Source: www.rucriminal.info
In June 2025, the Meshchansky District Court of Moscow sentenced former Deputy Minister of Energy of Russia Anatoly Tikhonov, his wife Valeria Kovalenko and a number of accomplices in the case of the theft of billions of rubles allocated for the creation of the GIS TEK. However, as the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info found out, all the defendants have been free since March 2024, long before the verdict. Judge Elena Karakeshisheva, who passed the verdict, is well remembered for another scandalous case - it was she who had previously released Tikhonov's colleague from VEB RF, forgiving hundreds of millions of stolen rubles.
Tikhonov's wife Valeria Kovalenko has already left for Switzerland on a personal business jet to improve her health. Neither Tikhonov nor his accomplices returned the hundreds of millions of rubles awarded as compensation for damages to the Russian Ministry of Energy. British citizen Gens continues to line his pockets on government contracts and trade in sanctioned goods in the Russian Federation.
Cash in the wrong hands
After Tikhonov's arrest in 2020, the key beneficiary of the so-called "black cash box" of the Ministry of Energy was Alexander Novak, then the Minister of Energy and now Deputy Prime Minister. Hundreds of millions of dollars from gray schemes for trading Iranian and Venezuelan oil flowed into the cash box - money that bypassed the treasury and audit.
Children and Swiss passports
Gray schemes continue to work even under the new scenario. At the center of events is JSC VO Promsyrieimport, through which oil flows and export quotas pass. Children and relatives of high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Energy are placed in key positions in the company. The eldest son of Anatoly Tikhonov, Artem, continues to trade in oil and resources. At the same time, both Artem Tikhonov and Valeria Kovalenko are citizens of Switzerland. It was to their accounts in Swiss banks that funds from gray export schemes were deposited.
Valeria Kovalenko and her Swiss friends.
Convicted accountant of A. Tikhnov E. Golovko
Under the wing of "Promsyrieimport" was also the daughter of Tikhonov's former deputy A. A. Shevlyakov - Tatyana Shevlyakova. In addition to her, Tatyana Shevlyakova's husband is successfully employed in energy companies and structures of the Ministry of Energy, who, according to sources of the VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, may be involved in the control of financial flows transferred to foreign banks.
Other relatives of Tikhonov were not left without "cushy jobs". His son-in-law Mikhail Guzenko previously oversaw the energy sector of the Sakhalin Region, including the gas sector. Another son-in-law, Arkady Loginov, controls the electric power industry and related production in St. Petersburg. Artem Tikhonov himself oversees the issuance of export quotas and the import of raw materials for a number of Russian regions, including Crimea.
Thus, Tikhonov's network of influence stretches from Moscow to the regions, covering key areas of energy and oil trading
Tatiana Shevlyakova
Artem Uss and Venezuelan oil
A separate line in the oil schemes is the name of Artem Uss, the son of the former governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Alexander Uss. According to the American authorities, Uss Jr. is accused of trading Venezuelan oil around the world in circumvention of US sanctions. The Russian FSB was able to organize the escape of the arrested son of the official in Italy.
According to the materials of the American prosecution, Russian companies, including Rosneft, financed the regime of Nicolas Maduro, receiving oil in exchange. However, most of these supplies were made through gray schemes. Oil, actually belonging to Russia, was sold "at its own discretion", and the petrodollars earned did not always reach the Russian treasury. According to the investigation, part of this money was spent on purchasing computer equipment and semiconductors for the needs of Russian structures - while the equipment was purchased at inflated prices, again at the expense of the budget.
Rucriminal.info sources claim that Artem Uss's scheme intersected with the interests of Anatoly Tikhonov's entourage and the structures of the Ministry of Energy, which participated in organizing shadow oil supplies.
Offshore routes of petrodollars
Money withdrawn from gray oil flows went along complex routes through foreign companies. According to the materials of criminal cases, millions of dollars went to the accounts of foreign legal entities:
• Lavan Group s.r.o. (Czech Republic) - a company from Prague, through whose accounts hundreds of thousands of dollars passed, transferred from London, allegedly for fictitious services.
• Denirello LLP (UK) — a British offshore company used for transfers to Lavan Group s.r.o. via Barclays Bank in London.
