Offshore empire of Rostec’s “wallet”: how Albert Avdolyan used BBR Bank and Cypriot shell companies to move profits abroad and avoid taxes
Media outlets have discovered that a ruling has appeared on the Moscow Arbitration Court’s website that reveals the offshore network of Albert Avdolyan, a longtime friend and "wallet" of Rostec CEO Sergey Chemezov.
BBR Bank, whose co-owner Dmitry Gordovich was arrested for money laundering, has decided to challenge the additional tax assessment. The ruling concludes that BBR is Albert Avdolyan’s private bank, with profits from Avdolyan’s companies (Scartel, Yota, etc.) being funneled offshore, and that Avdolyan himself is implicated in numerous dubious cases, including tax evasion.
In 2012, BBR Bank entered into subordinated loan agreements worth tens of millions of dollars with the Cypriot companies Globalone Holding Limited ($10 million + €10 million) and Racast Investments Limited (€10 million). In 2014, the bank transferred over 100 million rubles in interest to the Cypriot companies. The bank did not pay taxes in Russia, as Russia had a double taxation agreement with Cyprus at the time.
The tax authorities conducted an audit of the bank and discovered that funds were actually transferred through these two Cypriot shell subsidiaries to parent companies in the British Virgin Islands—Globalone Management Group Limited and Racast International Limited. Given that the actual recipients of the funds were BVI companies, and unlike Cyprus, Russia did not have a treaty with this jurisdiction, the bank was obligated to pay taxes in Russia as well. The Federal Tax Service assessed BRR Bank approximately 30 million rubles in additional taxes and penalties. The bank dug in its heels and went to court. It would have been better if it hadn’t. During the investigation, many interesting details about the schemes of Avdolyan and his associates emerged.
Essentially, a significant portion of Avdolyan’s offshore network was uncovered—it included companies based in the British Virgin Islands, their Cypriot subsidiaries, and representative offices in Russia. For example, settlements between the bank and the Cypriot companies Racast and Globalone were conducted through the companies’ accounts at the Latvian bank JSC Citadele Banka. Avdolyan’s company, Wooden Fish Agency Limited, facilitated the opening of these accounts. Its Russian representative office was headed by Irina Belyanova, who also manages Avdolyan’s other companies: A-Property, AP Holding, and A-TEK, as well as ANO Tochka Budushchego and the charitable foundation Novy Dom. Avdolyan himself occupied the modest position of chairman of Wooden Fish’s supervisory board.
The director and shareholder of the Cypriot Globalone and the Moscow representative office of Globalone from the BVI (beneficiary - Avdolyan) was 38-year-old Nadezhda Kudravets, a native of the Irkutsk region and co-founder of the New House Charitable Foundation.
Belyanova and the Cypriot Globalone shared a phone number. This number was also used by Ekaterina Yutkina, the chief accountant of the Russian offices of the offshore companies Wooden Fish and Globalone.
All of Avdolyan’s Russian offshore representative offices were registered on the 39th floor of the Imperia skyscraper in Moscow City. These premises were once owned directly by Avdolyan, but were later transferred to Victory Trading Group Limited (BVI), which leased them to the representative offices. Victory Trading, according to the court ruling, is also owned by Avdolyan.
Moreover, the phone numbers of employees of the Cypriot Globalone matched those of the Cypriot Racast, whose director was Stanislav Vrublevsky, who also served as director of the Moscow office of Victory Trading Group, replacing Maria Yuryevna Polukhina. Wooden Fish paid for Vrublevsky’s airfare for business trips, as an employee of a single group of companies.
In 2017, Anatoly Semerukhin, a minority shareholder of BBR Bank, a member of its Supervisory Board, and an advisor to the Chairman of the Management Board since 2005, became the main shareholder of the Cypriot subsidiaries of Globalone and Racast. He transferred his shareholding in the bank to these offshore companies. Incidentally, the Cypriot company ultimately simply wrote off the bank’s substantial debt. Semerukhin refused to testify in the case, citing poor memory and Article 51 of the Russian Constitution.
Furthermore, Wooden Fish is known to have represented the interests of the investment fund Telconet Capital Limited Partnership in Russia, which owned Yota Devices, the developer of the YotaPhone smartphone. Albert Avdolyan was a shareholder in the fund. Services under the Yota brand were provided by the WiMax operator Scartel, one of BBR Bank’s major corporate clients. Scartel was 100% owned by the Cypriot company WiMax Holding Ltd, which was controlled by Telconet Capital Limited Partnership. Avdolyan is the beneficial owner of Scartel, according to the court ruling. Irina Belyanova also previously worked at Scartel.
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At the same time, Avdolyan registered WiMax Holding Ltd. together with Dmitry Gordovich, one of the beneficiaries of BBR Bank, and acquired OJSC VMNUTS VTI from another beneficiary, Dmitry Shvetsov, where Shvetsov remained the director. Avdolyan also leased out bank premises in Vladivostok and Krasnoyarsk. All this confirms the information that BBR is, in fact, Avdolyan’s private bank. It was Gordovich who collected data on the financial transactions of Chemezov’s business partner, so Gordovich’s arrest was a major embarrassment for Avdolyan. Gordovich’s lawyers attempted to appeal his detention, but the court upheld the decision, which came into effect on April 8.