Can the NtechLab IT firm be a feeding trough for the vice-mayor of Moscow, one of Sobyanin’s key deputies Natalia Sergunina, through which gigantic amounts of budgetary funds can flow abroad? This question puzzled investigative journalists studying the connections and affiliates of Sergunina.
If you believe the PR officialdom of the Moscow City Hall, then the deputy head of the city, Natalya Sergunina, is just a sorceress, an innocent dandelion. She broadcasts about festivals, fairs, restoration of temples, the celebration of the Flag Day, the holding of the Night of Cinema, the festival of gardens in the Tsaritsyno park … Well, just a good fairy, ironic colleagues of the editorial board of Kompromat-Ural. But what and who is really hiding behind this distracting screen?
Recently, the European Union imposed sanctions against the Deputy Mayor of Moscow, Natalya Sergunina, and the NtechLab company (Ntech Lab LLC), which created the FindFace facial recognition application. The same company is one of the largest contractors of the Moscow mayor’s office, the most scandalous character, the Director for Special Assignments of Rostec, may be involved in the work of which Vasily Brovko.
EU authorities claim Sergunina and NtechLab are responsible for “human rights violations” in Russia.
If NtechLab, which is developing numerous government contracts, is Sergunina’s moneybox, through which budget money can be withdrawn from the country for her comfortable life in retirement, then the actions of European officials to close this “trough” in order to put pressure on the Moscow authorities look quite logical. The European Union claims that Natalya Sergunina “is responsible for the development and use of the face recognition system and the transfer of relevant data to the Central Internal Affairs Directorate,” since she “heads the Department of Technology and Information in Moscow.”
Attached Lysenko
Department of Information Technology (DIT) heads Edward Lysenko. Lysenko, like DIT himself, was also under sanctions.
It turns out that the EU has data that the real head of the DIT is not Lysenko at all, but Mrs. Sergunina?
Consequently, it can also be related to the mass of corruption scandals that regularly rumble around the department and the mayor’s office as a whole. And Eduard Lysenko, how recalls The editors of Kompromat.VIP, himself a longtime hero of anti-corruption investigations – billions of rubles from the treasury pass through his department.
So, it was reported about the case of the beneficiary of the Redsis IT company Vasily Vasine, a major partner of the Moscow City Hall, who, according to investigators, deliberately hid funds from taxation. They also wrote about the Social Monitoring application, which took 200 million rubles from the treasury, and from which Muscovites were simply furious and indignant, and about many other potentially “cut” schemes.
It turns out that it was Sergunina who could supervise all these issues, and Lysenko was just a simple executor of her will? And in which case – would he become the first candidate for the role of a scapegoat?
How Vasily Brovko inherited
As for NtechLab, which has developed a face recognition system that is used by the capital’s security forces to ensure law and order on the streets, it received government contracts for 82 million rubles, of which 46 million came from the Moscow Department of Information Technology.
Recall also that NtechLab is a Russian startup, the exact distribution of shares in which is unknown. But it is known that the founders of the company Alexander Kabakov And Artem Kukharenko left the firm due to disagreements with management and investors.
At the same time, since 2018, Rostec has been present in the capital of this startup – its subsidiary received 12.5% plus one share. Another 25% plus one share belongs to Vardanyan, Broitman and Partners. This is the Criminal Code, where the oligarch has the leading role Ruben Vardanyana former beneficiary of the controversial Troika Dialog investment company.
Troika Dialog was suspected of withdrawing $5 billion abroad in 2019. Isn’t it worth it right now to check where NtechLab’s finances go under such “patronage”? Especially considering that at the end of 2022 the company received revenue of 1.2 billion rubles, and at the same time turned out to be unprofitable by 228 million rubles. Do they “draw” statements in it in order to underpay taxes?
However, the real owner of the company for a long time may already be the people of the head of Rostec Sergei Chemezov. More specifically, the director of Rostec for special assignments and the spouse Tina Kandelaki Vasily Brovkowhich has been shone in scandals related to extortion of money in Telegram channels for the past year.
