Investigation on how the Chekists privatized the national wealth

Mikhail Maglov, Roman Badanin, Maria Pevchikh , Dmitry Sukharev, with participation of Ivan Vasilyev, June 16, 2022

For more than 15 years, a group of Russian secret service officers has been carrying out secret business assignments, from dividing Yukos’ property to acquiring stakes in Gazprom’s most promising assets. Much of the luxury assets acquired by this group of “golden colonels” end up in the possession of Gazprom head Alexei Miller.

“Gazprom is more than just a stock company. The country’s entire economy is largely based on the gas industry,” said President Vladimir Putin a year after he was first elected, in May 2001, when he announced to the team of the gas monopoly that his confidant Alexei Miller had been appointed head of the company. This phrase was true in every sense, even the ones that Putin probably would have preferred to hide. From the first day of his presidency, Gazprom became more than a state company; it became a source of personal wealth for Putin himself and his entourage, including people from the security services.

Unnational treasure

It all began with words about the state benefit. The president announced to Miller that his goal was to regain state control over the gas monopoly . The new president and new CEO of Gazprom began by first establishing personal control over the company. Gazprom’s former management was purged within a year. “The new czar started asking me some pretty interesting questions. So I said: if I don’t keep my place, I’m leaving right now. When Putin heard that I was leaving, he was so happy that he made a phone call right in front of me […] instructing to issue an order,” Rem Vyakhirev, the previous head of Gazprom, recalled in his last interview.

Left to right: Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Deputy Chief of Staff Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin, new President of Gazprom Alexei Miller and the previous head of Gazprom — Rem Vyakhirev, 2001 Source: kremlin.ru

Even earlier than Vyakhirev, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who was head of the Gazprom board of directors, was also expelled from the company. In 2000, Putin replaced him with Dmitri Medvedev, who was then just an obscure St. Petersburg lawyer. Within a year after Miller’s appointment, nine out of eleven other Yeltsin-era directors were removed from Gazprom’s management, one of whom even had to be kept in a detention center for a while. . Putin and Miller’s acquaintances from St. Petersburg and the security services were brought in to fill the vacancies and put in charge of the gas giant’s most important subsidiaries.

Putin’s people at Gazprom ↓

Люди Путина в “Газпроме”

Как росло число людей, связанных с Путиным, в совете директоров “Газпрома”:

1999 — 1

Герман Греф
первый замминистра госимущества. Работал с Путиным в мэрии Санкт-Петербурга. Был назначен в “Газпром” с приходом Путина к власти

Арнгольт Беккер
президент ОАО “Стройтрансгаз”

Рем Вяхирев
председатель совета директоров “Газпрома”

Фарит Газизуллин
зампред правительства, министр госимущества

Владимир Малин
первый зампред Российского фонда федерального имущества

Лев Миронов
глава профсоюза работников нефтяной, газовой отраслей промышленности и строительства

Виктор Тарасов
президент НПФ “Газфонд”, председатель правления Газпромбанка

Виктор Черномырдин
бывший председатель правительства

Вячеслав Шеремет
зампред правления “Газпрома”

Игорь Шувалов
глава Российского фонда федерального имущества

Виктор Щугорев
гендиректор “Астраханьгазпром”

2002 — 5

Герман Греф
первый замминистра госимущества

Алексей Миллер
председатель правления “Газпрома”, работал с Путиным в комитете по внешним связям мэрии Петербурга

Михаил Середа
глава аппарата правления “Газпрома”, бывший заместитель Миллера в Балтийской трубопроводной системе

Дмитрий Медведев
В 90-х работал в комитете по внешним связям мэрии Санкт-Петербурга, председателем которого являлся Путин. С приходом Путина стал председателем совета директоров “Газпрома

Илья Южанов
министр по антимонопольной политике и поддержке предпринимательства, работал в мэрии Петербурга в одно время с Путиным

Александр Ананенков
зампред правления “Газпрома”

Буркхард Бергманн
глава немецкой компании Ruhrgas AG

Фарит Газизуллин
министр имущественных отношений

Александра Левицкая
первый замруководителя аппарата правительства

Борис Федоров
представитель миноритарных акционеров “Газпрома”

