The Shady Scheme of Russian Senator
Dmitry Savelyev, one of Russia’s wealthiest senators, received millions of dollars from a company implicated in a scheme to embezzle money from the Russian budget. This scheme was previously uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky
One of Russia’s wealthiest senators, Dmitry Savelyev, has in the past received millions of dollars in his offshore company’s Swiss bank account. He was one of those who used the company noted in a dirty scheme to withdraw money from Russia, behind which were the organizers of embezzlement from the Russian budget. Their names became known thanks to the famous Sergei Magnitsky case. This was found out by IStories in a joint investigation with Swiss.info.
Millions by shady scheme
In the rating of the richest Russian senators, 55-year-old Savelyev has long held in the top 20. In the mid-1990s he headed Lukoil structures, in 1998–1999 he was the general director of the state-owned company Transneft, which transports oil through trunk pipelines. Then he bought its major contractors.
As Kommersant wrote, Savelyev is close to Sergei Kiriyenko (current first deputy head of the presidential administration and former prime minister), with whom he worked in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. After Transneft, Saveliev served in the State Duma from 1999, and moved to the Federation Council in 2016.
As IStories and Swiss.info found out, from May 2012 to the end of January 2013, almost $8 million (247 million rubles at the average annual exchange rate) came into the account of Savelyev’s offshore company (he was a deputy at the time) and his wife Olga — Green Island Investors Corp in the Swiss bank EFG. The transaction purposes were specified as “loan agreements” and “supply of equipment.”
The money came from Zibar Management, based in the British Virgin Islands, which Hermitage Capital CEO Bill Browder mentioned among the entities involved in a scheme to embezzle 5.4 billion rubles from the Russian budget. The scheme was uncovered thanks to auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for Hermitage Capital and subsequently died in a Russian pre-trial detention center as a result of being held in inhumane conditions, beaten and denied medical care.
Zibar Management has been linked to Dmitry Klyuev, who is considered by the US to be the alleged organizer of the tax fraud scheme known for the Magnitsky case. Klyuev fell under international sanctions in 2014. The accounts of his Universal Savings Bank received the same 5.4 billion rubles stolen in 2007 from the Russian budget through illegal income tax refunds. Klyuyev was able to move some of this money out of Russia using the same Zibar Management.
The 5.4 billion rubles withdrawn from Russia through a chain of shell companies ended up in the accounts of two related offshore companies, Zibar Management and Altem Invest. Their owners were listed as unremarkable Russians Antonina Kazakova and Alexander Ovchinnikov. However, in 2013, employees of the Cyprus-based bank FBME noticed a suspicious connection between the accounts of the two companies, and that Kazakova was answering the bank on behalf of Zibar, even though she formally owned only Altem. In the course of an internal investigation, bank officials concluded that both companies were linked to Dmitry Klyuev and sent their report to the Cypriot anti-money laundering unit (MOKAS).
The fact that Altem and then Zibar paid for Kliuyev’s son’s private school is evidence that Kliuyev may be the beneficiary of the companies. Zibar also paid for services for both Klyuyev’s former and current wife. In addition, Altem paid for Klyuyev’s villa in Dubai, and Zibar transferred money to the accounts of his Belizean companies.
Switzerland dropped the investigation
Following an application by Hermitage Capital, the Swiss prosecutor’s office initially opened a criminal investigation and began looking into transactions, in particular between the Savelievs’ offshore company and Zibar Management. But the proceedings were dropped in 2021. The prosecutor's office decided that since the Savelievs’ company’s account in the Swiss bank was opened only in 2011, three and a half years after the embezzlement of funds from the Russian budget, there could be no claims against the Savelievs.
As part of the same criminal case, in March 2011, the Swiss prosecutor’s office arrested 8 million euros in the accounts of Faradine Systems, owned by Vladlen Stepanov — at the time the husband of tax official Olga Stepanova (both defendants in the Magnitsky case). And although Faradine, according to the prosecutor’s office, opened accounts with Credit Suisse only in March 2010, that is, two and a half years after the crime, this did not prevent it from investigating the origin of the money, coming to the conclusion that it was connected to the embezzlement of 5.4 billion rubles from the Russian budget and deciding to confiscate half of these funds. The Swiss prosecutor’s office refused to explain why the approach to Savelyev’s funds was different.
Based on the responses received by Swiss.info, the position of the Swiss law enforcement agencies did not change even after Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine and after Savelyev was included in the sanctions lists of many countries. At the same time, some Swiss banks began to close accounts of citizens, including those with Russian passports at the same time.
The Savelyevs’ connections to the money that went through Zibar Management can be seen in other transactions as well. Thus, in June 2012, the Turkish construction company Mert Insaat Turizm A.S. received more than 14 thousand dollars (or 470 thousand rubles) from Zibar Management to its account. The purpose of the payment specified services for Savelieva. What kind of services, it was not disclosed. However, a couple of years before that Mert Insaat Turizm acquired a complex of private villas Kiris Villa Park on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, a few kilometers from the resort town of Kemer in Turkey, and actively sold them, local publications said.
In September of the same year, Zibar Management again transferred money in the interests of the Savelyev family. According to the transactions and invoices at the disposal of the journalists, the company paid for the stay of Dmitry Savelyev and nine other people in the luxurious Totaro chalet in the Courchevel ski resort in France during the New Year holidays in 2013. Such a trip cost 127 thousand euros (4 million rubles).
Senator Savelyev and his wife Olga did not comment on the situation.