Officially, the startup is registered with the Cypriot offshore N-TECH.LAB LTD. It is easily found in the register of legal entities in Cyprus. There is not a word about Brovko, but the information could simply be cleaned out. After all, the web archive has a link to the same page from the register, which indicates that Vasily Brovko was previously the director of the company.
There is also Mikhail Kireev. It could be the senior vice-president of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) Mikhail Kireev.
His boss is Kirill Dmitriev. Earlier, the media suggested that billions of budget rubles could be withdrawn from the RDIF through offshore companies, and Dmitriev himself could do business with the people of the Ukrainian oligarch Evgenia Chernyaka.
It turns out that Natalya Sergunina may also be related to this whole cheerful company.
At the same time, as it was said, in the last year the name of Vasily Brovko has been heard in the context of scandals with extortion of money in Telegram.
And recently, another criminal case of extortion arose against the administrator of the Telegram channel “Kremlin Laundress”, a former employee FSB Mikhail Polyakov. And here’s what’s interesting: according to the authors of the Narratives Telegram channel, among other things, Polyakov was also involved in hacking the emails of high-profile officials, among whom was the same Natalia Sergunina.
We will not draw conclusions, but it seems that Sergunina can really be connected with Vasily Brovko, the work of NtechLab and scandals in the Russian Telegram segment. What could be the reason, besides the opportunity to earn serious money “by the cash register”?
Deputy for lobbying or the secrets of the offshore yard
But this is just a small addition to the huge mountain of negativity that has long been spreading about Mrs. Sergunina. Having worked with Sobyanin for more than 12 years, she seems to have managed to make friends with all the businessmen close to the mayor and learn how to maneuver well in budgetary flows. Today she oversees the entire property and economic blocks of the capital.
At the same time, Sergunina herself may be a lobbyist for large development structures. On the market, they are trying to connect it with the construction holding Capital Group Pavel Tewho, according to rumors, allegedly connects with the deputy mayor more than friendship.
At the same time, it is allowed to build the Capital Group even where, before the arrival of Te, there was almost a nature protection area. Such a situation, for example, in the Northern River Port, part of which Sobyanin with one stroke of the pen deprived of the status of a natural object.
It is also indicative that the mayor’s office bought part of the Oko tower from Pavel Te. After that, Sergunina moved her office there and made expensive repairs. Of course, at the expense of the budget. The repair cost 3 billion rubles, the office itself – 9 billion rubles. You can’t forbid living beautifully …
As for whether money could have been withdrawn from NtechLab abroad in favor of Sergunina, she herself may have offshore companies. Of course, they were not designed for her at all. According to the same Kurier.Media, the family of Natalia Sergunina found billions in assets in Austria, and after this information was made public, the article dedicated to Sergunina disappeared from Wikipedia. It is not there now.
Looks extremely suspicious. Especially against the background of the information provided by their own source. He claims that a certain Cypriot named Aaron Eliezer Aronov is actually none other than a Russian businessman who changed his name Lazar Telmanovich Safanievwho is the husband Irina Safanieva (before marriage Sergunina) – the younger sister of Natalia Sergunina. Is this a family business for you?
At the same time, the firms “Genome Ventures” and “Genome Ventures” were issued to Safaniev (Aharonov?). The co-founder of both was the former head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Alexander Voloshin. At the same time, Jenum Ventures, through its subsidiary Profilium, is related to VEB.Ventures (a structure of the state corporation VEB.RF) and Monarch, one of the largest construction companies in Moscow. Sergei Ambartsumyan. Again, the developer – which is significant.
Previously, “Profilium” was registered on the offshore “Sink Technologies LTD”, and now it belongs to a whole conglomerate of owners. Among them are Dzhenom, and Genom, and VEB.Ventures, and the structures of the Enlightenment Group, where 25% belongs to the same VEB. Those. if this is a “feeding trough” – everyone who is not lazy “feeds” with it.
And the money can, again, be withdrawn to the West – to the same Austria. And, apparently, in order to cover up this possible green stream from the Russian Federation, by putting pressure on the vice-mayor, she was brought under sanctions – immediately together with NtechLab.