Виктор Христенко
зампред правительства

10 марта 2022 — 6

Алексей Миллер
председатель правления “Газпрома”, работал с Путиным в комитете по внешним связям мэрии Петербурга

Михаил Середа
глава аппарата правления “Газпрома”

Андрей Акимов
председатель правления “Газпромбанка”. Предположительно служил в КГБ в одно время с Путиным, работал в Швейцарии, и Австрии под прикрытием вместе с будущими коллегами по структурам “Газпрома” Александром Медведевым и Еленой Бурмистровой

Виктор Зубков
глава совета директоров “Газпрома”. Бывший премьер-министр, бывший зам Путина в комитете по внешним связям мэрии Петербурга. Среди прочих заслуг именно Зубков договаривался о выделении земли для строительства кооператива “Озеро”, где была дача Путина

Тимур Кулибаев
глава совета директоров “Газпрома”. Бывший премьер-министр, бывший зам Путина в комитете по внешним связям мэрии Петербурга. Среди прочих заслуг именно Зубков договаривался о выделении земли для строительства кооператива “Озеро”, где была дача Путина

Денис Мантуров
министр промышленности и торговли, давний партнер друга Путина Сергея Чемезова

Виталий Маркелов
зампред правления “Газпрома”

Виктор Мартынов
ректор РГУ нефти и газа имени Губкина

Владимир Мау
ректор РАНХиГС

Александр Новак
зампред правительства

Николай Шульгинов
министр энергетики

Кроме того, в руководство “Газпрома” (правление и менеджмент важнейших дочерних предприятий) за время президентства Владимира Путина попало множество выходцев из спецслужб, бывших коллег, знакомых и даже родственников главы государства. Среди них:

Михаил Путин
зампред правления “Газпрома”, двоюродный племянник президента России, психиатр по образовани

Елена Бурмистрова
зампред правления “Газпрома”, прежде работала в Вене в компании IMAG вместе с Андреем Акимовым, выходцем из советских спецслужб, знакомым Путина.

Сергей Хомяков
директор службы безопасности “Газпрома”, бывший сотрудник ФСБ.

Сергей Ушаков — предшественник Хомякова на должности директора службы безопасности “Газпрома”, с 1986 года руководил подразделениями КГБ и ФСБ в Санкт-Петербурге, с января 2007 г. — первый замдиректора Федеральной службы охраны. С 2007 по 2012 — советник президента России.

Валерий Голубев
бывший зампред правления “Газпрома”, сослуживец Путина по КГБ. Во время работы в “Газпроме” становился героем журналистских расследований о многомиллиардной коррупции.

Александр Дюков
предправления и гендиректор “Газпром нефть”. В конце 90-х работал с Миллером в Морском порту Петербурга, который в то время контролировался малышевской преступной группировкой, с которой в свою очередь имел связи президент Путин.

Александр Медведев
в 2002—2019 гг. гендиректор “Газпром экспорта». С 2014 по 2019 год — зампред правления ‘Газпрома’. В 90-х годах работал в Австрии и Швейцарии вместе с Акимовым. Согласно публикациям западных СМИ, являлся штатным агентом КГБ.

Юрий Шамалов
президент НПФ “Газфонд”. Старший сын совладельца банка “Россия” Николая Шамалова, старший брат бывшего зятя Путина Николая Шамалова.

Ярослав Голко
первый вице-президент Газпромбанка, член правления “Газпрома” с 2007 по 2014 годы — ближайший знакомый и бизнес-партнер Валерия Голубева, сослуживца Путина по КГБ.

Маттиас Варниг
управляющий директор Nord Stream AG, компании, занимающейся эксплуатацией газопровода “Северный поток”. Бывший кадровый сотрудник министерства государственной безопасности ГДР (“Штази”), с тех пор знаком с Путиным.

Александр Кузнецов
генеральный директор ООО “Газпром комплектация”, зять Марии Ентальцевой — гражданской супруги Алексея Миллера

Юрий Горох
заместитель руководителя аппарата правления ОАО “Газпром”, личный охранник Алексея Миллера

By 2005, control over Gazprom had formally been returned to the state, only to have the gas monopoly’s most lucrative assets soon fall into the hands of people closely tied to Putin.

