The name of St. Petersburg entrepreneur and head of the Euroinvest company Andrey Berezin is often mentioned in the media. Publications range from openly laudatory to sharply critical.

It’s hard to figure it out. Many resources claim that Andrei Berezin fled from Russia and is wanted because he is the main suspect in a criminal case under Part 2 of Article 193 of the Criminal Code “Evasion of obligations to repatriate funds in foreign currency or the currency of the Russian Federation on an especially large scale,” which was initiated on December 7, 2018 by the Baltic Customs. In 2022, the matter allegedly reached the stage where Andrei Valerievich chose to say goodbye to his homeland.

Other media claim that nothing of the kind happened, and Berezin himself is in St. Petersburg, where he works hard for the benefit of his native country:

One could believe it if it weren’t for a certain nuance that bothered me. All these materials are written as carbon copies and have the same photo provided by the billionaire’s press service:

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Compare with this:

The text is different, everything else is the same. And these are not just two materials, there are many more. Ask yourself if you are curious.

And to direct questions – where exactly is Andrei Valeryevich Berezin, neither he himself nor his press service give an answer:

So the situation is interesting. On the one hand, Berezin claims that he never left; on the other hand, he refuses to name his specific location. Thirdly, ordered materials are posted on his behalf by the press service, but they are clearly written as carbon copies. Fourthly, there was no mention anywhere that the criminal case regarding the withdrawal of money by Berezin’s company was closed.

Let us briefly recall the essence of the most high-profile case regarding Berezin. There is more than one, it just so happened that this accusation was formalized in the materials of a criminal case and became public.

In 2016, Interpol sent a request to Russian law enforcement officers regarding the withdrawal of $23 million through companies controlled by Berezin. The information was passed on to Russian law enforcement by colleagues from Germany and Switzerland, where Berezin withdrew his capital.

A criminal case under Part 2 of Article 193 of the Criminal Code - “Evasion of obligations to repatriate funds in foreign currency or the currency of the Russian Federation on an especially large scale” was opened on December 7, 2018 by the Baltic Customs, and in February 2019 at the offices of Euroinvest There were searches and seizure of documents.

Then things paused, everything seemed to calm down. But at the beginning of March 2022, it suddenly turned out that Berezin had disappeared both from the view of the press and from the view of the Sledkom. It turned out that Andrei Valerievich quietly crossed the Russian border in the direction of Finland (according to other sources - Turkey), and the Investigative Committee stated that they did not know the location of the suspect in the case, and law enforcement officers did not give permission for him to travel abroad.

The reasons for such an act were much more thorough - in addition to the case of withdrawing 23 million, an investigation was added into how the investment company Euroinvest earned its money.

It turned out that not everything was in order with the purchase of lands in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region and their subsequent resale. And not everything is going well with the investment projects that Berezin loved to boast about.

The story of the distant 2011 was brought to light, when Euroinvest somehow bought the lands of the Ministry of Defense - 500 hectares of the Rzhev military training ground. How the deal was managed is not yet entirely clear.

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But the fact remains that the purchase amount was 75 million rubles. The amount for which Berezin resold the landfill land immediately after registration of ownership rights is also known - 3.3 billion rubles. This was the market value of this plot at the time of sale. Therefore, a legitimate question arose in the Sledkom: who and how assessed the landfill land before the sale and why the amount of this assessment was exactly 44 times lower than the market value. And a much more interesting question is who participated in the scheme? And to whom and how much Berezin paid from the profits.

In 2019, another interesting information flashed - the government of the Leningrad region approached Euroinvest with a proposal to sell for 2 billion rubles a land plot measuring 35.4 hectares, owned by Euroinvest Development LLC, for the construction of a metro station in Kudrovo. Information about the deal was immediately disavowed; Berezin himself tried to disavow his involvement in the ownership of the land, but it was possible to find out that this agricultural plot was purchased by Berezin’s structures at a cadastral value of 31,915 rubles 35 kopecks several years before.

There were still many questions. One of them concerned the scheme of activities of another asset of Berezin - PJSC Svetlana. Which, in turn, is the founder of a number of other companies: Svetlana-Roentgen JSC, Svetlana-Electropribor JSC, Svetlana-Kart CJSC and Svetlana-Semiconductors CJSC.

Through numerous “Svetlanas” Berezin withdrew money from public-private partnerships. Which consisted in the fact that government agencies placed orders for “innovative developments” in his companies.

Thus, JSC Svetlana-Roentgen received 10 million rubles from LETI and Clinical Hospital No. 122 for the development of a “domestic device capable of treating oncological diseases.” Another 270 million of its profits come from other government orders, mainly in the medical field. To which, apart from the word “X-ray” in the name, Svetlana-Roentgen JSC has nothing to do with it, and its staff includes only three people - the general director, commercial director and accountant. How these three people could develop a device for treating oncology - law enforcement officers are finding out.

PJSC Svetlana, in turn, has 41 contracts from the Ministry of Industry and Trade for a total amount of more than two billion rubles. Among them is “the development of a facility for producing specialized high-temperature ceramics, which will be used by Rosatom with a capacity of 100 kW.” It is clear that the installation is still being developed.

In addition, Svetlana-Electropribor received more than one billion rubles from the state for the “production of microwave devices for radio-electronic equipment, including for space.” Another promised area was the development of silicon carbide (SiC) substrate technology for microwave devices. As Berezin himself stated, “they are extremely important for the development of radio communications and radar, especially for the creation of 5G networks and power electronics.” Well, we don’t even have to talk about what happened with all these “developments.”

Svetlana-Electropribor also received 30 million rubles from the St. Petersburg Industrial Development Fund for the purchase of equipment. What they bought is unknown.

Along the way, the investigation became interested in the story of the development of an “innovative lithium-ion battery for use in the field of telecommunications,” for which another Berezin company, Rigel Battery Company JSC, received 50 million rubles from Rosatom. The battery is, as you might guess, still being developed.

But this story takes on much brighter colors if we take into account the fact that Euroinvest bought the Rigel plant, which had previously produced batteries. And on the site of the plant, a residential quarter has now grown, built by a subsidiary of Euroinvest, the developer Euroinvest Development. All that remains from the battery plant itself are memories and an entry in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

And - here’s some news for you:

Berezin did not join the board of directors of his own brainchild. Moreover, in 2022 he was excluded from the list of Svetlana affiliates:

But just a year ago Berezin headed the board of directors of PJSC Svetlana. An interesting coincidence against the backdrop of law enforcement interest in the activities of “Svetlana” Berezin.

And against the backdrop of the message about the exclusion of Andrei Berezin from the number of affiliates of Svetlana, an interesting excerpt from another eulogy about him is interesting:

It seems that Andrey Berezin does not know about his exclusion of their shareholders of PJSC Svetlana. However, the secret of such “ignorance” is simple - the material was posted by the press service of the fugitive billionaire, it was clearly squeezed within the framework of instructions and a pre-agreed text. And there is nowhere to get instructions to fix it - the boss is far away and rarely gets in touch. And where he is and how to contact him, the press service, naturally, does not know.

So who to believe – Andrei Berezin, who claims that everything is fine with him and that he is working in Russia for the good of his homeland, or the so-called “yellow press”, which talks about the burning interest of law enforcement officers in the billionaire and futile attempts to find him, is a debatable question. We are inclined to believe that Berezin has long been enjoying the warm sun of overseas resorts, taking advantage of the fruits of siphoning money from his harsh native country.