Some still-unclear maneuvering is going on around Yakunin, the former head of Russian Railways (RZD). Just last Friday, we read the news that Millennium Bank had its license revoked — RZD’s pocket bank, whose board of directors included Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin’s wife, Natalya Yakunina. That same day, there were searches at Sergei Mikhailov’s home, a former member of the RZD board who has been living off RZD advertising and PR contracts for about a decade. And then there was the summons for ACF staff to give testimony.
I don’t want to turn into a political psychic and speculate about what is really behind all these events, who has gone after whom, and how badly the proverbial security hawks have fallen out with the proverbial liberals — or the very specific Yakunin with the very specific Putin. Is there a chance that old man Yakunin, our longtime favorite and a constant subject of our investigations, is finally being seriously targeted? Of course there is.
Yakunin is a symbol of corruption in Russia. If someone decided to design a coat of arms for corruption, it would feature Vladimir Ivanovich in a fur coat and expensive watch, standing in his gatekeepers’ lodge or private chapel, wrapped in a web of endless offshore companies and “traditional values” rhetoric.
You would think there must be some limit to how much one person — or one family — can steal. How many times can they run the same scheme, based on the same principles, using the same people? And how long can such a model keep going?
We have written a great deal about how the Yakunin family business, fronted by the elder son, Andrei Yakunin, is inseparably tied to RZD. First we uncovered a network of station hotels, then electronic train tickets and the booking system, and then geogrids worth 1 billion rubles.
At some point, the younger Yakunin’s penetration into RZD reached unimaginable proportions: you are offered the chance to book a room in Andrei Yakunin’s station hotel through Andrei Yakunin’s payment system, after first buying your train ticket through Yakunin’s payment system as well. There are commissions and service fees everywhere, and everything is routed through the same offshore company.
In fact, we conducted more investigations than this, and some of them remained in ACF’s archives after the resignation of the fur-clad potentate. Now we’re dusting off a few of them. Fortunately, investigating Yakunin’s business and that of his circle is easy and even enjoyable. His offshore empire is set up so crudely that any fifth-grader could expose it triumphantly — let alone an investigator from the Interior Ministry.
As most of our readers will remember, the business of Yakunin’s elder son Andrei is registered to two Cypriot offshore companies — VERLYS NOMINEES LIMITED and V.R.L. NOMINEES LIMITED. This is not guesswork or speculation: all you have to do is study the list of his “projects” on the website of VIY Management, check the owners of the legal entities, and you will find our old acquaintances from Cyprus — the Lysiotis family of lawyers. Yakunin’s estate in Akulino is also registered to an offshore company formally owned by them.
A closer look shows that these offshore companies hold several other interesting assets. You won’t believe it, but all of them are once again tied to RZD.
For example: anyone who has ridden the Sapsan high-speed train has definitely seen this magazine:
It is a monthly publication with a print run of 80,000 copies — nearly a million magazines a year. The magazine may be free for passengers, but they charge quite handsomely for advertising:
This magazine is published by Reklamotiv LLC. The same company also prints the magazine Sakvoyazh SV, which has a monthly print run of 400,000 copies. It is distributed in compartment cars and SV luxury sleeper cars.
Reklamotiv LLC also publishes other railway-related titles and has been working with RZD continuously since 2010.
The owners of this company are hidden behind the Cypriot offshore firm TRUBAN CO LTD. Until recently, TRUBAN CO LTD was the sole owner of Reklamotiv, and only after Yakunin’s resignation was its stake reduced to 18%.
There is no need for a fortune teller to figure out who owns the Cypriot TRUBAN CO LTD. It is the same nominees in whose names all of the Yakunin family’s assets are registered.
But that’s not all.
Like any self-respecting giant state corporation with an unlimited budget, RZD organizes an endless number of useless forums, conferences, and training sessions every year. All of this is handled by a dedicated contractor — Business Dialog LLC. Let’s look at their website:
Since 2012, this company has organized virtually nothing except various railway and other transport-sector gatherings.
