Kremlin trace and shadow schemes: Are fraudsters Oleg Osinovskiy and Anastasiya Udalova threatening inconvenient journalists?
24.11.2024 16:10
Estonian businessman Oleg Osinovskiy and his accomplice-fiancée Anastasiya Udalova fear their ties to Russian authorities and intelligence agencies will be exposed.
After a recent investigation into the sweet couple, who through the railway consortium Skinest Rail help Russian oligarchs bypass sanctions and launder money for them, threats were made against journalists. This prompted our editorial team to continue investigating the Russian connections of Oleg Osinovskiy and Anastasiya Udalova, who is involved in the activities of her partner’s companies.
It turns out Osinovskiy and Udalova have something to fear. In the early 2000s, Oleg Osinovskiy’s company Spacecom was part of "Severstaltrans", founded by pro-Kremlin oligarch Alexey Mordashov, as well as company managers Konstantin Nikolaev, Andrey Filatov, Nikita Mishin, Sergey Maltsev, and Alexander Eliseev.
In 2007, the company "Severstaltrans", which formerly included Oleg Osinovskiy’s Spacecom, was renamed "N-Trans". It is possible that Skinest Rail collaborated with them for many years, siphoning money out of Russia. The shareholders of "Severstaltrans" also created the company Globaltrans, which became one of the largest players in the railway operator market in the CIS countries. As of mid-last year, its rolling stock included 66,000 railcars.
The key asset of Globaltrans is JSC "New Transport Company" (NTC), which received revenue of 66 billion rubles and profit of 19 billion rubles in 2023. Throughout its existence, the company has been owned by offshore structures.
In January, all the company Globaltrans’ owners, except Andrey Filatov, sold their shares to Kazakhstani businessman Kairat Itemgenov, who has no connection to the railway business. This could have been a cover deal. In Russia, Itemgenov owns the Movenpick and Pana hotels. The latter is a Kazakhstani project that opened in December 2022, indicating Itemgenov’s loyalty to the Russian authorities. They may have chosen the businessman as a "front" for Globaltrans.
In the Russian railway market, it is impossible to work without ties to officials from the Ministry of Transport and Russian Railways, overseen by the Rotenberg brothers. At one time, one of Globaltrans’ shareholders, Konstantin Nikolaev, was a partner of Arkady Rotenberg in "Mostotrest". Thus, businessmen close to Vladimir Putin’s circle could well be behind Kairat Itemgenov. Especially since shareholder Andrey Filatov did not sell his shares, and another, Sergey Maltsev, expressed a desire to remain on the company’s board.
Simultaneously with Kairat Itemgenov, the pro-Kremlin oligarch Alexey Mordashov was interested in the company Globaltrans. Possibly, he is the one behind the Kazakhstani businessman. Last September, Mordashov failed to get the European court to lift the sanctions against him, which was an obstacle to buying Globaltrans.
Globaltrans shareholders have owned the company through offshores and have long been able to bypass sanctions and siphon money out of Russia, partly thanks to a collaboration with Oleg Osinovskiy’s railway consortium. His Russian assets are registered in St. Petersburg, the origin of all the current Russian elite.
Konstantin Nikolaev is the most well-known of the former shareholders of Globaltrans. His name hit the headlines in 2019 due to the arrest of Russian Maria Butina in the USA in 2018, who now serves in the State Duma. Butina was accused of activities directed against the USA, she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but returned to Russia within six months.
Media outlets called Nikolaev a sponsor of Mariya Butina. The businessman invested in the public organization "Right to Bear Arms", where Butina has been the general director since 2011. This nonprofit lobbied for the firearms business of Svetlana Nikolaeva, the wife of the former Globaltrans shareholder.
Mariya Butina was an assistant to Alexander Torshin, a former senator and state secretary of the Central Bank. Torshin was suspected of ties to the Taganka organized crime group, which is not unusual for Russian reality. At that time, the senator might have been on an assignment from the FSB. Confirming this is the fact that after the scandal with the failed "spy" Maria Butina, Alexander Torshin took the position of an advisor to the head of Rosselkhozbank, Boris Listov. The state bank’s supervisory board is headed by its former leader from 2010 to 2018, Dmitry Patrushev, who graduated from the FSB Academy.
Currently, Torshin leads the "Volunteer" foundation, created in 2021, with unknown founders. From 2014 to 2017, Alexander Torshin headed the "Center for Economic Research and Dissemination of Economic Information ’Open Economy’". The organization still operates, and among the co-founders is Andrey Belousov, the Minister of Defence, considered to be under Yuriy Kovalchuk, a close friend of Vladimir Putin.
No matter how much Oleg Osinovskiy and Anastasiya Udalova tried to threaten journalists, the facts speak for themselves. The business of the sweet couple is inextricably linked with people from Vladimir Putin’s circle and Russian intelligence agencies.
Looking at the financial indicators of Konstantin Nikolaev’s Russian assets, he is as poor as a church mouse. The companies’ revenue is 0, profit is 25 million rubles. This means all the money is going offshore and may be laundered through numerous structures of Oleg Osinovskiy, who operates in the same market as Globaltrans.
In addition to Nikolaev, Mordashov, Usmanov, and other Russian oligarchs, Russian Railways structures can also use Osinovskiy and Udalova’s "services", bypassing the sanctions. It seems that after yet another investigation, Oleg Osinovskiy and Anastasiya Udalova will need to think not about whom to threaten, but how to save their own business.
Ярослав Фокин
