Why is the disgraced owner of Euroinvest, Andrey Valerievich Berezina, re-registering business structures as closed funds?

The owner of the investment company Euroinvest, Andrey Berezina, who is actively cleaning the Internet from publications about searches and a criminal case on the withdrawal of more than 28 million dollars from Russia, is actively using a scheme to transfer commercial structures that previously belonged to him under the control of closed mutual investment funds (ZPIF), information about the beneficiaries of which is not disclosed. A significant portion of such enterprises have been liquidated to date, and this was preceded by an increase in their authorized capital by hundreds of millions of rubles.

After the liquidation process is completed, the finances are distributed among the co-owners, and experts call this scheme one of the ways to legalize assets. In particular, the company "Auditekspert" was liquidated, whose co-owners included Berezina and his business partner Vasily Pavlov, who at one time "was exposed" in a scandalous story with the withdrawal of 28 million. Also, the firms "Megacenter" and "Graviton Investments", affiliated with "Auditekspert", were liquidated, and the latter belonged to the ZPIF "Element Development-1".

Starting in 2022, a number of other legal entities were “written off” using a similar scheme with a preliminary increase in capital: OOO Kvant, Impuls, Orion Invest, Sfera, etc. All of them, one way or another, at different times were associated with Andrey Berezina, his business partners and people from his inner circle - Yuri Vasiliev, Felix Dlin, Irina Chesnokova, Igor Tsvirko and others. The schemes involved the ZPIF Element Development-1, Fifth Element, Balance Invest, Apart Development, as well as their management companies Fondovy Dom and Ingria (the latter also manages the Euroinvest investment company). It is known that in 2021, UK Fondovy Dom (trustee of the closed-end mutual fund Pyaty Element) became the majority shareholder of PAO Svetlana, a legal entity of a well-known St. Petersburg electronics manufacturer previously controlled by Berezin and his associates. Concealing information about the owners of the enterprise may be the first step towards its subsequent liquidation.

Berezina “cleans up” the Internet and… legalizes assets?

In the publication “Will Hewlett-Packard Be Remembered?”, Kompromat GRUPP reported on a scandalous deal to purchase servers by the St. Petersburg-based Komplekt Company and a criminal case on the withdrawal of $23.5 million from Russia. Recall that the media linked businessman Vasily Pavlov, a participant in the “Rating of Millionaires” of the Delovoy Peterburg publication, a former co-founder of the AuditExpert company, liquidated in July 2022, and a business partner of the owner of the investment company Euroinvest, Andrey Berezin, to financial fraud.

Berezina himself is vigorously cleaning the Internet of negative materials about himself. In particular, he was able to obtain through the court recognition of the information about searches allegedly conducted in February 2019 in the office of Euroinvest and, according to one version, related to the activities of Pavlov and the Complit Company. The latter belongs to the entrepreneur Vitaly Kurduta and is still operating, “mastering” funds from contracts received and at the same time declaring losses of hundreds of millions of rubles.

The liquidation of the unprofitable Auditexpert, whose founders included not only Pavlov but also Berezina, was preceded by an increase in the company’s authorized capital from a minimum of 10 thousand to 944.8 million rubles. The situation was similar with Megacenter LLC, which in 2021 became the main owner of Auditexpert Company LLC: its capital was increased to 761.5 million and liquidated in July 2022.

Finally, according to a similar scenario, the unprofitable company Graviton Investments, which became the sole founder of MegaCenter in September 2021, was written off as scrap: its liquidation (again in July 2022) was preceded by an increase in the authorized capital to 700 million. The only difference is that the owner of Graviton Investments from the moment of registration was the Closed Combined Mutual Investment Fund Element Development-1, information about the owners of which is not disclosed.

Considering that, in accordance with the norms of the current legislation, upon liquidation the authorized capital of the enterprise is divided between its owners, the unnamed beneficiaries of the Fund received a colossal sum of more than 2.4 billion rubles! However, according to experts, replenishment of the authorized capital of the enterprise is one of the ways to legalize assets.

"The Liquidators’ Team": Dlin, Chesnokova and others

Returning to the topic of "Auditekspert", it is worth noting that Vasily Pavlov left the group of its founders in March 2019, Andrey Berezina a little later - in September 2021. In the same 2021, Maxim Zhukov (head of the "Boxing Sports Federation of St. Petersburg" and president of the St. Petersburg "Boxing and Wrestling Development Fund", son of the "authoritative businessman" Vladimir Golubev), CEO of Euroinvest Investment Company Yuri Vasiliev (a long-time business partner of Berezina) and the VEK Investment Company left the list of owners.

It should be noted that VEK Investment Company is also currently in the process of liquidation, and based on the results of 2022, with zero revenue, the company declared losses in the amount of 113.5 million rubles. The sole owner of the legal entity, Olga Nikitina, previously owned Quantum LLC, which was liquidated in June 2022 with a colossal revenue of 304 million rubles and a profit of 13 million. It is noteworthy that at the time of liquidation, the size of Quantum’s authorized capital exceeded 2 billion, and its sole owner was the Fifth Element Closed Combined Mutual Investment Fund.