How Sibur was taken over by Putin’s friends and relatives

Russia’s largest chemical company Sibur was once part of the gas giant, but in 2002 its president Yakov Goldovsky tried to get his business out of Gazprom’s control. Goldovsky was arrested in Miller’s reception room, Sibur was returned to Gazprom, and Goldovsky, who had spent some time in pre-trial detention, fled abroad. But in 2007 Gazprom left Sibur ownership, selling the company to Gazprombank. Gazprombank, in turn, ceded Sibur to a group of private shareholders, including Leonid Mikhelson, Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko, and Kirill Shamalov, former son-in-law of the president.

How Sogaz was taken over by Putin’s friends and relatives

Sogaz is Russia’s largest insurance company, created in 1993 by Gazprom to serve its employees. Beginning in 2004, Gazprom ceded 50% of Sogaz’s shares in several stages to structures affiliated with Rossiya Bank, whose shareholders include Putin’s friends from St. Petersburg and his mistress Svetlana Krivonogikh. As of 2020, Sogaz shareholders included Tatiana and Yuri Kovalchuk, the president’s nephew Mikhail Shelomov, Gazprom, and several individuals also associated with Putin’s inner circle. Read more about how Sogaz was taken over by the right people below.

How Gazfond and part of Gazprombank were taken over by Putin’s friends and relatives

Gazprombank was created by Gazprom in 1990. In 2007, the bank acquired a new shareholder, Gazfond, the largest non-state pension fund. 50% + 1 share of the bank were received in exchange for the block of shares in Mosenergo owned by Gazfond. Gazprom lost control over Gazfond back in 2006. Several unnamed legal entities made a contribution and joined the founding members of the pension fund. It later turned out that the contributors who had received almost 60% of Gazfond were Sogaz and companies affiliated with Yuri Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Rossiya Bank.

How Stroytransgaz was taken over by a friend of Putin’s

Stroytransgaz was founded in 1990 to serve Gazprom’s infrastructure needs. In the 1990s, Gazprom provided Stroytransgaz with 80% of its orders. The company’s main shareholders were the children of Gazprom head Rem Vyakhirev and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. After Vyakhirev was ousted as head of Gazprom, the blocking stake was purchased in the interests of Gazprom by Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov then stated that he had no interest in the deal and conducted it to Gazprom’s advantage. However, in December 2007 the structures of Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko gained control of the company.

How Stroygazmontazh was taken over by another friend of Putin’s

In May 2008, within the framework of getting rid of non-core assets, Gazprom put up for sale controlling stakes in five of its contracting organizations: Lengazspetsstroy, Krasnodargazstroy, Spetsgazremstroy, Volgogradneftemash, and Volgogaz. These companies were bought by Putin’s friend Arkady Rotenberg and merged into one legal entity, Stroygazmontazh.

How Gazprom-Media was taken over by Putin’s friends and relatives

The Gazprom-Media holding company was created in 1998 to manage the media assets, which at the time were owned by Gazprom. In 2001-2002, Gazprom-Media seized the assets of oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, who had fallen into disgrace — this was perceived as an act of political censorship. At present, Gazprom-Media is one of the country’s largest media holdings, controlling the television channels NTV, TNT, Match TV, TV-3 and Pyatnitsa, the radio stations Avtoradio, Yumor FM, Relax FM, Energy, the television production centers Comedy Club Production and Good Story Media, the publishing house 7 Days, the websites RuTube and Sportbox.ru, and the movie company Central Partnership. Gazprom-Media is now effectively controlled by Gazprombank and, through it, by Putin’s friends, among others.

How an employee of Putin and Miller gained control of Gazprom’s oil business

In September 2005, Gazprom bought 75.5% of Sibneft, subsequently renamed Gazpromneft, from Roman Abramovich. Just before the sale, Sibneft’s shares went up by more than 30%, boosting the price of the deal to $13.091 billion. According to former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov, the Russian budget lost at least $6.5 billion on this deal, and the deal itself was “a thank you to Abramovich for his help in the Yukos case.”

