While we were busy with the election campaign, someone was lying low in his fur vault, right between a chinchilla coat and an orange railway track inspector’s vest trimmed with precious sable.
He’s sitting quietly, thinking everyone has forgotten about him.
Not so — we forget nothing, because we write everything down in the Black Notebook. As promised, we are examining every piece of this scheme in meticulous detail.
http://navalny.ru/yakunin/ Today, the Anti-Corruption Foundation is ready to explain to the general public why the hotel branch of Vladimir Yakunin’s business empire and that of his family is criminal. And why the whole family should be put on trial. So, the hotels. In a statement to Reuters, Russian Railways said that there are no business ties between Andrei Yakunin and the state monopoly. "As for the financial interests of Russian Railways OJSC and its president in the companies you named, there are none." "Of course, we looked into Andrei Yakunin’s background and know that his father is the head of Russian Railways. However, they assured us that there is an impenetrable wall between the investment company that owns the Regional Hotel Chain and Russian Railways." Source Wow, an impenetrable wall. Well then, let’s take a look at what kind of wall this is. For this analysis, we will use only the publicly accessible SPARK database. Anyone can verify our findings. There are 15 hotels. We studied all of them carefully, and here is what we found. The general scheme looks like this:
http://navalny.ru/yakunin/hotels/ - a convenient interactive chart with explanations http://maps.yandex.ru/?um=A2J8mtat0u1k1iyDQbXy70PrBwVqlXNP&l=sat%2Cskl%2Csat - Yakunin’s hotels on a Yandex map It all begins in 2009, when Regional Hotel Chains LLC, together with the Cypriot company Gauntmont Limited, creates 15 Russian companies. Each is called RGS + city name LLC, has charter capital of 9,000 rubles, and is registered at the same address in St. Petersburg. For those who plan to check the records: Gauntmont Limited is the old name of the Cypriot offshore company now known as Regional Hotel Chain (RHC). Next, according to Andrei Yakunin himself, a "rigorous selection process" is held to choose a real-estate acquisition consultant, and every single time it turns out to be (SURPRISE) Zheldoripoteka, a Russian Railways subsidiary. What exactly Zheldoripoteka’s consulting services consisted of is anyone’s guess. We assume that Zheldoripoteka was in fact the seller of the land — today, the land on which the hotels stand, or are planned to stand, is owned by the corresponding RGS companies from point 1. Between mid-2009 and the end of 2012, 12 RGS companies issue additional shares. This is how the project is financed. The total amount invested comes to 3.6 billion rubles (about €72 million at the time). The shares are bought by the Cypriot Gauntmont Limited (RHC) and RVM Capital Management Company CJSC, which provides most of the funds. After that, events develop according to two scenarios. For some hotels (4a), the stake owned by RVM Capital Management Company CJSC is sold to a certain Regional Hotels LLC. In other LLCs (4b), RVM Capital Management Company CJSC sells its stake to the only other founder — the Cypriot Gauntmont (RHC). In both cases, RVM exits the project, but it does so in different ways. In those hotels where RVM’s stake goes to Gauntmont, it is soon sold to TransFinGroup Management Company CJSC. At first glance, it just looks like a scheme: buy, finance, sell. But it is worth taking a closer look at who is selling these hotels to whom. The same points as above, but now with details. Watch closely. The same scheme as above, but with specific people overlaid onto it.
The development project for these 15 hotels was devised by the investment firm VIY Management. Andrei Yakunin does not hide the fact that he owns VIY, nor that VIY manages the Regional Hotel Chain. In fact, both Gauntmont (RHC) and VIY belong to the same offshore company, VERLYS. Until October 2010, Andrei Yakunin’s partner in VIY’s London office was a man named Sergei Orlov. Why does this matter? Judging by the dates, the hotel construction project was being developed precisely when Sergei Orlov was his partner in London: he could not possibly have been unaware of such an ambitious project. About that "rigorous selection process" and Zheldoripoteka. The consulting that led to the successful acquisition of 15 sites by the RGS companies was carried out by Zheldoripoteka after 49% of it had already come under the ownership of RVM Capital Management Company, whose director is still Sergei Orlov. From 2006 to 2013, Sergei Orlov also sat on Zheldoripoteka’s board of directors. Returning to the question of affiliation: the consulting services for the sale of the land — and most likely the sale itself — to Andrei Yakunin were provided by a company on whose board sat his London partner Sergei Orlov, while 51% of that company was owned by Russian Railways OJSC. Our businessmen also obtained mortgages on some of the hotels from KIT Finance, a bank owned by Russian Railways. Investment in the hotels. A hotel construction project obviously requires substantial funding. Where did the money come from? The same London partner, Sergei Orlov, CEO of RVM Capital Management Company, invested more than 2 billion rubles (about €40 million at the time) in financing the hotel construction. Sale of RVM Capital’s stake. As described above, RVM’s stake either goes directly to Regional Hotels LLC or returns to the Cypriot Gauntmont (RHC), which in 2013 sells it to TransFinGroup Management Company CJSC. Almost forgot: the managing director of the Cypriot Gauntmont is Sergei Bashkov. Readers already know him as the director of the company to which Yakunin’s dacha in Akulino is registered. In other words, the director of the fur vault. Now for the most interesting part. After all these reshufflings, who ends up with the lion’s share of the hotels? Until May 2013, Regional Hotels LLC belonged to RVM Capital. In other words, from one pocket to another. But quite recently, Regional Hotels LLC was sold to TransFinGroup Management Company CJSC. So, 12 hotels into which RVM Capital invested ended up, in varying shares, with TransFinGroup. And who exactly are they? It is easy to see from the chart that TransFinGroup is controlled by the non-state pension fund Blagosostoyanie. (source) This is a fund wholly owned by Russian Railways, into which the pension savings of not only all Russian Railways employees are paid, but also, for example, employees of Uralvagonmash. Under this control structure, where Blagosostoyanie controls more than 50% of it (directly or through subsidiaries), TransFinGroup may formally be a “management company,” but in reality it likely manages very little independently. They invested where they were told to invest. The chairman of Blagosostoyanie’s board of directors is Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin. And until 2013, one of the board members was... Sergei Orlov.
