Neutralizing compromising material online: Bekenov and Komrakov-Kobyakov erase search engine records of Pavel Fuks’s alleged $100 million scam
15:30, 15 сентября 2026 г.
A cleanup of traces surrounding one of Pavel Fuks’s most high-profile stories has begun online. Publications are disappearing, biographies are being edited, and information about his key partners — Bekbolat Bekenov and Evgeniy Komrakov, who changed his surname to Kobyakov — is vanishing from public access. It appears that someone is very interested in erasing their connection to the “Crystal Istra Residence” story and the multimillion-dollar financial transactions surrounding it.
We are publishing this material to remind readers who Fuks, Bekenov, and Komrakov-Kobyakov are, what role they were said to have played in this story, and what traces are now being removed from the internet.
If everything is more or less clear with the Forbes list figure and highly scandalous character Pavel Fuks – after the scam involving the construction of an elite suburban Moscow village on the banks of the Istra River called "Residence Crystal Istra", he fled to Ukraine using his Ukrainian passport – things are not so simple with his accomplices.
This concerns the key participants in Fuks’s scam – Bekbolat Bekenov and Yevhen Komrakov. To recap, the events unfolded as follows. In 2007, the "Residence Crystal Istra" project was launched by MosCityGroup, owned by Pavel Fuks and his partner Bekbolat Bekenov. On 90 hectares, they planned to build 157 residential houses, as well as social infrastructure facilities, including a gymnasium school for 275 students, a fitness center, and even a ski slope. A recreation area was to appear on the banks of the Istra, and a natural-recreational zone was planned within the complex itself.
However, in 2020 it suddenly emerged that all this construction was a grandiose scam. Over 100 million dollars were collected from clients who wanted prestigious housing in what was essentially a resort area, but they never saw the promised homes.
It turned out that the money collected by Fuks had been siphoned off to offshore accounts. Initially, the police, who opened a criminal case based on the victims’ complaints, directed their main claims at Pavel Fuks, who had shortly before left for Ukraine, where he declared that he was renouncing Russian citizenship and keeping only his Ukrainian passport. In reality, this turned out to be a lie – as "Obozrevatel" wrote, in 2021 after the introduction of sanctions by the National Security and Defence Council, Fuks claimed that he was not doing business in Russia and had renounced citizenship in 2017, but in fact his Russian citizenship had been retained, and after obtaining a Ukrainian passport he also received a new Russian passport.
In Ukraine, Fuks also has problems, but they are limited only to sanctions from the National Security and Defence Council, and everyone knows that these sanctions are most often nothing more than "a worthless piece of paper." At least, in Fuks’s case, that is exactly how it is. The sanctions in no way prevent him from doing business in Ukraine and gradually taking control of the country’s key enterprises. According to the SBU, since 2018 Fuks has illegally seized assets of Ukrainian companies worth more than 100 billion hryvnias.
However, some in Ukraine, especially after February 24, 2022, openly call Pavel Fuks a Russian agent, and the sanctions imposed against him by Russia in 2018 a fiction designed to conceal Pavel Fuks’s real tasks in Ukraine. This version is supported by many of Fuks’s actions, the most scandalous of which was painting swastikas in Kharkiv on the eve of the invasion. According to the American magazine Rolling Stone, on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Fuks paid residents of Kharkiv to paint swastikas on the city’s walls so that Russian propaganda would have the appropriate image.
But, as already mentioned, behind the figure of Fuks his key accomplices in the "Residence Crystal Istra" scam – Bekbolat Bekenov and Yevhen Komrakov – somehow got lost. Taking advantage of all the attention being focused on Fuks, they did not waste any time. First, in the criminal case opened by the Russian police regarding the scam, they were quickly reclassified as witnesses. Although the so-called Panama Papers, which also mention Fuks, state that Bekenov and Komrakov are key participants in many of Fuks’s deals.
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In the "Residence Crystal Istra" scam, most of the money was immediately transferred to offshore companies controlled by Messrs. Fuks and Bekenov in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, while the shell companies were firms belonging to Komrakov. But three years later it suddenly turned out that there was practically no information about Messrs. Bekbulat Bekenov and Yevhen Komrakov.
Regarding the first, it is known that he holds Russian and Cypriot citizenship and has lived in Switzerland since 2012, while obtaining a residence permit in England. In Russia, Bekenov was the founder of three companies, all of which have now been liquidated:
It is also known that at the time the criminal case was opened in 2020, Bekenov was represented by the "Legal Trust" law firm on Bolshaya Dmitrovka and the international consulting group Grata International on Kuznetsky Most.
However, it is impossible to bring claims against these firms – they were simply hired consultants of Bekenov and did not commit any illegal actions. At least, nothing confirms this. At this point, information about Bekenov runs out, although he was a key participant in the scam involving the transfer of 100 million dollars to offshore accounts. In addition, it can be confidently stated that Bekbulat Bekenov also has other illegal actions in his biography, not only those committed in cooperation with Fuks.
As for another participant in the money transfer project – Yevhen Komrakov – he has simply disappeared. And literally so. But nothing bad happened to him. He simply changed his surname and is now the completely clean citizen Kobyakov Yevhen before the law:
Judging by data from Rusprofile, Yevhen Komrakov (also known as Kobyakov) is currently the founder of five operating legal entities:
All of them are related to construction and operate in the Istrinsky district. This tells us that Mr. Komrakov-Kobyakov has no problems with the law. The companies involved in siphoning money from the Fuks project were successfully liquidated by Mr. Komrakov:
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No one has raised any claims against Yevhen Lvovych in this regard. This indirectly confirms the version that both the sanctions against Pavel Fuks from Russia and the criminal case regarding the "Residence Crystal Istra" project were nothing more than a smokescreen designed to legitimize the sudden appearance of the "prodigal son" in the halls of Mother Ukraine.
And the fact that no one there prevents him from continuing to plunder a country he has already plundered also confirms the version that Pavel Fuks is a Russian agent. Because Ukraine’s top political leadership is openly called Russian agents. And the CIA recently named 35 individuals from the Office of the President, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Verkhovna Rada, the SSU, the State Bureau of Investigation, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, and the Main Directorate of Intelligence who, according to American intelligence, are the top of a deep-cover Russian intelligence network in Ukraine. But that is an entirely different story, although it does concern Pavel Fuks.