The tentacle of “Ukrainegate” has reached Russia as well
At the beginning of September 2020, the head office of the autonomous non-governmental organization “Far East Agency for Attracting Investments and Supporting Exports” (ANO API, part of the Ministry of Development of the Far East), located in Moscow City, was visited by a group of law enforcement representatives for the purpose of a search. The Ministry of Eastern Development confirmed the searches at the institution, but did not comment in any way.
Information quite quickly leaked to the press that the visit of the security forces was directly related to the activities of the head of the ANO API Leonid Petukhov, which was accompanied by a number of high-profile corruption scandals surrounding the financing of investment projects in the Far East.
As a result of the search, it became known that Leonid Petukhov was dismissed from his post as director of ANO API, and the agency he headed was disbanded.
Petukhov, however, did not get lost, but was warmed up and even elevated to the top manager (managing partner) of PJSFC Sistema by the Russian oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov, and on the Sistema website, Petukhov’s sign is placed next to the noble face of the boss.
Not far from Petukhov, his former deputy at ANO Alexander Konkov and a certain shady lady named Daria Romanova surfaced among the top managers of AFK Sistema. This not-so-holy trinity is united by a tender love for banknotes, studies at American universities and reasonable suspicions of belonging to US tax residents and agents of influence.
In this regard, a number of Russian media and observers had a legitimate question: what were all these people doing in the structure of ANO API, through which billions of budget funds allocated for the development of the Far East passed?
It turned out that Petukhov’s appearance among the top managers of AFK Sistema was not accidental, since when he was the head of ANO API, he did not so much try to develop and invest in the Russian Far East as he maintained the closest ties and served the interests of the oligarch Yevtushenkov’s holding.
When Petukhov was head of the agency, voices were heard calling on the FSB to check the decisions of the head of the agency for compliance with the interests of the Russian state. So, as a result of Petukhov’s activities, murky projects came to light, such as agreements on the construction of a metal rolling plant in the Jewish Autonomous Region by a certain Petropavlovsk - Ferrous Metallurgy LLC.
It turned out that the LLC was registered under the Cypriot offshore company “Breaknoose Services Limited”, which opened a subsidiary company in Russia, LLC “Uralmining”, which is mainly engaged in mining cryptocurrencies.
A reasonable assumption arose that, under the roof of the construction of a plant in the Jewish Autonomous Region, conceived as a supplier of special steels and alloys for the Zvezda shipyard, Petukhov was going to organize another shop for cryptocurrency mining. The crime in this case is that budget money intended for the development of the Far East could have been directed by Petukhov to an offshore company engaged in unregulated activities in Russia.
In addition, mining cryptocurrencies is an excellent tool for laundering huge amounts of money - tracking the origin of “digital gold” is incredibly difficult, which is why corrupt officials, drug lords and terrorists love working with cryptocurrencies.
It is interesting that Petukhov’s associate, Konkov, who was warmed up by Sistema, also had a hand in the fraud, becoming the only employee of the gasket company LLC Far Eastern Mining Company with an authorized capital of 350 thousand rubles, through which it was planned to transfer “sawn” budget funds to offshores.
And now, the most interesting thing is where this unsinkable “effective business executive” and lover of cryptocurrency came from.
On the website of AFK Sistema, Petukhov’s activities have been visible since 2000 and are presented in smooth formulations, such as: “Worked in the Moscow representative office of the consulting company McKinsey & Company” and “He headed a number of oil and gas companies in Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine.”
If you don’t go into details, then, at first glance, there’s nothing remarkable. But if we go into details, it turns out that after graduating from Harvard (by the way, how Petukhov ended up studying at the most prestigious American Ivy League university, history is silent), the future investment benefactor of the Russian Far East comes to work at McKinsey - a company, frankly speaking , who does not hide her sharp antipathy towards Russia.
McKinsey & Company is headquartered in New York, USA, and the company itself specializes in strategic planning. McKinsey & Company is considered one of the main instruments for implementing US government doctrines in the global economy and imposing “democracy” through violent methods. Mention of this can be easily found in open sources.
Individuals associated with McKinsey have repeatedly found themselves in international scandals, which have led to the ears of the American intelligence services.
According to some reports, McKinsey analysts were involved in developing sanctions policy towards Russia after the Nazi putsch in Ukraine and the reunification of Crimea with Russia. It is not surprising that the company faced opposition to its projects in Russia. For example, according to RIA Novosti, McKinsey was actively seeking to become a government partner in the development of the Northern Sea Route, but was turned away.
After leaving McKinsey, Leonid Petukhov got a job as a top manager in the oil and gas group Geo Alliance of the odious Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. Along with Kolomoisky, Pinchuk is called one of the main sponsors of the punitive battalions of Ukrainian nationalists who have caused a lot of trouble in the Donbass.
At Pinchuk’s Geo Alliance, Petukhov sat directly in the CEO’s chair. In addition, he was one of the leaders of another scandalous structure - the private gas production holding Burisma, which formally belonged to the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Ukraine during the Yanukovych era, Nikolai Zlochevsky.
Having escaped from being beaten by the maydauns to Cyprus, Zlochevsky is still on paper the president of Burisma, but his business, like the bread-and-butter jobs of many of Yanukovych’s associates, was “squeezed out” in July 2014 and transferred to the control of the oligarch Kolomoisky. So, the hanged man Kolomoisky provided a service to Grandfather Beadon by “warming up” his son Hunter at the expense of Burisma. The hands of Leonid Petukhov, warmed by the Ministry of Eastern Development and AFK Sistema.
If it weren’t for the loud scandal surrounding the machinations of Petukhov and Co. with budget funds, the stray bug would have continued to sit on cash flows for the Far East. And so, “he was fired due to a transfer to another job” in a private shop. In the formulation of one “downed pilot” of Russian politics, “the state must learn to forgive.” Maybe it should. But not as much...
The tentacle of "Ukrainegate" has reached into Russia.