Alexander Dyukov and Aleksey Miller, 2016. Source: gazprom.ru

Another acquaintance of Putin and Miller, Alexander Dyukov, was put in charge of Gazpromneft. In the 1990s, he managed the St. Petersburg oil terminal and the St. Petersburg seaport, which at the time was controlled by Ilya Traber, an “influential businessman” who had been acquainted with Putin since the 1990s. Miller also worked at that port after 1996.

All of these mega-deals could not have happened without the approval of the head of Gazprom. Did Miller act only out of loyalty to his boss and his friends or did the head of Gazprom have his own material interest? To answer this question, we will tell you three stories.

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Story 1

How Alexey Miller created a mega-company dedicated to servicing himself

Not all of the Putin era billionaires were native Russians. The most famous example of another kind is Arab Ziyad Manasir, a Jordanian national who has made a spectacular career in Russia, where he moved as a student. In early 2013, at the peak of his career, Manasir’s fortune was estimated at $2.5 billion  — all thanks to the Gazprom contracts awarded to the enterprising Jordanian and his main company, Stroygazconsulting (SGK) .

Ziyad Manasir

When Manasir started working at gas projects in the Tyumen Oblast in the 1990s , he put three jackets on top of one another and wrapped his head with a scarf to protect against the cold and had no prior experience working “up north”. Success came to him through acquaintances. “At first he was dog poor, but then he impressed me with his can-do attitude,” recalls a gas industry worker acquainted with Manasir. Manasir met Colonel General Alexander Grigoriev of the Federal Security Service, who brought him “[to the top] by pulling some strings” .

Ziyad Manasir

Vladimir Putin and Alexander Grigoriev, 70s. Source: kremlin.ru

Grigoriev is one of Putin’s closest friends from his time in the KGB. This officer was known for working against dissidents, in particular, under the guise of the priest “Father Alexander,” keeping an eye on dissent in the church, including supervising the future Patriarch Alexy II, who was listed in reports under the codename “Drozdov.” “If you want to live with the big people, you gotta share,” said our interlocutor who knows Manasir.

Anatoly Tkachuk

Manasir did share: two remarkable persons became co-owners of his growing business: Olga Grigorieva, the daughter of this same Putin’s friend, and Major General of the Federal Security Service Anatoly Tkachuk, who owned no less than 35% of the company. Tkachuk, like Grigorieva, had nothing to do with the gas or construction industries but he did have something to do with intelligence. As an officer of the military counterintelligence of the KGB, Tkachuk worked abroad and in 1986 was sent to the site of the Chernobyl disaster. There he was checking the version of a terrorist attack by foreign special services . In addition to Manasir’s business, Tkachuk was listed as a co-owner or manager of many commodity companies  — such a career looks logical for a “seconded state security officer”. After leaving the equity of SGK, Tkachuk became president of the seemingly inconspicuous RFI-Bank. However, it was this financial institution that was involved in the grand scandal with the Wirecard payment system and its head, Jan Marsalek . Marsalek allegedly cooperated with the Russian secret services and fled to Russia or Belarus after the investigation against him began in Germany.

Anatoly Tkachuk

Not only did Manasir give shares in his company to the right people, he had for years been registering luxury properties designed for Gazprom’s top executives, primarily for Miller, in his name. According to The Project’s calculations, the Jordanian and companies associated with him owned at least a dozen properties associated with Gazprom’s management, including the Millerhof palace complex near Moscow, a country house in Sochi near the Laura ski resort, and many others. It also built and managed real estate objects that were secretly intended for the top state officials. It was SGK that ordered Putin’s palace in Gelendzhik, and in Sochi, Manasir’s company Svod International managed the ski resort where Putin and Dmitry Medvedev like to ski . Everything looked like Manasir could feel secure about his well-being. So much so that he was one of the few guests at the secret wedding of Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova and businessman Kirill Shamalov in 2013.

How Gazprom organized Putin’s skiing vacation in the Caucasus and blood baths in Altai

However, in 2013 the warm relationship between Manasir and Gazprom came to an end . “It was an ideological split,” describes our source in the gas industry. “He was told to do something, and he didn’t want to do it. And he gave up everything according to the list of assets: this went there, that went there and that was it.” If we investigate to whom Manasir’s assets went, it becomes clear who they really belonged to all this time.

