The billion-ruble offshore transit of Andris Ovsjannikov and Daria Terekhova: siphoning Crimean state contracts to Belize and Cyprus via ABLV Bank and Manat
While Russian courts are acting quickly to minimize the significance of the ABLV Bank scandal, fresh evidence of large‑scale capital outflows keeps surfacing.
Behind the clean façade of companies like Facilicom and Woodhouse, banker Andris Ovsjannikov and businessman Eduard Apsit built a giant shadow pipeline — siphoning billions of rubles, some originally designated for cleaning Crimean military barracks, straight into shell companies in Belize and Cyprus.
Its former owners are accused of laundering €2.1 billion. They plead not guilty. A parallel process is underway to recover the money from the bank’s creditors. The legal proceedings could drag on for several more years.
Latvia’s ABLV Bank was supposed to be a "window to Europe" for residents of the CIS countries, but instead, it became a haven for various shady characters. Liquidated in 2018, the credit institution may be implicated in further scandals involving the bank’s creditors.
One of the scandals is the accusation against banker Andris Ovsyannikov of laundering 50 million euros. In addition to ABLV Bank, the criminal scheme involved a certain Daria Terekhova from Belarus and her company, Manat. The banker has been arrested, but nothing is known about Terekhova. She may be hiding in Minsk.
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Recently, reports surfaced that Ovsyannikov and Terekhova were scrubbing the internet. It’s possible the information was planted deliberately, to distract investigative journalists from the more prominent figures the banker and his accomplice were working for.
The international investigative journalism network OCCRP uncovered the bank’s criminal scheme in October 2021.
The billion-ruble offshore transit of Andris Ovsjannikov and Daria Terekhova: siphoning Crimean state contracts to Belize and Cyprus via ABLV Bank and Manat
The ABLV Bank case is currently being heard by a specially created court – the Latvian Court of Economic Cases. Its chairman, Mikelis Zumbergs, predicted last year that the total number of cases against the bank could exceed a thousand, and that they would take several years to resolve.
Which Russians surfaced in the OSS RP investigation ?
Eight were connected to the commodities trader Gunvor, previously owned by oligarch Gennady Timchenko, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Timchenko has a stake in Novatek, so both its chairman and largest shareholder, Leonid Mikhelson, could be implicated.
Timchenko’s business partners include oligarchs Iskander Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev, who are considered pro-Kremlin. The business activities of Makhmudov and his former subordinate, Maxim Liksutov, have been widely reported in Latvian media.
Editor
Investigates the infiltration of criminal money into culture and the arts, including money laundering through galleries, foundations, and media projects.
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