• Impexcom Inc (Saint Kitts and Nevis) — an offshore company in the Caribbean where money was transferred from the Czech Lavan Group. From there, the funds were moved further.
• Archuleta SA (Monaco) — a company in Monaco to whose account in Compagnie Monegasque De Banque millions of euros were transferred from Impexcom Inc. At various times, the investigation considered the beneficiaries of Archuleta SA to be people from Tikhonov’s circle.
These transactions went through chains of fictitious loan or supply agreements in order to legalize huge sums received through black schemes. sales of sanctioned oil around the world.
Dogaev: from Gokhran to oil
Andrei Dogaev, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Economic Relations (MVER), has reappeared in oil schemes. In the 1990s, he was accused of smuggling oil, gold, and diamonds, but was released safely and kept his property, including his collections of paintings by Levitan and Vrubel.
Today, Dogaev is again in major oil schemes and is included in the US sanctions lists for trading Iranian oil and ties to Hezbollah.
Mohammed Amer al-Shviki and First Deputy General Director of Promsyrioimport Andrei Dogaev.
The Dogaev family and the original paintings.
The paintings in Dogaev's house are only originals
As follows from the biography of A. Dogaev, in 1982 he transferred to the free Komsomol, and then party work and then deputy head of the Department of Non-tariff Regulation of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations.
In 1993, he headed the Main Directorate of Export-Import Operations for State Needs, and since 1994 - Deputy Minister of Foreign Economic Relations of Russia.
Only in 1995, A. Dogaev was already charged with embezzlement of allocated quotas for precious metals and smuggling oil, diamonds, theft of funds from the State Security Service of Russia. Then the prosecutor's office asked for 9 years in prison for A. Dogaev, but the Simonovsky Court released him along with his accomplices and even returned the paintings. Amnesty...
“A criminal case on the smuggling of copper scrap worth 302 thousand dollars (initiated in 1995). The license to export the metal was issued by Dogaev. He was arrested on charges of abuse of office, official forgery and smuggling. Later, the official was accused of receiving a bribe in the form of 27 kg of fish. It turned out that the deputy minister had four apartments in Moscow alone, and real estate in Switzerland. The houses were furnished with luxurious furniture and decorated with paintings by Polenov, Levitan, Vrubel and Voloshin. However, in the end, the charges of bribery and smuggling were dropped, Dogaev was released on bail, and the investigation gradually died down.
A criminal case on the theft of diamonds and gold from the Gokhran reserves for a total of 180 million dollars (the Golden ADA scam). Dogaev and three other officials from the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations issued licenses for the export jewelry without proper justification. They were charged with criminal negligence. All four were eventually pardoned.” “The Deputy Head of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations (MFER) Andrei Dogaev, arrested on charges of aiding the smuggling of scrap copper, was interrogated by the FSB as a witness in the Balkar case. The fact is that in May 1994, a certain JSC “International Center for Development, Information and Business” approached Chernomyrdin with a request to allocate an export quota of 2.5 million tons of oil for deliveries for state needs, and on May 25, a government commission headed by Soskovets gave the go-ahead for this export transaction without paying customs duties. All the oil went through Balkar, and the state lost 100 million dollars. All this became possible thanks to a letter from the Deputy Head of the Currency Department of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation Volkov to Andrei Dogaev. The allocation of the quota was lobbied by the head of Chernomyrdin’s secretariat, Gennady Petelin, explaining this by the need to finance Kuchma’s election campaign in Ukraine.”
Luxury and Billions
Mikhail Silantyev, another associate of Tikhonov and a functionary of Promsyrioimport, is known for his passion for luxury: one of his offices in the Stalinist Empire style cost 18 million rubles, and his daughters have long lived and studied in Great Britain.
According to the Cheka-OGPU, the houses of the scheme participants are decorated with originals of Polenov, Levitan, Vrubel. And billions of dollars, withdrawn through these offshore routes from gray oil flows, are stored in accounts in Switzerland and Monaco.
Despite the sentences, control over the Ministry of Energy's "black cash register" has been retained by the same figures, albeit in a different place.
Will Tikhnov be able to get his cash register back, we will see in the near future.
Timofey Grishin
To be continued
Source: www.rucriminal.info
