Sovcombank Co-owner Sergey Khotimsky Invested Millions of Dollars in U.S. Real Estate, and It Avoided Sanctions

“The more donuts pass through our hands — the more powdered sugar sticks to our fingers,” explained Sergey Khotimsky in an interview, describing the workings of the banking market. Khotimsky is a co-owner and first deputy chairman of the board of one of Russia's largest banks, Sovcombank, and formerly a movie producer; in the 2000s, he produced the cult comedy about army service, DMB.

“He’s one of those who conducts business flawlessly. Never stuck his nose up at anyone, always tried to maintain good relations with everyone,” is how a prominent Russian businessman who once made the Forbes list described Sergey Khotimsky in a conversation with IStories.

Sovcombank is among the top 10 Russian banks in terms of assets. It controls a significant share of the entire bank guarantees market in Russia, including providing guarantees for government contracts with the Ministry of Defense. And in 2025, Sovcombank became the only private lender for the most significant state project — the construction of the high-speed railway Moscow — St. Petersburg, stretching 679 km.

On the day Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Sovcombank came under American sanctions along with the largest state banks in Russia. And a month later, when the U.S. Treasury imposed sweeping sanctions against the Russian elite, Sergey Khotimsky, along with his brother Dmitry, another Sovcombank co-owner, and other top managers — chairman of the board Dmitry Gusev, and chairman of the supervisory board Mikhail Kuchmet — were also sanctioned.

American donuts

The sanctions proved painful for the bankers, a joint investigation by The Post and Courier, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and IStories has found.

Sovcombank’s top managers owned mansions at the exclusive Palmetto Bluff resort in South Carolina, USA, with a total value of $22 million (or nearly 1.9 billion rubles at the current exchange rate), according to county property records. In 2019, the resort made headlines — singer Justin Bieber’s wedding was held there.

The first to buy homes in Palmetto Bluff, back in 2010, were Sergey Khotimsky and his then-wife Elena Baskina. In the following years, properties there were acquired by Dmitry Khotimsky and Dmitry Gusev; Mikhail Kuchmet bought a plot that he did not have time to develop.

Due to sanctions, almost all these assets were frozen — this means the government does not seize them, but imposes a ban on any use or transactions involving them. Aside from Sergey Khotimsky’s three-story mansion valued at nearly $6 million (or 500 million rubles at the current exchange rate).

On March 13, 2022 — 11 days before sanctions were imposed against him — Khotimsky transferred this house to his now ex-wife, Elena Baskina, according to county property records. While the homes of Khotimsky’s partners remain vacant, Baskina’s house is being rented out for more than $2,000 a night.

Sanctions also bypassed commercial real estate in the American state of Georgia. According to county property records, from 2014 to 2021, companies affiliated with Khotimsky and Baskina invested more than $37 million (approximately 2.3 billion rubles at the average USD exchange rate on the transaction dates), primarily in commercial properties leased to restaurants and shops.

One of the banker’s tenants, Doug Landau, owner of the popular local pub Neighbor’s, told reporters how he was frightened when he saw Khotimsky on the sanctions list. According to him, he paid about $30,000 a month in rent to a company registered by the businessman. Since companies in Georgia are not required to disclose their owners, Landau had to hire lawyers, who informed him that the company had a new owner.

Landau was unable to find out precisely who replaced Khotimsky, or when.

Perfect timing

Elena Baskina answered the reporters that her ex-husband Sergey Khotimsky completed the transfer of his remaining shares in companies owning real estate in Georgia to her in early March 2022. According to her, as early as the summer of 2021, she and her former husband decided to revisit the terms of their divorce regarding their assets both in the United States and in Russia.

What prompted the banker to give up expensive real estate in the U.S., where he regularly traveled (as confirmed by border crossing data obtained by IStories), remains unknown. Khotimsky did not respond to journalists’ questions.

Sergey Khotimsky and Elena Baskina divorced back in 2018. The former spouses divided their property: Elena Baskina received their shared house in Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina, which was somewhat more modest than the one Khotimsky kept. Baskina soon sold her house for nearly $4 million, according to county property records.

Baskina told reporters that she has lived in the U.S. permanently since 2015: “I wanted all my assets and sources of income to be in the U.S. and under my control in exchange for transferring Russian assets to my ex-husband and waiving child support.”

The entire asset division process took “several months, and the final step was completed just around mid-March 2022,” Baskina explained in her response. And at the end of March 2022, Sergey Khotimsky came under personal U.S. sanctions.

According to Kimberly Donovan, who was deputy director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), during the Russian invasion in 2022, Russian elites were massively transferring assets to family members, close associates, and ex-wives — “two weeks or a month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

“Getting Sovcombank and its executives on the U.S. sanctions list was an expected outcome — it was obvious they were directly connected to the Russian state,” adds Ilya Shumanov, a board member of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International — Russia. “In my view, they were definitely prepared for this.”

At the beginning of 2022, Sovcombank’s management tried to prevent sanctions from being imposed on the bank itself. To this end, they hired the American lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs, one of whose representatives is former U.S. Senator David Vitter. He stated that imposing sanctions on Sovcombank “will have serious negative consequences for the market,” since the bank has “deep ties with the U.S. and Western institutions.”

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Sergey Khotimsky and other Russian bankers mentioned in this article did not respond to our inquiries. In a recent interview with Vedomosti, Khotimsky expressed a negative view of media outlets recognized by the Russian authorities as “foreign agents.”

Elena Baskina answered that the publication of “any claim or insinuation” that she “participated in an attempt to hide assets or arrange false ownership would be harmful and unfair, because it is simply not true.”

Tony Bartelme (The Post and Courier) and Thad Moore (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) contributed to this report.