Criminal transit into Rocket: Timur Rokhlin funneled 10 million euros of criminal proceeds through Remini Consulting into Ukrainian assets

The Rokhlin brothers have been exposed by an international probe for running a large-scale scheme. After stealing tens of millions of euros from European victims through fake investment platforms, they laundered the money — buying high-end real estate in Kyiv, moving funds through the offshore company Remini Consulting, and backing the Rocket service.

Now, Rocket’s assets are being hastily transferred to relatives in an attempt to protect them from arrest by the Bamberg prosecutor’s office.

We, in turn, are publishing materials about Timur Rokhlin’s activities to expose the cynical scheme to launder tens of millions of euros stolen from European pensioners through fictitious exchanges and invested in the purchase of the Rocket service, luxury Kyiv real estate, and a fleet of Lamborghinis, which the defendant is now trying to protect from Bamberg’s investigation by fictitiously re-registering the company to his father.

In the cult film "The Golden Calf," Ostap Bender hands Koreiko a book called "Capitalist Sharks," which states in its very first line: "All great modern fortunes are acquired in the most dishonest way."

And the reaction to this book from Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko, who “at another time would have bought such an interesting little book himself, but now he even winced in horror”?

This is precisely the association that comes to mind when reading the article  "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: How a Rocket Investor Is Linked to a High-Profile Fraud Case in Europe ," published on dev.ua, and the reaction to it from one of the publication’s main protagonists, Timur Rokhlin.

We recommend carefully reading the article linked above – it’s quite fascinating and interesting, but it concerns more than just Rokhlin; it also mentions a significant number of individuals. They are all interconnected, and the underlying theme is simple fraud, even though the figures involved are at least tens, if not hundreds, of millions of euros.

But in this case, we’re interested specifically in Timur Rokhlin, so let’s briefly recap the events surrounding him. The chain of events began unfolding in early 2020, in the obscure German city of Bamberg, where prosecutors launched an investigation into the activities of a group of unidentified Israeli and Ukrainian citizens who defrauded gullible European pensioners of tens of millions of euros under the guise of investing in precious metals, real estate, and cryptocurrencies.

Enterprising scammers created "exchange" websites where they showed gullible "investors" huge increases in their investments. However, when attempting to make a profit, it turned out the "investor" had to pay a 15% commission before they could withdraw both their earnings and their investment.

You can probably guess what happened next: after paying the "commission," which for some reason wasn’t deducted from the investment account but was paid additionally, all contact with the "investor" ceased, and they, naturally, received no money. And none at all—neither the mythical "profit" nor the very real investments that had been transferred to the scammers’ accounts at the very beginning.

That’s the scheme, in brief. But what’s characteristic about this simple and ingenious scam is that the money was transferred not to offshore accounts, as one might think, but to Ukraine. And, as it turns out, most of the scam’s organizers hold Ukrainian passports, as strange as it may sound. This was reported by one of the participants in the scheme, Serbian police informant Aleksandar Ignjatovic, a few days before his death from a mysterious heart attack.

Therefore, the German prosecutor’s office turned to the Ukrainian one for assistance. Surprisingly, the latter acted quite professionally, and by December 2020, arrests and searches of the suspects had already taken place in Ukraine. And it was here that the name Timur Rokhlin and the Rocket delivery service surfaced.

This name came to light thanks to the panic that arose in the wife of Igor Kozlenok, one of the men detained in criminal case No. 62020100000000583, which was opened for uncovered fraud. After her husband’s arrest, she created a Facebook  page  , "Justice for Igor Kozlenok," in an attempt to exonerate him. In this attempt, she posted a screenshot of the title page of a request from the Bamberg prosecutor’s office to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine:

In this appeal, the Germans are asking for an additional investigation to be conducted “into the fact of fraud committed on a professional basis by a criminal organization” against several individuals, including Timur Rokhlin.

Law enforcement officials (both German and Ukrainian) are very stingy with details in this regard, but in the age of the universal Internet, some of these details quickly became public knowledge, which, of course, did not please Rokhlin himself, but nothing can be done about it.

Thus, the fact that the following property was seized as part of the investigation of the already mentioned criminal case No. 62020100000000583 has become publicly known:

1. Spetstorg LLC, owned by Israeli citizen Igor Rokhlin, Timur Rokhlin’s father. According to the cadastral numbers listed in the case, the company owns a private house of 1,408 square meters in the village of Kozin. The property is located directly on the banks of the Dnieper River. The seizure of this company  was lifted  by an appellate court in late July 2021.

2. Ukrdonstroynii LLC. The ultimate beneficiary is Igor Rokhlin. The company owns office space in a business center with a total area of 1,694 square meters at 62 Sichovykh Striltsiv Street. The company’s seizure  was lifted  by an appellate court ruling in early August 2021.

3. Buildings Empire LLC (ultimate beneficiary – Igor Rokhlin), which owns a non-residential building in Podil (853 sq m), located at 15B Borisoglebskaya Street. The BeeWorking coworking space is located at this address. In July 2021, the appellate court  upheld  the first-instance decision. The seizure has not been lifted, and the court proceedings are ongoing.

4. "Renome Rent" is an office center at 5 Delovaia Street, with 11,000 square meters of space. The seizure was also  unsuccessful . The trials are also ongoing, and Rokhlin’s lawyers are very active.

