A villa in Cannes, a company in Monaco, and multibillion-dollar contracts with Gazprom: how oligarch confidant Vadim Gurinov hides assets abroad

Vadim Gurinov, a trusted business partner of Russian oligarchs close to Putin, owns a villa in Cannes, which was registered to several companies in France, Luxembourg, and Cyprus. Another Gurinov family company, in Monaco, was exposed in court by a Frenchman disgruntled with the villa’s owners.

According to documents from the French registry, Vadim and Galina Gurinov owned the Luxembourg company RILB Property SCI with a charter capital of 5 million euros (liquidated in December 2016, with long-time Gurinov employee Nikolai Berdin, a top manager at the tire company Cordiant, the Rurik fund, and the company Service-Telecom, acting as the liquidator). 

This company was registered as the owner of a share in the company Riviera International La Bomma (France), with a share capital of one million euros and assets of approximately four million euros. 

Riviera International La Bomma owned the villa "La Bomma" in Cannes, on the "Billionaires’ Point" in the La Garoupe area of the French Riviera. At 215 Chemin de La Croe, on a plot of almost 30 acres, a mansion and a small caretaker’s house were built, along with a swimming pool and garden. The company purchased the property with loans, including from a Monaco bank. It also owned other properties. Until 2016, Riviera International La Bomma was owned by the Gurinovs through two companies: RILB Property SCI (Luxembourg) and the Cypriot TIARAVAL Ltd. However, in 2016, the Luxembourg company went bankrupt, and the assets were transferred directly to the couple. 

Apparently, after the war began, the Gurinovs began having trouble making payments, as one of the company’s top managers filed a lawsuit over €134,000 in unpaid wages and compensation. In 2022, a writ of execution was issued to seize and sell Riviera International La Bomma’s assets; one of the properties was ultimately put up for auction and sold. Galina Gurinova subsequently paid off part of the company’s debts, contributing over €20,000. However, this was to no avail: a French court declared Riviera International La Bomma insolvent and placed it into receivership, appointing SELARL GM as its manager. The company challenged these decisions in court, and is currently not liquidated. 

Incidentally, in court, the Gurinovs’ aggrieved French employee testified that Riviera International La Bomma is a shell company, with nothing left to its name, and that the owners could easily bankrupt it. Both owners, according to the Frenchman, "live off a company registered in Monaco" called Valeri. Indeed, the French registry does list a foreign Monegasque company named Valeri, whose founders and directors are hidden from the registry. Valeri, as a reminder, is the Gurinovs’ daughter, who also owns a business in London. 

Its French office is also located in Cannes at 26 Chemin des Nielles, 06160 Antibes. A luxurious modern villa of 400 square meters on a 50-hectare plot is located at this address. According to the property registry, Valeri operates in the same way as Riviera International La Bomma: renting out properties. It was founded in 2010, a year after Riviera International La Bomma was registered. An application to French officials for the construction of the villa at 26 Chemin des Nielles was submitted in 2012, and construction was officially completed in August 2017. 

In the same year, 2012, Vadim Gurinov took up the position of president of the Stroytransgaz group of companies, one of Gazprom’s largest contractors with a turnover of tens of billions of rubles. 

Gurinov also worked for many years in a group of St. Petersburg businessmen, who initially began their careers at Sovex, the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, and the seaport. This group is associated with the influential St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber (Antikvar). It is Gurinov who is the current sanctioned party’s unofficial assets. Since the 1990s, the Gurinov family has been building a vast network of companies abroad, acquiring assets with funds from current sanctioned parties.

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In 2021, Gurinov formally acquired VimpelCom’s cellular tower infrastructure. Gazprombank provided the loan for this transaction. 

Many of the family’s Russian assets were registered in Galina Gurinova’s name. They were later transferred to relatives and top managers. For example, Galina left the Voronezh company Kontur-S, which is now owned by her husband’s brother, Artem Gurinov (as well as another member of the St. Petersburg group, Roman Spiridonov). Kontur-S shared a phone number with the St. Petersburg-based Olt Service, which served as a link to the Belarusian KhimTekhInzhenering, a company of the Avestra Group, a stake in which is owned by Vadim Gurinov through the Cypriot Avestra Group Holding Ltd (co-owners are Roman Spiridonov, Dmitry Ivanov, the Ruric fund, and Igor Berezina). Avestra actively trades Russian chemicals and oil.

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