A long list of luxurious properties — houses and land plots in the suburbs of Moscow and Sochi, apartments in central Moscow and the buildings of the Millerhof palace complex on Istra — were transferred to legal entities affiliated with a man named Sergei Tregub . Many of these properties are now used personally by Miller and his wife Marina Yentaltseva .

Marina Yentaltseva

Marina Yentaltseva

Like Miller, Yentaltseva began her career at the St. Petersburg city hall, was Putin’s secretary there, and when the latter was appointed president, she moved to the Kremlin, where she headed the president’s protocol for many years.

‘Ydypus complex’ and other complexes of Alexei Miller

There is a huge amount of luxury real estate and companies scattered all over the country — from the Black Sea to the Altai Mountains — that are registered to the entourage of the intelligence officer Sergei Tregub. Many of them are used by the head of Gazprom.

Estate in the Greenfield village

Istra district, Moscow Oblast

Millerhof estate

Istra district, Moscow Oblast

Estate in Znamenskoye

Odintsovsky district, Moscow Oblast

An elite complex of residences “Imperial Yacht Club”

Krestovsky Island in St. Petersburg

Villa on the territory of the Rus health resort

Sochi, Krasnodar Krai

Cottage on the territory of the Grand Hotel “Polyana”↓

Krasnaya Polyana, Krasnodar Krai

Villas in Sochi ↓

Krasnodar Krai

Five-star boutique hotel Gelendzhik-Park ↓

Krasnodar Krai

Шале и лес

Vyborg district of Leningrad Oblast

Ydyp eco-hotel ↓

shore of Lake Teletskoye, Altai Republic

Altai red deer farm ↓

Altai Republic

Ski resort ↓

Krasnodar Krai

Apartments in Moscow ↓

Trubnikovsky Lane, $2,2 млн

Two Mercedes-Maybach S 600 ↓

Even more surprising is that after Manasir’s disgrace, Tregub received not only his luxury real estate, but also a substantial part of his business. Formally, Stroygazconsulting, Manasir’s main company, became part of Gazprom’s so-called “mega-contractor,” Gazstroyprom, after a series of perturbations in 2018. Gazstroyprom subsequently incorporated two of Gazprom’s other major contractors, Rotenberg’s Stroytransgaz and Timchenko’s Stroytransneftegaz. This merger of Gazprom’s own once-sold-out assets was presented as an attempt to save on the gas monopoly’s expenses.

In reality, it looks like one big swindle. Back in 2015, when Manasir’s “legacy” was being divided, almost 75 percent of SGK went to companies associated with Tregub and his patrons. These are OOO Ancord, Intek Group, and Legato, which through a chain of legal entities were controlled by offshore companies, the beneficiary of which is now another person with the surname Tregub, Sergei’s nephew Vadim Tregub.

Vadim Tregub (on the left)

In 2018, some of SGK’s assets began to be transferred out under the umbrella of the Sphera company. It was this part of Manasir’s former business that would become part of the “mega-contractor” by 2019, but SGK itself continued to exist . These are 23 production companies with a total book value of about $746 million. This still considerable business is owned through a chain of legal entities by offshore companies , the ultimate beneficiary of which is the same Vadim Tregub. Some of the SGK companies are terminating their activities, but not all of them. For example, Gaztechleasing stands out, which is still earning money from state contracts by leasing construction equipment, oil tankers, and aircraft. For example, three months ago the Komi Republic authorities allocated 1.8 billion rubles from the budget to pay off the debt to Gaztechleasing.

In other words, the person in whose name the luxury real estate linked to Miller is registered still owns a business that was supposed to be part of Gazprom.

But what about the part of Manasir’s former assets that ended up being merged into Gazstroyprom? It turns out that people, including those acting in Miller’s interests, sold the business to the state company he heads. Some part of the money received in the deal — 34.4 billion rubles  — wound up in the Cyprus-based company Redensy Management (this company will be mentioned later in our investigation). Then, Redensy transferred a significant portion of these funds to the Russian companies Vladenie-V and All-Russian Farmer Center , which, as stated above, nominally own the real estate of Gazprom’s CEO: the palace in Greenfield village and Millerhof, respectively. It turns out that the money paid by the state-owned “mega-contractor” was used, among other things, to arrange for the luxurious life of Putin’s former secretary and his spouse.

