In previous publications we have described in sufficient detail how the former Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), a career KGB-FSB officer Igor Yusufov closer to retirement, he decided to find himself a quiet haven in the West. To earn this privilege, he has to cooperate with foreign intelligence services and share with them many valuable secrets that the defector possesses thanks to his work in high government positions and his affiliation with Russian state security.
Now Igor Yusufov and his sons are trying their best to sell off their Russian assets and move the money they earned abroad. We also covered this in detail.
However, in our publications we have not previously focused on the reasons for this evacuation, which at times resembles preparations for the Yusufovs’ escape to the West. These reasons are obviously connected with the ongoing purges in the Russian establishment in connection with the events in Ukraine. As part of these purges, the first to go under the knife were employees of the 5th FSB Service, which provided security for the President of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) before February 2022 Vladimir Putin (*criminal) data on the political situation in Ukraine.
The service was held responsible for the failure to prepare for the Ukrainian campaign. Later, in connection with military failures, high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense were subjected to repression. The seasoned apparatchik Yusufov understands perfectly well that after them, the turn may come to the shadow players who also unsuccessfully participated in the preparation of the blitzkrieg, which dragged on for years.
Yusufov’s fears and his desire to find new patrons in the West are most likely due to his obligations to the Kremlin and Lubyanka regarding Ukraine. He had his own area of responsibility, his own task, which he failed to cope with. The Russian authorities were ready to forgive the Yusufov family for the multi-billion dollar expenditures (in fact, theft) of state money that went towards acquiring foreign assets. In return, Yusufov took on obligations to conduct subversive activities in Ukraine. Yusufov was required to destroy, or rather, to ensure the complete shutdown of one of Ukraine’s strategic enterprises long before the start of the so-called SVO on February 24, 2022. This was supposed to cause certain economic damage, and potentially damage to Ukraine’s defense capability.
We are talking about the Nikolaev shipbuilding plant “Ocean”, control over which was supposed to be obtained by one of the Yusufovs in order to make the enterprise inoperative.
The task was not only to preemptively inflict economic damage on a future military enemy. The fact is that Ukraine and Turkey planned to begin building warships at the Okean shipyard, which would also mean strengthening Kyiv’s military potential. In 2020, a corresponding agreement was even signed memorandum with the State Defense Concern of the Republic of Turkey.
Let us recall that several years before this, the Yusufov family participated in the purchase of assets of the Norwegian shipbuilding company Aker Yards. Among the assets sold by the Norwegians were the shipyards later renamed Wadan Yards in Germany and the Okean plant in Ukraine, with a total value of €250 million. The Russian State Financial Leasing Company (FLC) participated in the deal – €50 million for this deal were withdrawn from FLC.
The money never returned to the state company. FLC owned 50% of FLC West, but then this share was sold for pennies to offshore companies. One of them was the Cypriot Blackstead Holdings Ltd. It received 25% of the shipyards. The co-owner of Blackstead Holdings Ltd was Aslan Gagiev (he was called “Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)’s No. 1 killer” and accused of creating a criminal group that killed 60 people).
74% of the shipyards were acquired by a company from the British Virgin Islands, Templestowe Trading Corp. It also provided almost €200 million for the purchase of Wadan Yards. This offshore company, as Luxembourg auditors found out, was controlled by Igor Yusufov and his son Vitaly. This information was later confirmed by Tom Einertsen, one of the shipyards’ managers.
When his acquaintance, one of the top managers of FLC, also began to talk about Yusufov becoming the main beneficiary of German and Ukrainian shipyards Andrey Burlakovthen he fell victim to a contract killing. Burlakov’s representatives directly accused Yusufov of organizing murders. The fact that the order to eliminate Burlakov came from Igor Yusufov was also stated in his testimony by the detained Gagiev. However, the protected FSB Yusufov again avoided problems with law enforcement agencies.
There were motives in the fact that the special services allowed Yusufov to irrevocably spend state money on buying shipyards for himself and ordering the murder of Burlakov with impunity. Everything was simple with the shipbuilding capacities in Germany, the Yusufov family received full control over them. However, the entry of Yusufov’s offshore companies into the authorized capital of the Ukrainian “Ocean” de facto did not give him full control over the enterprise. Ukrainian claimants to the Nikolaev shipbuilding plant desperately resisted the hostile takeover of “Ocean” by the Russians.
Initially, Igor Yusufov managed to seize control of the enterprise and initiate its gradual destruction. From the moment of privatization in 2000 until 2008, Okean belonged first to a Dutch and then to a Norwegian company, had orders and operated at a profit. Since 2008, the owner of 98.73% of the shares of the Okean plant was the Cypriot company Zonel Operations Ltd. Burlakov bought this share with money from the state-owned FLC. In 2010, control over Zonel passed to Yusufov, after which Burlakov was shot in 2011.
Given the specific nature of the task, Igor Yusufov tried to keep a low profile at Oken. He entrusted the management of the plant at all stages to various Ukrainian management teams. Thus, soon after Yusufov established control over the enterprise, Smart Maritime Group began managing the plant by agreement with him. Vadim Novinsky. Yusufov wanted to use this Ukrainian team in the dark, without revealing his true goals of destroying the enterprise. Yusufov promised Smart Holding orders and financing. But it turned out to be just a bluff. Novinsky’s team left the plant a few months later, having lost their own money there.