Here is Yakunin himself at the “1520 Strategic Partnership” forum organized by Business Dialog:
In the last year alone, Business Dialog LLC won tenders worth 1 billion rubles. The bulk of that money — 677.5 million rubles — came from a single RZD tender for the right to organize Russian Railways’ participation in exhibitions and conferences, as well as to organize, run, and support Russian Railways exhibitions and conferences from 2015 to 2017.
It would be strange if something as lucrative as event management had somehow escaped the grasping paws of the Yakunin family and their inner circle.
According to an extract from the corporate registry, 25% of this company belongs to the Cypriot offshore firm TRUSSLAND CO. LTD.
Who owns TRUSSLAND CO LTD? One guess:
There they are again, our old acquaintances — the nominal owners of the dacha in Akulino and all of Andrei Yakunin’s business. Behind magazines and conferences worth nearly 1 billion rubles stand yet more of Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin’s sons, friends, in-laws, and gatekeepers. We cannot say exactly who holds what share — that is the whole point of nominee shareholders — but it makes absolutely no difference. The Yakunins have latched onto two more perpetual streams of contracts: the press and corporate event management. Corruption in its purest form.
Since Interior Ministry investigators have taken it upon themselves to search and investigate Yakunin’s shady dealings, we are giving them the golden key to his corruption empire — a step-by-step guide and instruction manual.
Look for the Yakunin empire here — in this shabby building in Cyprus:
This is the door to Yakunin’s offshore empire.
Behind it sit two lawyers — a sweet old man pushing eighty, Renos Lysiotis, and his daughter, fashion-world figure Vera Lysiotis, whom we have written about many times.
Formally, on paper, these lawyers are dollar millionaires. In reality, the millionaires are not them but the people on whose behalf Renos and Vera Lysiotis agreed to put down their names and signatures. The lawyers themselves live much more modestly; their firm charges less than €1,500 a year to maintain other people’s companies.
The Lysiotises offer to register any company in the names of nominees — themselves. A document called a trust deed is signed between them and the real beneficiaries. In this way, the nominee shareholders disclaim the rights of actual ownership.
I do not think Russian investigators need to be told that, thanks to the close ties and cooperation between Russia and Cyprus, they can obtain information within a matter of days about the holders of these trust deeds — about who really owns the assets registered to offshore companies. There will be names, signatures, passport details, and bank account information — the lawyers keep all this data on the beneficial owners.
The same kind of information can also be found in the banks where all these companies are serviced. Here’s a hint: check Piraeus Bank and Bank of Cyprus. There must be a reason why the latter’s vice president is Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a KGB lieutenant colonel and a friend of Putin’s — ask him.
In short, given the desire and the political will, Yakunin’s corruption could be exposed fully and irreversibly within two or three months.
And if investigators want to see what the Yakunin family spent its millions of dollars on — besides Akulino and the London estate, of course — here is another of our findings: the sailing yacht *Lady Mariposa*.
Here, in fact, are Vladimir Yakunin’s son, grandson, and granddaughter at the yacht’s helm:
There is hardly anything to investigate here: the Yakunin family does not hide its ownership of the yacht in the United Kingdom at all.
The Yakunins are mentioned as the owners in specialized publications, and even the yacht’s website was originally registered personally to Andrei Yakunin.
And here are the latest routes of the Yakunin yacht. All the most “patriotic” destinations — Kizhi, Valaam, Uglich...
Young Yakunin is quite the patriot in general. Not only is he a British citizen:
He also writes this kind of nasty stuff about Russia:
In fact, this is not all that we have preserved over the years of investigating the Yakunin empire, and we will definitely continue publishing archival investigations. Sooner or later, criminal cases will be opened against Yakunin and his accomplices, and no foreign citizenships will help them escape punishment. To the investigators working on the Yakunin case: good luck and fair winds!
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