Сергей Фурин

However, this is not where the swindle ends either. If you look at the ownership structure of the “mega-contractor,” it turns out that 26 percent of it  is owned by a certain Sergei Furin, who is registered in an ordinary apartment building in Izmailovo . Is this also done to save money, for which purpose the “mega-contractor” seems to have been created? We doubt it. What is sufficient to know about Furin is that he is the personal driver of Sergei Tregub and members of his family .

In other words, the blocking shareholder of Russia’s largest state-owned infrastructure company, which claims 1.4 trillion rubles from the budget a year, is the driver of a man no one knows.

Perhaps Tregub is a big businessman with a long and successful history in the infrastructure business? That is also unlikely. Tregub has as little to do with this business as General Tkachuk. But like Tkachuk, Tregub is also deeply connected to intelligence.

Tregub had been on military service since the 1980s — he supposedly served at the Sary-Shagan firing range in Kazakhstan, where Soviet air defense equipment was tested. He worked for a long time in the Soviet-friendly Syrian Arab Republic in the nineties. He was a military attaché at the embassy in Damascus and dealt with air defense, “I think all the military attachés are affiliated with the GRU,” Tregub’s American colleague of those times, Rick Francona, recalled. In his small edition book, “The Orient is a Riddle. Jerusalem is Sacred,” orientalist Leonid Medvedko names Tregub among “honest servicemen and other intelligence officers devoted to their duty.”

One of the rare photographs of Sergei Tregub. It shows him with Rick Francona, military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, mid 90s

One of The Project’s interlocutors refers to Tregub as “a former resident spy in a Middle Eastern country”. Our spy finished his service in 1997 in the rank of colonel or higher, and in 2006 he was delegated to important business assignments (see next chapter). Since then, he and a group of his former intelligence colleagues, presumably also “honest intelligence officers committed to their duty,” (see diagram) have created an extensive network of shell companies controlling nearly $2.5 billion worth of business assets and property. Tregub holds a significant portion of these assets on behalf of the Miller family.

And Ziyad Manasir is now done with our country . But Manasir did take a piece of Russia, where he was a successful businessman, with him: the Jordanian built the Vikiland mansion in his homeland, which strikingly resembles Manasir’s palace in Greenfield village near Moscow. That same mansion, which overlooks the luxurious palace of Alexei Miller and is once again registered to one of the shell companies of the ubiquitous Sergei Tregub.

The destiny of the agents

The nominal empire of Sergei Tregub is ruled by his colleagues and relatives

Vadim Tregub
Nephew, graduate of the Zhytomyr Military University, where his father used to work for many years. Lives in Cyprus and Dubai. Owns 20% of the Ydyp and Katun eco-hotels in the Altai Republic. Director of the Cypriot company. Redensy Management that owns 99% of the Millerhof palace near Moscow and two apartments in the Arbat district of Moscow.

Akhkubek Akhkubekov
Employee of Gross Group M and former FSB officer. In 2000, he was on board the plane that was hijacked and flown from Makhachkala to Israel, due to which his name appeared in the press. Owns 80% of Ydyp and Katun eco-hotels in the Altai Republic

Gulnara Ustobabaeva
Researcher at the Foundation for the Promotion of Eurasian Integration, worked at a Rosneft subsidiary during the Tregub period, and later at his company Gros Group D. Owned a share of hotels in Altai before Akhkubekov.

Sergei Tregub Jr.
Son, graduate of the Scottish Institute of Business. Owns a red deer farm in the Altai Krai

Valentina Khromova-Tregub
Daughter, works for Villa Michetti, aka Millerhoff

Natalia Lysenko
Former employee of Vympel MIK. Owns apartments at the Imperial Yacht Club complex in St. Petersburg.

Alexander Smirnov
Partner, former fighter of the Vympel special forces unit, participant of the Chechen war. Together with Sergey Tregub he controls: the palace at Greenfield, еру Esto-sadok cottage, two Mercedes-Maybach S 600, a villa at the Rus sanatorium, 11 villas in Sochi, the Gelendzhik-Park boutique-hotel and a forest in the Leningrad region near the villa community for Gazprom executives.