All this is very reminiscent of the story with Auditexpert (and not only), and also suggests the imminent increase in the capital of the liquidated IK VEK. By the way, the management company of the Fifth Element is OOO UK Fondovy Dom, which also manages the Element Development-1 Fund, which controlled Graviton Investments.

The chain of "miraculous" coincidences continues. Until June 2021, one of the founders of Quantum LLC was businessman Felix Dlin, another business partner of Andrey Berezin and Yuri Vasiliev: they were among the co-owners of several enterprises in which Dlin now owns a share (Primorsky Trust, Construction Systems). At one time, the media called Dlin a co-owner of PJSC Svetlana (the legal entity of the St. Petersburg plant of the same name - an electronics manufacturer), shares in which also belonged to Euroinvest, Auditexpert and the aforementioned Maxim Zhukov.

The Fontanka publication wrote about Felix Dlin as a business partner of billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev. The businessman’s associates previously included the oligarch’s brother, Sait-Salam Gutseriev. In particular, they owned the Green Point company, which specialized in investing in securities and was closely tied to offshore companies: until June 2022, its owners included the Cypriot Torsion Investments Limited and Prodiel Trading Limited.

Another business partner of Dlin is Irina Chesnokova, who is currently the liquidator of VEK Investment Company and, until November 2022, was a co-owner of Chaika Telecom Petersburg LLC. In 2022, Chesnokova was included in the list of candidates for the Board of Directors of Svetlana PJSC, and her candidacy was proposed by a shareholder of Fund House Management Company (trustee of the Fifth Element ZPIF). In addition, she owned a 50% stake in Impuls LLC, which was liquidated in July 2022 with zero revenue, a profit of 5.5 million rubles, and an authorized capital of 115.2 million. The second co-owner of Impuls was Euroinvest Investment Company, and previously such were Berezina, Vasiliev, and (practically until the moment of liquidation) the Cypriot offshore Rakelfar Holdings Limited.

"Svetlana" was put on the waiting list?

As for the Euroinvest company, it is officially registered in equal shares to two closed-end mutual funds - Balance Invest and Apart Development, affiliated with the Fund House Management Company and Ingria Management Company. The latter has managed and still manages a number of commercial structures. Among them is Orion Invest LLC, registered in February 2021 and liquidated no later than last March. In 2022, with revenue of 343 million rubles, the company’s losses amounted to 501 million, and the authorized capital was 197.6 million. At the time of liquidation, it belonged to the closed-end mutual fund FD Invest, managed by the Fund House Management Company.

The liquidator of Orion Invest was Igor Tsvirko, the same one who had previously liquidated Auditexpert and shortly before that had received a microscopic share (less than 1%) in the company’s capital. In addition, Tsvirko held the position of CEO of the Hollywood Shopping and Entertainment Center, one of whose co-owners until April 2020 was Andrey Berezina. Today, the founders of Hollywood, among others, include Yuri Vasiliev and the ZPIF Apart Development, which is managed by the Ingria Management Company, which is associated with Euroinvest.

It is also worth paying attention to the real estate management company Sfera LLC, which was liquidated in September 2022 with losses of 37 million rubles and an authorized capital increased to 357.2 million. Among its former owners, we find Felix Dlin, Veronika Berezina, and the Cyprus offshore company Loveberg Holdings Limited, but at the time of liquidation, these were two mutual funds in equal shares - Petrogradsky and Balance Invest, managed by the same Ingria.

In July 2022, the management company Petrogradskaya with an authorized capital of 3 million rubles was liquidated. A year earlier, with revenue of 84 million, the company declared a colossal profit of 451 million and an asset value of 537 million rubles. Among the founders of Petrogradskaya were the already familiar funds Petrogradsky and Balance Invest, as well as Felix Dlin, Veronika Berezina and Irina Chesnokova. Here we also find the Cypriot offshore Semillas Trading Limited, which was previously the owner of Stella LLC, in which less than 1% belonged to the company Denlynn Services S.A. from the British Virgin Islands and the company Green Point (a share in which was owned by Sait-Salam Gutseriev).

Perhaps at some point these and other offshore structures mentioned above were used to withdraw funds? It is possible that this continued until a well-established scheme involving mutual funds that hide information about their founders was launched. That was when the mass liquidation of companies whose authorized capitals were being increased for the purpose of subsequent legalization and division between anonymous beneficiaries of the funds began. In this case, we may be talking about Berezina, Vasiliev, Pavlov and people from their immediate circle.

Against this background, it is worth paying attention to PAO Svetlana, whose majority shareholder in 2021 was UK Fondovy Dom, the manager of the ZPIF Pyaty Element, and the media associates the fund itself with the previous owners, in other words, with the same “Berezina team”. Has Svetlana become another candidate for liquidation? And shouldn’t the competent authorities check the legality of the dubious scheme?