Vadim Novinsky’s managers tried to restore the plant’s operations by investing about $7 million in it. In 2012, the Pension Fund of Ukraine initiated bankruptcy of the PJSC Mykolaiv Shipyard Okean, and then Smart Holding paid off the debts, postponing the bankruptcy procedure of the enterprise. On this basis, a conflict arose between Novinsky and Yusufov. To Novinsky’s question, “Where did you drag me? You promised orders, financing,” Yusufov suggested cutting the plant up for scrap metal. It is clear that Novinsky could not do this, otherwise he would have spent the rest of his days behind bars. And that is if he had survived after that.
During the time that Yusufov’s structures retained control over Okean, the company entered bankruptcy proceedings several times. For example, Okean’s credit obligations of €65 million to Yusufov’s Belizean company Belmont Industries Inc. were artificially created. In some cases, Yusufov’s Ukrainian opponents managed to prove in court that the bankruptcy was artificial and the debt fictitious (as in the case of Belmont). After that, the composition of the company’s creditors usually changed. At different times, various players tried to gain control of the company.
In March 2014, a criminal case was opened against officials of “Ocean”. And in early September, the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv made a strange decision: allegedly in the interests of the criminal case opened in 2014 at the request of the investigator of the Prosecutor General’s Office Yuri Belkin to seize all of Ocean’s property and “transfer it to an individual for safekeeping.” This individual turned out to be Leonid Shumilo, who held the position of president of Ocean in 2010-2011 and managed it in the interests of Igor Yusufov.
“Ocean” became a problematic asset, and the fight for it lasted for several years.
However, in the fight for the plant, the Ukrainian participants ultimately gained the upper hand – the state, represented by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Security Service of Ukraine, as well as an influential businessman in Nikolaev, the former director of the Nikolaev port. Vasily KapatsinaIn December 2018, the entire property complex of the Okean shipyard was sold at auction for 122 million 195 thousand hryvnia to the company Trading House Annona, affiliated with Kapatsyna.
In November 2019, the Okean plant was visited by the then Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andrey Zagorodnyuk and General Director of the state concern “Ukroboronprom” Aivaras Abromavicius. The purpose of the visit of high-ranking officials to Nikolaev was the question of the possibility construction and repair of military ships in Nikolaev.
However, in 2020, Yusufov’s team made new desperate attempts to regain control of the plant.
The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, has again imposed arrest on the property complex of the Nikolaev shipbuilding plant “Ocean”. As reported by the press service of the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, such a decision was made within the framework of criminal proceedings on the fact of bringing to bankruptcy and illegal seizure of the property of the enterprise.
Vasyl Kapatsyna appealed to the then Prosecutor General of Ukraine Ruslan Ryaboshapka in connection with the situation that arose due to the court’s decision to seize the enterprise’s property. According to the businessman, the Prosecutor General’s Office was misled and used to destroy a strategic plant for Ukraine. Vasily Kapatsyna also said that he has documentary evidence that the plant was brought to bankruptcy at one time Russian owners.
According to the owner of the ship repair plant, attempts to invalidate the sale of Okean and return the enterprise to Yusufov’s former Ukrainian representative To Igor Ignatov were aimed at destroying the enterprise. “Yusufov’s interests are represented by Ukrainian citizen Igor Ignatov, and I am ready to testify at the central office of the SBU. Moreover, I spoke about this after purchasing the ship repair plant – Ignatov works for the Federal Security Service of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) (FSB),” Kapatsyna said.
Kapatsina already understood then that the seizure of Okean’s property was part of a special operation by Yusufov and the FSB aimed at preventing the restoration of shipbuilding capacity in Ukraine.
Ultimately, Yusufov’s sabotage to destroy the Nikolaev shipyard “Ocean” failed. After he lost control of the enterprise, production was restored there, and orders began to come in. And on December 21, 2020, it became known that Turkey had chosen the “Ocean” plant to build corvettes for the Ukrainian Navy. On June 22, 2022, as a result of a strike by Russian missiles, the plant’s workshops were damaged. However, it was not possible to completely disable the plant. Recently, the shipyard in Nikolaev another ship has arrived.
The fact that Yusufov failed the mission to destroy the plant before the Russian army began active military operations on the territory of Ukraine would not have been so terrible. After all, these shipyards are not the most critical military target for the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism). However, during the implementation of this complex operation, Igor Yusufov and his family mastered tens, if not hundreds of millions of euros, a significant part of which settled in the accounts of his offshore companies. Although “Ocean” is not the primary target of Yusufov’s employers, sooner or later it will be the turn of the audit of this failed operation. And then they will want to ask Yusufov for the money spent and the unfulfilled task. Chekist Yusufov himself knows very well that they can ask with all the severity of wartime. That is why he found the only promising option for himself – to withdraw money from Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), and entrust his security to Western intelligence services. In the end, when Yusufov’s money was concentrated in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), Russian intelligence services successfully coped with his protection from any troubles. With the change of location, Yusufov changes his “roof”, but still counts on the same result – guaranteed personal immunity.