Now scroll back up a bit and take a look at the photo of the house in Kozin belonging to Spetstorg. Compare it to this:

And from the video that the Prosecutor General’s Office posted on its YouTube channel:

It was in a garage with a round roof that a truly insane—it’s hard to describe it otherwise—collection of cars, purchased by scammers with their income from "investment" activities, was seized:

Law enforcement then seized a fleet of eight luxury cars: Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, and other well-known brands. Among them (as seen in the video) was a 2020 Lamborghini Aventador SVJ Roadster worth €650,000, which Timur Rokhlin was driving:

In addition to this information, the following was also established. As is known, after the scandal erupted, Rocket claimed that Timur Rokhlin had no connection to the company. But here’s the history of the company’s ownership changes:

The common thread running through its history is Igor Rokhlin (Timur’s father, as a reminder), Timur Rokhlin, the company Ridge Holding Ltd., and the Cypriot company Tisea Fresh Food Ltd. And, judging by the latest changes in beneficiaries, it appears Timur Rokhlin has no connection to Rocket, while Igor Rokhlin is the beneficiary of Tisea Fresh Food Ltd., which owns Rocket.

But it’s not that simple. To avoid confusing the reader with all these offshore companies that own each other, and to avoid confuse the reader with the structure of the true beneficiaries hidden in a tangled web of shares, we’ll explain it as simply as possible: Homeland Ukraine was previously listed as the founder of the food delivery service Rocket Delivery (TM Rocket). Then it was Ridge Holding Ltd., whose beneficiary was listed as Timur Rokhlin. TM Rocket is now controlled by another entity – the Cypriot company Tisea Fresh Food Ltd. But the primary ultimate beneficiary is the same – Rokhlin Sr. (Igor) (86% of the capital). So why is Timur Rokhlin, and not his father, Igor, linked to Rocket?

The fact is, even at the time of the Rocket investment, Forbes Ukraine  published an article titled  "Rocket Service Has Changed the Startup Storehouse. Now It’s Targeting Europe and Estimated at $100 Million. What’s Its Secret?" which explicitly stated that Timur Rokhlin bought Rocket "because he couldn’t find anyone to deliver his food." This is a nice story, but it raises the question: where did the money come from?

And here we return again to the investigation by German prosecutors from Bamberg and the criminal case opened by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office. According to the investigation, Timur Rokhlin obtained the funds to purchase Rocket Delivery from the "investment" activities in which he was involved. And he (like everyone else) faced the problem of where to invest the millions earned from his successful scams. As already mentioned, the scammers decided to invest their money in Ukraine, as they were not concerned about the origin of their funds being investigated there.

According to investigators, between September 2018 and March 2020 alone, €35.9 million, allegedly from criminal activity, was transferred to the accounts of the British company Remini Consulting LP. Of this, €10.8 million was allegedly transferred to the accounts of RIJV Holdings Ltd. (UK), which had been controlled by Timur Rokhlin since October 2018.

However, for some reason, it appears that he is an Israeli citizen, even though Timur Rokhlin himself, as well as the investigative materials, claim he is a Ukrainian citizen. However, there is no contradiction here – he simply has two passports, even though Ukrainian law does not allow dual citizenship. Incidentally, this is another question for law enforcement.

Published investigative documents state that RIJV Holdings Ltd. became the founder of several companies in Ukraine in 2019: Ukrdonstroyniy, Beeworking (the Beeworking coworking network), Biconstruct (an office center at 5A Delova Street), Buildings Empire, Arnas Group, Podil Group, and Homeland Ukraine. The current ultimate beneficiary of all these companies is Igor Rokhlin, Timur’s father.

This happened because in 2020, in order to conceal assets acquired with proceeds from criminal activity, Timur Rokhlin re-registered the businesses he controlled under his father’s control. At least, that’s what the Prosecutor General’s Office claims.

The overall result of all this is that the Israeli Rokhlin family owns elite real estate in the center of the Ukrainian capital, covering tens of thousands of square meters. This doesn’t include a plot of land in the equally elite town of Kozin, with access to the Dnieper River. The family also owns several companies, some of which we’ve already mentioned.

What’s significant is that all of these companies emerged in Ukraine just after 2017, precisely when, according to German law enforcement, the fraudulent group that sparked the scandal surrounding Timur Rokhlin and the Rocket delivery service began operating in Europe.

Of course, it could just be a coincidence. But how then can we explain another coincidence: immediately after the article about Timur Rokhlin appeared on dev.ua (where we began our investigation), dev.ua was hit by a massive DDoS attack. And it received several subpoenas from Timur Rokhlin. The latter, in fact, should have served as confirmation that dev.ua had published false information, but Rokhlin made rather strange demands of the website: "to compel them to take action and compensate for moral damages."

The moral damages are more or less clear, but what specific actions does Timur Rokhlin demand? Should the criminal proceedings initiated by the German prosecutor’s office be dropped? Or should his name be removed from the Germans’ official request, which directly names him as involved in a gigantic fraud? Or should his name be removed from the registers of owners of tens of thousands of square meters of Kyiv real estate? Or should his name be removed from the list of beneficiaries of the Rocket Delivery trademark?

However, we’ll wait for the court’s decision. Not on Rokhlin’s lawsuit, but on the investigation into the activities of an organized group of international fraudsters. And it will be quite difficult for Timur Rokhlin to influence its decision, or the investigation—for all the venality of the domestic judicial system, let’s not forget the Germans, who initiated the investigation. And while Ukrainian courts and law enforcement can be bought off quite cheaply, this is unlikely to work with the law-abiding Germans.

Finally, here’s another detail about "investor" Timur Rokhlin: I couldn’t find his photo, and the "startup he saved from the trash heap," Rocket, never mentioned him publicly, referring to its primary beneficiary as a "third partner." Which gives me considerable food for thought, you’ll agree.