Soon after Mikhail Mishustin became prime minister, it turned out that part of the land under the luxurious estate was presented to the family of an official on Rublyovka by the mysterious businessman Alexander Udodov.

Open Media found this information in Rosreestr back in mid-January.

What connects Mishustin and Udodov and why does the businessman consider himself indebted to the current prime minister? At the disposal of “Open Media” were documents that may answer this question. These are the materials of the criminal case on the illegal VAT refund, a multibillion-dollar scam that was launched shortly after Mishustin became the head of the Federal Tax Service.

“Mask show” in the tax service

Mikhail Mishustin became head of the Federal Tax Service on April 6, 2010. Exactly one year later, on April 6, 2011, a special operation of the FSB thundered across Moscow. Operatives broke into the building of the Moscow department of the tax service on Bolshaya Tulskaya, the home of the deputy head of the department, Olga Chernichuk, and several tax inspectorates.

As Kommersant and RBC wrote in those days, law enforcement officers were investigating an attempt to steal a gigantic amount – 2 billion rubles – under the guise of VAT refunds. The organizer of the scheme, the sources of both publications called a certain Alexander Udodov, emphasizing that he is well acquainted with Mishustin (Kommersant specified that they play together in the Sportima hockey club). Searches were also carried out at Udodov’s house.

However, in the future, the acquaintance of Mishustin practically disappeared from this story. In May 2014, Alexander Sabadash, a prominent St. Petersburg businessman and former senator from the Nenets District, went to jail. He is considered the main organizer of the scheme. A year later, the Gagarinsky Court of Moscow convicted the businessman and four accomplices for attempting VAT fraud, Sabadash received six years in prison, the rest – from two to six years.

The text of the appeal in this case is in the public domain. Udodov is mentioned once – as a witness talking about his acquaintance with Sabadash.

But the investigators suspected that Udodov played a very important role in this case. A source familiar with the course of the investigation handed over to OM the indictment – a document of hundreds of pages, signed by the senior investigator for especially important cases under the chairman of the ICR Denis Nikandrov (later Nikandrov himself was arrested in another case), which was submitted to the court.

The document describes in detail exactly how Sabadash and his accomplices tried to steal the money: there are interrogations of witnesses, wiretapping materials, a description of what was seized during the searches. The surname Udodov occurs 106 times in the document, according to Open Media. Investigators interrogated Udodov twice – on April 18 and December 12, 2013, both times in the status of a witness. The lawyer of one of the convicts also confirmed to Open Media that this surname was often found in the case materials.

Alexander Udodov, friend of the Mishustin family. Photo: avatar in Telegram

The role of Udodov in the scam according to investigators

From the indictment, it turns out that the following version of events was considered the main one before the trial. In the fall of 2010, businessman Alexander Sabadash met with his friend Alexander Udodov. Sabadash, who began trading vodka in the 1990s, controlled Vyborgskaya Cellulose OJSC, one of the country’s largest pulp and paper mills.

On the territory of the enterprise, the construction of a pellet plant was being completed. In fact, it was erected by the forces of Vyborg Pulp itself, but according to the documents, it looked as if the work was carried out by a certain company Es-Kontraktstroy and its subcontractors (in reality, one-day firms). The Es-Kontraktstroy company was going to claim about 2 billion rubles of VAT for reimbursement from the budget. None of the participants in the construction was going to pay tax, it was just a “scheme”.

Udodov, with whom Sabadash met, had a reputation as a person who “decides a lot in the tax sphere,” the Kommersant newspaper used this wording. In addition, six months before the events described, a close friend of Udodov, Mikhail Mishustin, headed the Federal Tax Service.

Udodov, as stated later in the case file, introduced Sabadash to Olga Chernichuk. This woman worked for many years in the tax authorities, and with the arrival of Mishustin, she went on promotion – she became deputy head of the Federal Tax Service in Moscow. Chernichuk promised to help her new acquaintances.

To begin with, the Es-Kontraktstroy company was deregistered from the tax records in Arkhangelsk and attached to the capital’s IFTS No. 28. It was a famous inspection: it appeared both in the Magnitsky case and in the Novaya Gazeta investigation on illegal VAT refunds.

In November 2010, Es-Kontraktstroy filed a tax return claiming 1.932 billion rubles to be reimbursed from the budget. The camera check has begun. The participants in the scheme needed forged documents – this scope of work, as follows from the wiretapping materials available to Open Media, was just undertaken by Udodov.

Thus, the case includes a dialogue that took place on the morning of February 3, 2011 between Roman Temkin (this person actually controlled Es-Kontraktstroy and was a subordinate of Sabadash) and a person whom the investigators identify as Udodov. Temkin asks if he can go to a certain designer Tatyana. “Designers” – it is separately explained in the case file – in jargon they call people who prepare false documents for submission to the tax office (they “draw” the necessary papers). Udodov, as follows from the wiretapping, replies that he will now call Tatyana.

Screenshot of a fragment of the indictment in the Sabadash case. Transcript of Udodov’s conversations with Temkin, the person involved in the case. Photo: Open Media Late in the evening of the same day, Udodov, Temkin and Chernichuk meet at the house of the deputy head of the Federal Tax Service at Sokolnicheskaya Slobidka, 3. Once again, they discuss a desk audit.

In total, from December to the end of March, Udodov and Sabadash phoned more than 200 times, and Udodov and Temkin – 84 times, the investigators thoroughly counted.

“I was with our friend (…), talked to him, he was somehow tense, [потому что] these are tense, pots,” Temkin said to Sabadash during one of the calls. The explanation for the wiretap clarifies: “friend” – probably Udodov, “pans” – employees of the tax inspectorate.

