Turlov and Livinsky are preparing for a peaceful old age on the Cote d’Azur

The Central Bank approved the sale of Russian subsidiaries of the American Freedom Holding (trading in securities) to Maxim Povalishin. The latter is, according to Kommersant, one of the founders of the company’s Russian business.

As the correspondent of The Moscow Post managed to find out, behind the personality of Povalishin there may be a much more influential and controversial figure of entrepreneur Timur Turlov and his possible patron, the former general director of Rosseti Pavel Livinsky. Details are in The Moscow Post.

Hang on “value”

Timur Turlov was the head and founder of the Russian investment company Freedom Finance until 2021, after which, according to Kommersant, a former top manager of the company, Povalishin, took over a 100% stake. According to Rusprofile, the stake actually belongs to the offshore Freedom Corp.

Most likely, in this business Povalishin, who also owns Kazakhstan’s JSC Freedom Finance and whose interests may include Ffin Bank, owned by IC Freedom Finance, represents Mr. Turlov.

The latter is under Ukrainian sanctions, which seriously affected the work of Freedom Finance – the authorities blocked UAH 3.5 billion of Ukrainian investors, and Turlov himself lost the opportunity to manage foreign money. Freedom Finance operates in 13 countries.

After that, Turlov announced the renunciation of Russian citizenship and the sale of Russian business to local management, and unsuccessfully tries to challenge the sanctions.

Doubtful business

At the same time, sources of the Ukrainian Forbes claim that investments in the international stock market of Ukrainian users were made through the Cypriot division of the holding. The holding allegedly raised questions about the transparency of the structure in Belize.

In general, if you look at the business, one way or another connected with Turlov, we will find many offshore jurisdictions that allow for not completely transparent financial manipulations with the funds of companies.

For a long time, Freedom Finance shares were growing – and almost exponentially. Turlov was talked about as a brilliant investor, but closer to 2022, reports began to appear that Freedom Finance could be an ordinary financial pyramid, and all the stories about Turlov’s genius could be nothing more than advertising financed by him, designed for gullible investors.

According to Moment of Truth, in the reports, the structure of the company’s operations is similar to the manipulation of a small firm. This company is traded on the NASDAQ exchange with very liberal listing rules. In addition, she is known for her “inflatable” and fraudulent companies. Since it was not easy for Turlov to attract American investors with such “exploits”, the shares eventually collapsed naturally.

How much investors have lost is a big question. It turns out that Turlov’s attempts at this stage to abstract from the company can be aimed not only at avoiding sanctions, but also at avoiding liability for speculation if law enforcement officers are interested in Freedom Finance’s activities?

If we look at the financial performance of Ffin Bank, we will see that over the year (as of January 1, 2022), its assets have almost halved. The reliability of the bank during the year and the last given half-year is unstable and tends to decrease.

According to the same data, the share of cash in the bank’s assets is significant and amounts to 11.36%, while the average value for average Russian banks is about 3%. Such a high share of cash may indicate, among other things, the risky policy of the bank.

Last year, another structure of Turlov – FFIN Brokerage Services was blacklisted by the Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market. According to the Agency, FFIN Brokerage Services “has signs of illegal activity on the territory of Kazakhstan.”

Could Mr. Turlov engage in banal deception of investors and further “pumping out” their money for their own needs?

Mining, Livinsky, Rosseti

At one time, there was talk that Turlov was introducing friendship with the ex-head of Rossetti PJSC Pavel Livinsky. On the sidelines, they whispered that Turlov and his financial knowledge were needed by Livinsky allegedly to withdraw money obtained by mining cryptocurrencies at the facilities of Rosseti PJSC.

The Moscow Post has repeatedly covered the activities of the official. Most recently, our attention was drawn to a potential scam with the accession of “Rosseti” to FGC UES. Could they thus try to hide the multibillion-dollar embezzlement of both their corporations. Are they connected with Livinsky’s possible affairs with Turlov?

The corporation itself is drowning in corruption scandals from year to year, its top managers are detained, and multimillion-dollar embezzlements are revealed. It is known that in Rosseti, during the leadership of Andrei Ryumin (and he came to this post in 2021), a whole network was established to collect fees and kickbacks from unscrupulous contractors who hand over objects with gross deviations from technical specifications. We suspect that it was established even under Livinsky and, possibly, with his active participation.

Livinsky and Ryumin worked together at the United Energy Company. When the former headed Rosseti in 2017, Ryumin almost immediately took the post of head of Rosseti Lenenergo (former PJSC Lenenergo). In fact, his further career suggests that Ryumin is the essence of Livinsky’s creature. He did not conduct any global purges when he took office. For the sake of “tick”, apparently, he conducted a certain audit of the activities of his predecessor, which, by the way, also allocated a considerable amount from the company’s budget, and naturally found that Livinsky was clean as a glass.

By the way, a lot of money was allocated for this “audit” from the corporation’s budget. There are thoughts that these funds could not have been used for the designated purposes.

Instead of an afterword

Thus, Turlov and Livinsky, it seems, have regained their “pod” for deceiving shareholders and withdrawing money abroad. Perhaps the former head of Rosseti is going to spend a quiet old age on the Cote d’Azur, and this is preparation.