While our regular subject and modest state billionaire, Vladimir Yakunin, waits for his reappointment as head of Russian Railways, which should have happened two weeks ago, we’d like to treat you to another story about the origins of the wealth of this Koreiko (a reference to a fictional Soviet con man-millionaire) of Putin’s Russia.
It’s a very short and straightforward story, and it shows just how easy it is to make 1 billion rubles a year in Russia (about $28 million at the time; note: this applies only to members of the Ozero cooperative).
There’s this thing called geogrid. You’ve probably seen it while passing a road construction site.
It is widely used in road construction to reinforce embankments, slopes, and so on.
Those with more money even use geogrids to reinforce the banks of ponds at their dachas.
Naturally, geogrids are also widely used in railway construction. Wikipedia tells us: Flat geogrids are used just as extensively in railway construction: geogrids strengthen the railway foundation, reduce the movement of soil particles in the rail ballast, stabilize the ground, reinforce embankments on weak foundations, and ensure the stability of embankments and slopes.
Accordingly, Russian Railways spends a considerable amount of money on geogrids. More every year: from January 1, 2014 alone, contract work for laying geogrids cost the company 1 billion rubles.
Knowing the remarkable entrepreneurial instincts of Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin’s family, and his firm belief that not a single ruble of state money should be spent without sending at least a kopeck his way, we took a look at Russian Railways’ procurement and contractors. That’s when we discovered that one of its contractors holds a genuine monopoly on laying geogrids.
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The company’s name is "INFRATEKH": And this is despite the fact that laying it is hardly rocket science, the work is carried out in different regions of the country, and the market is entirely competitive.
http://www.eav.ru/publ1.php?publid=2012-08a18
Naturally, we became interested in who owns this company. Owning a monopoly contractor in the railway construction sector is any businessman’s dream.
The first thing we found was that once the company had fully established itself and secured its monopoly position, it changed owners in 2013—and since then, things have been going very well for it.
In 2014 alone, INFRATEKH provided services to Russian Railways worth 1 billion rubles, and in every tender the company was the only bidder.
So who is this lucky winner? LLC "INFRATEKH" belongs to the Cypriot offshore company AIS Infrastructure Solutions Limited.
AIS INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS LIMITED is owned by another Cypriot offshore company, VIVAROCCO LTD.
And who owns VIVAROCCO LTD? You can probably already guess.....
THAT’S RIGHT!
Vivarocco is owned by the offshore company VERLYS NOMINEES LIMITED, which we already know as the vehicle through which the Yakunin family registers its assets.
Verlys, owned by Cypriot lawyer Vera Lissotis and her father, is already known to our readers as the holder of a stake in the monopoly for selling electronic rail tickets, the owner of the RGS network of station hotels, and the owner of the lion’s share of other projects handled by Andrei Yakunin’s investment fund VIY Management. In fact, VIY Management itself, according to registry extracts, is wholly owned by two law firms belonging to the Lissotis lawyers.
So we are adding one more block to the remarkable offshore scheme of the family of the great patriot V. I. Yakunin, while Yakunin himself adds another 1 billion rubles to his piggy bank.
There you have it, citizens—learn from this. Never neglect a business opportunity, and work hard. Like Vladimir Ivanovich. You don’t become a musketeer that easily.
PS Of course, regarding all the facts described above, we are submitting crime reports to the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor’s Office, complaints about antitrust violations to the Federal Antimonopoly Service, and materials to the Russian government as the sole shareholder of Russian Railways. If you have any useful whistleblowing information about Yakunin and his dealings at Russian Railways, we would be glad if you sent it to us: https://blackbox.fbk.info
PPS In response to numerous requests, I’m introducing a permanent section called “So what do you propose?”, also known as “How it should be done”: it should be done the way we set out in the draft law "On the Contract System". There we specified that all major contractors must disclose their ultimate beneficial owner. It should not be possible for some company to provide 1 billion rubles’ worth of services while its real owner and beneficiary remain unknown. In this case, of course, he is perfectly well known to us—but not formally. Back then the government threw a fit and rejected our proposal. This example shows why. In the New Russia, we will introduce this rule, and all conflicts of interest involving shady schemes will be clearly visible.
PPPS If you support what the ACF is doing, you can express that in material form.