Sabadash was not always pleased with Udodov. “Sasha is the same hockey player as you, I remember there <нецензурное выражение>, but I don’t remember. He only remembers about money, ”Sabadash Temkin cursed during another conversation.

The former deputy head of the Moscow Federal Tax Service Olga Chernichuk lives in Sokolniki. On February 3, 2011, Chernichuk, Udodov and Temkin (the person involved in the case) discussed the “scheme” of embezzlement of VAT in this apartment. Photo: Open Media

Released from liability

Sabadash and his entourage were never able to get a VAT refund. The fact is that by the fall of 2010, IFTS No. 28 was in the center of attention of the FSB. It was already known about the theft of 5.4 billion rubles through the 25th and 28th inspections (the Magnitsky case), and in August-September, Novaya Gazeta journalists sent a large request to the Federal Tax Service, describing in detail the discovered tax “schemes”. In response, the department conducted an unscheduled inspection and sent materials to the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in December 2010 a criminal case on VAT fraud appeared in the 28th inspection.

Just since December, Sabadash and other participants in the scheme, including Udodov, “clients” of the Federal Tax Service No. 28, have become objects of wiretapping by the FSB, it follows from the materials of the criminal case. And five months later, in early April 2011, arrests began.

Roman Temkin was detained and interrogated on 6 April. In his testimony, he mentioned both Olga Chernichuk from the Federal Tax Service and Alexander Udodov. The next day, the special forces broke into the Moscow Tax Administration, searched Chernichuk’s office, her home, and the apartment where Udodov was registered. The media wrote about these large-scale events, and the sources of Kommersant and RBC unanimously called Udodov almost the main organizer of the VAT theft scheme.

However, no arrest followed. In the indictment, Udodov is listed as a witness. The Gagarinsky Court of Moscow issued a verdict in this case in March 2015, in addition to Sabadash, four people associated with Vyborg Cellulose were convicted.

“The case, of course, is egregious,” says a source who is well acquainted with the course of the investigation, who handed over materials to Open Media. “Insolently, they took the tax officers out of him, Udodov, left the guys who, in fact, did not manage to steal any money from the budget.”

Alexander Udodov is registered in a nondescript high-rise building on the outskirts of Moscow. There were searches in the tax case. Photo: Open Media

How Udodov is connected to Mishustin and his family

Alexander Udodov has a personal website, but it is rather difficult to reproduce his biography. It says that in 2001 the businessman graduated from the Kyiv University of Law (at that time he was a little over 30 years old), and in 2010-2014. worked in the gas company Itera Group. Between 2001 and 2010 there is a gap.

Some publications in the media say that during this period Udodov worked as vice president of the Peresvet-Invest construction company. In the middle of the 2000s, he built and became the owner of the U Rechnoy shopping center in the north of Moscow, Udodov himself told the Kompaniya magazine about this. A little later, in 2011, Udodov bought the glamorous Gimeney shopping center on Bolshaya Yakimanka from Peresvet-Invest.

The first intersection with Mikhail Mishustin, discovered by Open Media, took place in 2007. Udodov became a business partner of Boris Fedorov. This is the former Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Minister for Taxes and Duties, under whose wing Mishustin himself began his career in the civil service in 1998. Udodov – through Panamanian Avotower International Ltd – and Fedorov – through UFG Private Equity Fund I – bought a small metropolitan bank “Unifin”. When Fedorov died in 2008, the fund passed to the Fedorov family.

It was in UFG Asset Management in 2008-2010 – a short break in the civil service – that Mikhail Mishustin also worked. It turns out that in those years Udodov acted as a business partner of Mishustin’s employer.

At the end of 2007, Udodov had joint non-profit projects with Natalia Stenina, the sister of the future prime minister. They registered the Promis charitable foundation and the Sportima hockey club, and a little later they took part in the restoration of the temple in the village of Ubory, not far from Rublevskoye Highway. By the way, both Udodov and Mishustin himself play for Sportima, as the media write.

Mishustin and Udodov play together for the amateur hockey club Sportima. Photo: navalny.com

How Udodov presented the Mishustin family

At the beginning of 2009, Udodov gave Stenina a chic gift – six land plots with a total area of 1.3 hectares and two houses on Rublevka, in the Cotton Way cottage village. Open Media wrote about this in mid-January. Later, Alexei Navalny valued this gift at 730 million rubles. Navalny adds that this land and houses are part of a luxurious estate in which not Stenina lives, but Mishustin himself.

Another story about real estate: in October 2010, at the height of the VAT theft story, when Udodov actively helped Sabadash, Kopre Ltd (British Virgin Islands) purchased two luxury apartments in Khamovniki. Kopre Ltd was affiliated with Udodov: around the same period of time, she owned the Russian LLC GDC Energy Group (data center in Moscow) together with Andrey Astakhov. This is a hired manager in the structures of Udodov.

Later, the apartments were transferred to other Udodov companies, and then went to the restaurateur Arkady Novikov. After holding them for several years, he sold the property to Alexander and Alexei, Mishustin’s sons. As Navalny emphasizes in his investigation, this happened when both children reached the age of majority, that is, it was no longer necessary to indicate apartments in the declaration of Mishustin Sr.

As an acquaintance of Udodov told Open Media, he likes to emphasize his warm and close relationship with the Mishustin family, especially with Natalia Stenina. Therefore, some acquaintances even thought that Udodov was married to Stenina, that is, he was the son-in-law of the new prime minister, the source of Open Media continues. However, this is not true: Natalia Stenina, judging by her social media account, is married to Sergei Stenin, they have a son, Mikhail.

Open Media was unable to contact Alexander Udodov by phone; he did not respond to a message on Telegram.