Dmitry Baikovsky
Former fighter of the Vympel special forces unit. Owns 5% of the Sogaz Insurance Group

Andrey Kruglov
Partner, former fighter of the Vympel special forces unit. Together with Sergei Tregub and Alexander Smirnov (! through LLC VNPA-Nedvizhimost × he owns the Voronezh office of Yukos, which they inherited from LLC Prana.

Ilya Girevoy
Former FSB officer, employee of Gross Group D. Manager of a chalet in the Leningrad Region in a settlement for Gazprom top managersvilla community for Gazprom executives in the Leningrad Oblast

Sergey Furin
Driver of Sergey Tregub and his family. Owns a 26% stake in the Gazstroyprom company together with Sergey Filimonov

Sergey Filimonov
is the husband of an employee of Materhorn-Finance, Tregub’s company; Filimonov himself works as the director of Smirnov’s company Summa-Plus. Owns 26% of Gazstroyprom together with Sergey Furin

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Story 2

How the Chekists took over Yukos

To understand how Tregub and his secret service cronies got into the Russian business world and how important their role is, one has to go back to the beginning of Putin’s rule.

Back in 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest man in Russia at the time, told Putin in front of TV cameras about the large-scale corruption in the country. In response, Putin lashed out at Khodorkovsky and his oil company, Yukos. The “Yukos case” was the most notorious political trial of the 1990s — the company’s owners and managers were either jailed or forced to flee Russia, and Yukos property was taken over by state companies. However, it is now clear that some of the Yukos assets also went to a number of private individuals working for Putin’s entourage.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev at the court in Moscow, June 2004. Photo: Tatiana Makeeva / khodorkovsky.ru

When the fate of the Yukos legacy was being decided, Gazprom was for a long time considered the main contender, while Rosneft, which eventually received the majority of assets, was never a favorite, recalls former company shareholder Leonid Nevzlin. The plan changed when Yukos’s Western shareholders began a legal fight over their assets and Gazprom could face legal problems . “They decided not to eat the golden goose that was Gazprom,” confirms Igor Volobuyev, former vice president of Gazprombank . Shortly after the start of Yukos bankruptcy proceedings in 2006, a new manager was appointed to the company — the director of Yukos EP and Yukos-RM, Sergei Tregub, whom we already know. The former Yukos employees interviewed by The Project recall only one meeting with their new boss during which he fired them all. Kommersant wrote at the time that “Tregub acted as a ‘government watchdog, ‘ tasked with preventing the outflow of funds and assets during the ‘interregnum’”.

In the spring of 2007, the sale of some of the Yukos assets began. Rosneft or its affiliated companies won 9 out of 18 lots. But Rosneft lost the auction on lot #13 to an unknown entity called Prana established by a Belizean offshore company. This unknown Prana paid 100 billion rubles ($4 billion) of unknown origins for the lot. Journalists were keen to find out whose interests Prana represented, but no one confessed. A little later, it turned out that Prana too represented Tregub and his associates. .

Just a month after the auction, Prana sold to Rosneft one of the main assets of the lot — a 22-storey building of the Yukos headquarters on Dubininskaya Street. A short time later, Rosneft sold to Gazprom a half of another former Yukos asset — Tomskneft. The sums of the deals are suspiciously similar — Prana bought the Yukos office for approximately the same price as the half of Tomskneft cost to Gazprom . A source acquainted with the circumstances of this transaction tells the following version: Prana acted in the interests of “Gazprom” and then exchanged the purchased asset for half of the production business in Tomsk.

A person involved in the “Yukos case” on the side of the state recalls that in the mid-2000s, Tregub did not work for Miller, but represented someone “higher up”. The interlocutor categorically refused to discuss it further. A source acquainted with Miller put it this way: “The intelligence services and expropriation of Yukos are not at Miller’s level, decisions were made at a higher level.

In other words, intelligence colonel Tregub, a citizen of Russia and Ukraine, and a branched network of nominees associated with him, not only hold assets in Miller’s interests, but have been carrying out sensitive assignments for the country’s leadership for over 15 years.

Prana retained a part of the received Yukos assets and used them in a very curious manner. In particular, Prana ceded the second Yukos office in Ulansky Pereulok in Moscow to Sogaz, the same Sogaz whose owners include friends and relatives of President Putin. Now one of the Sogaz offices is located in the former office of Yukos. Putin’s closest friend Yury Kovalchuk works there during his visits to Moscow .

