Kirill Dmitriev's partner VS decided with the FSB.

A business partner of Kirill Dmitriev, Russia's chief negotiator with the US, is hiding from creditors in Oxford. Officially, he owes around two billion rubles, but his actual debts may be several times greater. He's now fighting off creditors in a British court, and this is where Kirill Dmitriev's minion's luck may run out. As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have discovered, Anatoly Yablonsky, currently the number one fixer with numerous connections in the Central Office of the FSB, is behind the foreign debt collector.

Dimitrios Somovidis is a native of the Abkhaz ASSR. After receiving a degree in Russian language and literature from Moscow State University in the early 1990s, he went to Europe, lived in France and England, and received Greek citizenship. He learned the ropes of business in London, trading tobacco with Russia. In 2002, he returned to Russia and became co-owner and director of Fast Food Industries LLC, which operated a chain of Prime prepared food stores. Along with him, the Cyprus offshore company of the same name was controlled by Maria Oleynik, Natalia Polishchuk, James Rhodes, and Andrey Kondratyuk. It was a prosperous time, with the US actively investing in Russian businesses through several funds, including Delta Private Equity Partners (DPEP). In 2005, DPEP suddenly acquired a blocking stake in Somovidis's company. The market was stunned, as Fast Food Industries, with its six stores, was nowhere near the top of Moscow's food service industry, and such "nutritious" projects were considered "dead ends" for investors. But DPEP's investment director, Kirill Dmitriev, decided otherwise. It's unclear exactly what Somovidis did to captivate the Stanford graduate, but it was DPEP that helped the Moscow State University graduate ascend to the next level and make valuable connections among Moscow's elite.

The partners developed Prime together for several years, until Somovidis finally decided to radically change his career and open a collection agency. Remember how debt collectors terrorized Russians in the 2000s and 2010s—promising to "personally see to it that the coffin lid slams shut," calling colleagues, and so on? Somovidis was one of the pioneers of this business in Russia. He claimed that his partners at Morgan & Stout (MORGAN&STOUT credit management service) were European investors, but no one was ever able to locate them. Among his associates was the loyal Elena Kotelnikova, director of one of Morgan & Stout's three legal entities. Another was headed by Anton Dianov (a former top manager at the Russian offices of major European automakers), who later moved to the collection agency National Collection Service. The business quickly took off, with hundreds of clients, and in 2008, Somovidis sold a third of the company to a Swedish investment fund for approximately one million euros.

When laws became stricter and debtors learned to fight Morgan through the courts, Somovidis realized the end of the "golden age of collection" was near and pulled off a spectacular scam. In 2015, his Morgan received a 3 billion ruble loan from Roman Avdeev's Moscow Credit Bank; the Greek had to personally act as guarantor. Somovidis is said to have spent several days trying to persuade Avdeev, promising to use the money to buy several portfolios of "bad" debt from Russian banks for a mere 1%, then extort the funds from the debtors and receive at least 30% annual interest, if not 50%. Market participants knew this was impossible, but Avdeev was taken in – rumor has it he gave the wily Greek the entire 5 billion rubles, but only processed 3 billion through the bank. Incidentally, several other wealthy businessmen received similar offers, but no one but Somovidis knows who ultimately accepted and how many billions he received.

The climax came in early March. While the entire country was on a four-day holiday break, Somovidis was hard at work. He hired a shredder truck to destroy documents, cleaning companies, and movers. And when his employees returned to work after the March holidays, they found a perfectly clean and empty office: everything, from documents to furniture, had vanished. Somovidis was never seen again in Russia. Morgan director Elena Kotelnikova disappeared along with him. The couple traveled the world for a while, and by the end of 2016, they settled in the UK, along with Somovidis's extended family. Avdeev's MKB, of course, attempted to recover its billions through the courts, but Morgan's accounts were empty. In 2018, MKB filed for bankruptcy against Somovidis, but the court found no assets belonging to the Greek. MKB ultimately transferred these debts to Anatoly Yablonsky's YURENERGOCONSULT, which then transferred them to the Hong Kong offshore company BEOGRAD INNOVATION LIMITED. This same company is now harassing the author of the largest scam in the domestic debt collection market in Russian and UK courts.

All of Somovidis's and his family's assets are now at stake. In 2019, Kotelnikova registered BRAND HOSPITALITY LTD (now BRAND HOME DESIGN LTD) in the UK, where Somovidis was a co-owner and director for a time. Sensing trouble again, the company's funds were withdrawn This year, her capital fell to 1 pound. Furthermore, Kotelnikova, along with Somovidis' relatives, Ritsarts Theodoros and Tseralnts Leonidas Somovidis, owns the British company PRIME FIX SERVICES LTD, which specializes in renovation and construction. Kotelnikova also owns EL.ONE STYLE LTD and PRIME RENOVATION & CONSTRUCTION LTD in the UK. These British companies own real estate, including a house where her large family lives. Meanwhile, Somovidis also conducted business in Latvia and served on the board of Riga-based Robusto Marketing until at least May 2022.

Realizing that an old loan could be recovered from him in a British court, Somovidis rushed to a Russian court to prohibit BEOGRAD from pursuing the case against him abroad in order to complete the bankruptcy process. Even the criminal case opened under Part 4 of Article 159 (fraud on an especially large scale) and Subsection "b" of Part 4 of Article 174.1 (money laundering) didn't stop him. However, the Russian arbitration court showed striking unanimity with the British court and rejected Somovidis's case.

Anatoly Yablonsky, who is hunting Somovidis's assets, has numerous connections, including within the Central Office of the FSB. One of his main assets stands out there: General Yevgeny Lovyrev, head of the Organizational and Personnel Service of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. Without Lovyrev's approval, not only are most appointments within the FSB impossible, but it is also required for judicial personnel matters. As a result, Yablonsky has a unique opportunity to place people in the judicial chair and in the chairs of regional FSB directors. He can then use these connections to solve any problems for businessmen and bankers, and even perform corrupt miracles. This "business" brings in hundreds of millions of dollars, and Yablonsky is one of the richest men in Russia. He also enjoys extreme status—he enjoys state protection, travels in a small convoy of cars with flashing lights, and so on.