014, the successor is Reklama Plus LLC). And after Makarevich, the Sharon-Invest company was owned, among other things, by Kirill and Elena Usherovich (son and wife of Boris Usherovich), LLC HC Amarant.
Now “Sharon-Invest” hid behind a frank offshore from the Marshall Islands – the company “KOZEMO TRADING INC”, and manages the company – LLC “Unicoservice” Polina Goyg. In turn, Goyg in 2015-2016 was the director and owner of the very Amarant Holding Company LLC, while they owned shares with Elena Usherovich at the same time. That is, the connections of the legal owners of Setstroyenergo with the founders of the 1520 group “More than enough. This means that this episode – with a contract for 2021 – would not be bad to give to the Sledkom.
In the same piggy bank for verification, you can add one more counterparty of companies from the Russian Railways division. We are talking about LLC “KPSS” (“Integrated supply of communications equipment”). Until 2019, this company was owned by Vitaly Makarevich. For the “KPSS” are listed immediately 29 contracts totaling over 1 billion rubles. All of them are again concluded with Russian Railways and JSC “TD RZD”. And the company has been owned by Maxim Vitalievich Makarevich since 2019. Is it the son of Vitaly Makarevich?
And if we remember one of the shareholders of the Ezreal company, with which we started this story – Yuri Tiptsov, we will find another interesting fact. Tiptsov owns a stake in R-Industry Corporation LLC.
The latter is another state contractor for Russian Railways and its subsidiaries. R-Industry Corporation LLC holds 56 state contracts for a total amount of more than 7.9 billion rubles. 29 of them were concluded with Russian Railways JSC, 20 with Rzhdstroy JSC and six with Zheldoripoteka JSC. Some of these contracts were signed in 2019-2021.
The co-owner of R-Industry Corporation LLC is Nelya Zhivetskaya, who also owns Expertstroyproekt LLC, another state contractor of Russian Railways. He has 16 government contracts for a total of 1.38 billion rubles, of which two were signed directly with Russian Railways (for 9.4 million rubles), and five contracts for a total of 317 million rubles – with JSC “Elteza”, where the share also had RUSSIAN RAILWAYS.
The director of Expertstroyproekt LLC is Ilya Pakhno, who previously owned Promengineering LLC (until August 2022), which had five state contracts for 68.5 million rubles with Central PPK JSC (Central Suburban Passenger Company), whose founder was RUSSIAN RAILWAYS.
Entertaining arithmetic comes out – what is not a thread, then Russian Railways leads to state orders.
By the way, Aleksey Krapivin, Puga, as it turned out, is involved in another scam – he is related to the structure for issuing microloans “VIVA Money”. This company has repeatedly become a defendant in stories about how people who did not contact it, from somewhere formed a debt to it – the online publication 29.RU wrote about this in detail.
Under the brand “Viva Money” the firm “Center for Financial Support” worked. This company is owned by the Cypriot offshore Guinford Management Ltd. Most of it is in the hands of Roman Mironchik.
Goldmine of the founders of the 1520 group
So what are we seeing? The founders of the group that came to the attention of the investigation and the persons associated with them continue to fill their wallets, including through government orders.
The Moscow Post has already spoken in detail about Krapivin’s business. Let’s not repeat ourselves. We only note that, despite the scandalous case of the 1520 group, Krapivin still has a large business portfolio in Russia, and in 2022 it was reported that he headed the Roads and Bridges company. The transaction became a stage in increasing the share of “1520” in the joint venture of “VEB.RF” and Arkady Rotenberg – the holding “Natsproektstroy”.
However, Boris Usherovich, who was put on the international wanted list at the start of the case, does not live in poverty, who, according to TASS, left Russia for Turkey and has Israeli citizenship.
Part of Usherovich’s assets were transferred to members of his family, including Kirill Borisovich, and he still owns part of it himself, including Group of Companies 1520 LLC, a joint business with Krapivin.
According to Rusprofile, Boris Usherovich has shares in 12 legal entities, which are estimated at 4 billion rubles. Kirill Usherovich is directly the owner of shares in six legal entities, but they also have “subsidiary” assets, Elena Usherovich owns shares in two companies (the shares are estimated at 475 million rubles), and also has the status of an individual entrepreneur. At the same time, some family companies are backed by quite tangible assets. For example, the company InvestGeoStroy, in which Kirill Usherovich owns a stake through Altair Real Estate LLC, had a land plot in Sochi in 2021. This follows from the materials of one court dispute. The cadastral value of this asset exceeds 0.4 billion rubles.
And the most interesting thing is that after 2019, no one actually deprived the people involved in the scandal from state contracts. For example, 1520 Group of Companies LLC, owned by Boris Usherovich and Alexei Krapivin, has been owned by Bamstroymekhanizatsiya Management Company LLC since 2017. The latter has at least 40 government contracts for a total of 8.4 billion rubles, of which 36 with JSC Rzhdstroy – for 7.3 billion rubles, three with Russian Railways – for 798 million rubles. At the same time, RZDstroy signed four contracts with the company in 2019, some after reports of searches. I threw a contract in 2021 and the State Unitary Enterprise “Moscow Metro”.