However, part of Sogaz itself was also taken over by the same mysterious Chekists.

Story 3

How a Chekist linked to Miller got a stake in Russia’s largest insurance business

Alexander Smirnov

Among the people connected to Tregub (see the chart above), who managed the assets of the seized Yukos, was a man with an unremarkable name — Alexander Smirnov. He was a member of Vympel, a special division of the FSB, and participated in the Chechen wars. In the early noughties, Smirnov retired to the reserve and, together with his former colleagues, created a group of companies whose names invariably included the word “Vympel” . As the businessmen write on their website, they specialize in “assistance in resolving corporate disputes and working with troubled assets.”

Vympel squad members connected with Tregub, left to right: Andrei Kruglov, Alexander Smirnov and Sergei Filimonov

Smirnov has a partner, Dmitry Baikovsky, who is, not surprisingly, also from Vympel. . When registering his car, Baikovsky gave the address of his residence as military unit 35690 of the FSB Special Purpose Center, which is Vympel’s base. In November 2017, this man became the director and main shareholder of the small company Orbita Express . This small company acquired 2,5 % of shares of the largest insurer of Russia, the Sogaz group. Since then, Baikovsky’s stake in Sogaz has grown even larger: he now owns 5% of the shares, which may be worth 28 billion rubles. .

Dmitry Baikovsky

One could probably assume that Baikovsky is a successful entrepreneur. But this is hindered, among other things, by the fact that the personal car he registered was a 2005 budget Nissan X-Trail.

Whose shares does Baikovsky hold? Sogaz and Baikovsky did not reply to our inquiries, but a possible clue can be found in the accounts of the Cyprus-based company Redensy Management. At the beginning of 2021, this company received a stake in Sogaz controlled by Baikovsky as collateral, in exchange for which it transferred 3.5 billion rubles to the accounts of the security officer’s company. The company reports that Orbita needs this money to cover loans to companies controlled by Baikovsky himself, as well as the aforementioned Tregub and Smirnov. There are two important facts about Redensy Management itself: it lists as its owner the same Vadim Tregub from Zhytomyr, nephew of Sergei Tregub , and in Russia, it owns the Millerhof estate .

Dmitry Baikovsky

Unknown hero of the Forbes ranking

Sergey Tregub and a group of nominal owners associated with him control shares and stakes in companies worth at least $2 billion. With luxury real estate in their hands (see above), Tregub and his group own and manage about $3 billion in assets.

Stroygazconsulting and related companies, $750 million
The Tregub group controls Stroygazconsulting itself and 22 other companies associated with it  .

Stake in Gazstroyprom, $660 million
26% of the company is owned by OOO MK-3, which is registered to Tregub’s driver Sergey Furin and the former director of the Prana firm Sergey Filimonov.

Gazprom and Sogaz shares, $522.4 million
Redensy Management owns shares in Gazprom worth 2.6 billion rubles and has 5% of shares in Sogaz pledged, which could be worth 28 billion rubles .

Deposit accounts, $136.8 million
According to a 2020 report, the Cypriot company Redensy Management, whose director is Vadim Tregub, the nephew of our spy, keeps more than 128 million euros on a deposit account in Gazprombank, which at current exchange rates equals about 8.7 billion rubles or almost 137 million dollars.

Gross Group D construction company, $3.8 million Belongs to Tregubov’s firm Vladenie-V and has state contracts from the capital repair fund for apartment buildings in Moscow.

Vadim Tregub did not respond to the editorial request for a conversation. His uncle, Intelligence Colonel Sergei Tregub, responded to the offer to talk about Miller’s assets with an expressive emoji:

* * *

In early 2022, Alexei Miller, who had just celebrated his 60th birthday, became a Hero of Labor of Russia. “For special labor merits before the state and the people,” reads the award decree signed by Putin, perhaps the only Russian before whom Miller really has special merits.

Putin rewarding Alexei Miller the title Hero of labor, February, 2022. Source: kremlin.ru

Editor — Roman Badanin

Fact-checking — Ekaterina Reznikova

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