Now let’s sum it up. a) In 2009, two London partners at VIY — Andrei Yakunin and Sergei Orlov — decide to launch a hotel chain. b) They choose as their consultant — or rather, seller — Zheldoripoteka, where on one side the director and owner are Sergei Orlov and his company RVM Capital, and on the other side, Russian Railways. c) They buy land near railway stations that previously belonged to Russian Railways. d) They raise financing by selling shares in the companies to Sergei Orlov and RVM Capital. e) They later sell those shares to TransFinGroup, which is controlled by the Blagosostoyanie non-state pension fund, on whose board Sergei Orlov sits and which is chaired by Vladimir Yakunin. As for the terms of the deal, the difference between the purchase and resale prices, and who profited from this scheme, one can only speculate — and that is perhaps the most interesting part of the story. So in the end, the pension savings of Russian Railways employees and other members of Blagosostoyanie — 3 million people in all — were spent on buying hotels from the son of Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin, the chairman of Blagosostoyanie’s board and head of Russian Railways. The Anti-Corruption Foundation can hardly keep track of all the violations by the Blagosostoyanie pension fund in this hotel story alone. There is the blatant conflict of interest, the legal cap prohibiting a non-state pension fund from investing more than 20% in a single company (two lots of 19.9% plus 10.1% somehow stubbornly do not add up to 20%), and much more besides. The Anti-Corruption Foundation’s lawyers are already working on all of this. Expect a close examination from us of Blagosostoyanie’s activities, and a flood of questions for them. But for now, just a few facts. According to information on Blagosostoyanie’s website, 718,000 railway workers are currently members of the pension fund. 718,000 people. In addition, employees of Uralvagonzavod, Federal Passenger Company OJSC, and Lokomotiv LLC participate in its corporate program. Total: 2,950,000 people. This remarkable unanimity is easy to explain: enrollment in the fund is effectively mandatory when people are hired. Not only can you not refuse to join, you cannot leave without a scandal with HR.
These are the wonderful notices we received from Russian Railways. Let me sum it up in very simple terms: "Yakunin’s son’s ‘hotel business’ works like this: with the help of Russian Railways structures, he takes Russian Railways land, builds hotels on it using Russian Railways financing, and then sells them to the Russian Railways pension fund, which contains the money of 718,000 former and current Russian Railways employees. What a wonderful business, right? And what a towering ‘impenetrable wall’ there is between Russian Railways and Yakunin’s son’s business.
What a field day this could be for the FSB (Federal Security Service) and the Investigative Committee! All they have to do is check the price at which the Russian Railways land was bought, how much was actually invested in construction, and at what price it was "dumped" back. Why was this enormous chain of resales needed in the first place? Three hundred volumes of criminal case files. If, of course, anyone is interested in investigating it. P.S. And now a bonus unmasking for those who made it to the end. About a year ago, the Regional Hotel Chains website posted information about the chain’s purchase of the Marriott Courtyard hotel in Moscow, on land adjacent to Paveletsky railway station. After follow-up questions from Vedomosti, the press release was rewritten. It had claimed that the hotel was managed by Yakunin Jr.’s company. An RGS representative now says the information about the purchase of the Marriott was a mistake; the hotel is merely under management, she repeats. Here is the hotel in question (8,000 sq. m, 171 rooms)
And indeed, according to the cadastral records, the hotel and the land beneath it belong to an obscure company called Fortuna CJSC. So perhaps it really was a mistake? Let’s take a closer look at this “mistake”:
It turns out that the Cypriot owner of Fortuna CJSC belongs to three companies controlled by Andrei Yakunin. As attentive readers may remember from the July chart, Verlys and VRL also own the British and Russian VIY Management, the Regional Hotel Chain, and even Tristar Holdings, which built the Four Seasons hotel in the House with Lions in the very center of St. Petersburg. So that is what “merely under management” means. This large, beautiful, expensive hotel also belongs to the Yakunin family. When you walk past it, remember that. Once again, the Anti-Corruption Foundation is sending reports of crimes committed by the family of Russian Railways chief Vladimir Yakunin to the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the FSB. Once again, we demand Yakunin’s suspension from office until the investigation is complete. As usual, we ask everyone to help spread this information. The country should know its heroes.