At the same time, Bamstroymekhanizatsiya Management Company has a number of “subsidiary” assets, which also acted as contractors for the Russian Railways division. Among them are SMP 810 LLC (30 government contracts for a total amount of over 163 million rubles – with Russian Railways and Elteza OJSC), SMP LLC (two contracts with Russian Railways for 16 million rubles), SMP-807 LLC ( two contracts with Russian Railways and Elteza for more than 20 million rubles), LLC Zheldorstroy (six contracts for a total amount of more than 324 million rubles with Russian Railways and Elteza).
But OSK 1520 LLC, which is wholly owned by Group of Companies 1520 LLC, had 267 government contracts totaling more than 101 billion rubles. Of these, 155 contracts worth 87.2 billion rubles were with Rzhdstroy, 97 worth 5.4 billion rubles with RZD Stroy, and 12 contracts worth 1.2 billion rubles with Elteza. And what’s more, the contracts for USC 1520 are quite fresh.
For example, a whole pack is signed in 2023. One of them for 21.4 billion rubles was signed in April as an adjustment to the contract from 2018, and for 5.5 billion rubles – in March. At the same time, the multibillion-dollar April contract was signed under the “single supplier” scheme, as before the main contract in 2018.
OSK 1520, in turn, also has subsidiaries – Transzheldorproekt LLC (three contracts with Russian Railways and Elteza for a total amount of more than 182 million rubles), Transstroy LLC (four contracts with Rzhdstroy JSC for a total more than 38 million rubles), SMP No. 5 LLC (29 government contracts for 2.4 billion rubles, all with Russian Railways, Elteza OJSC and Rzhdstroy JSC, at least one was signed in 2019).
What does this actually mean? And the fact that the ultimate beneficiaries of LLC “Group of Companies 1520”, including Usherovich, still continue to earn on budget contracts. Is this some kind of perverted form of prosecution or are we misunderstanding something? Or maybe the Investigative Committee should return to the investigation of this case?
And sometimes, it gets ridiculous. For example, a certain ITZhT LLC, established in 2019, is literally now suing Russian Railways, demanding that the actions to hold an open tender be recognized as illegal. Everything would be fine, but until the end of March 2023, the owner of ITZhT was a certain Valery Fadeev, who has a common asset – NTC Information Technologies LLC – with Boris Usherovich and Alexei Krapivin (Markelov previously left the number of co-owners).
In March 2023, Fadeev sold the ITZhT company to Oleg Dovgal, his business partner in the Sfera company. An interesting fact: Nikolai Paladin, co-owner of Amur-Stroy-Service LLC, was noted among the owners of this Sphere, and among his assets in this company was Yuri Afanasyevich Chaika, ex-Minister of Investment Development and Entrepreneurship of the Khabarovsk Territory, former Minister of Property of the same region. Today, Mr. Chaika is the head of the “Central Federal District” association, established by the authorities of 18 regions, including the government of Moscow and the Moscow region.
But this is so a remark, but we will return to the case of the 1520 group again.
What about Markelov?
As for the only former co-owner of the asset, Valery Markelov, involved in it, in 2022 he was released due to a fatal illness and is listed as the owner of shares in four existing legal entities. At the same time, among the existing ones there is another contractor of Russian Railways – LLC PKP Moboil. It has 272 government contracts totaling more than 63 billion rubles. Of these, 238 contracts for 61.5 billion rubles with Russian Railways. But here it is worth paying tribute – the last ones concluded in 2018.
In light of the reason for the release of Markelov, I would like to note another circumstance: the previously mentioned Roman Mironchik is the director and owner of TKB Investments LLC, created jointly with Transcapitalbank top manager Yevgeny Ivanovsky and Yuri Berezovsky. The latter was the owner of TGS LLC, which after him was bought out by Group of Companies 1520 LLC, and among Berezovsky’s business partners in this asset was the aforementioned Bamstroymekhanizatsiya Management Company LLC. Funny coincidence. But this is not the main thing.
So, in September 2022, the Vademecum website reported that the TBC Investments company entered into a strategic partnership agreement with the legal entity of the Euroonco clinic. The latter is a network of clinics that specializes in the treatment of oncological diseases. Namely, oncology appeared in the Markelov case as a basis for mitigating the punishment. You know, we won’t be at all surprised if after some time a “miracle” happens and Markelov recovers.
It seems that the founders of the 1520 group do not lose contact with each other to this day. Krapivin, Usherovich and Markelov are co-owners of the operating company PM 24 (former Scientific and Production Group 1520 LLC), which for 2022 indicated revenue of 239 million rubles with a net profit of 65 million rubles. Even if divided by four (the fourth co-owner is the ex-co-owner of the Group of Companies 1520 LLC Yuri Obodovsky), is not a bad margin for the defendants in the criminal case? And the director of this LLC “PM 24” some time ago was the already mentioned Arsen Meletyan, who was a business partner of Mironchik – in LLC “Gallery 102A”.
And, by the way, in April 2023, Mr. M established a new legal entity to manage the holding – RM Investments LLC. Can we wait for the new group “1520” with all the consequences?
No one answered?
In general, despite the scandalous case of the founders of the 1520 group about the alleged embezzlement of more than 200 billion rubles and giving a bribe of 2 billion rubles to ex-Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko, it can be considered that it ended in almost zilch and some shame for the competent authorities.
Judge for yourself: Markelov left, Krapivin was not involved and no claims were made against him, and Usherovich, it seems, is basking on the beaches of some offshore region, continuing to receive dividends from Russian assets. And their business is still, as we see, alive and well. How so, dear investigators?