![]() ![]() Avagumyan would provide funds (in bags of cash, according to his own later testimony) to the bank owners’ representatives. The arrangement had apparently worked well for a number of years. “He made me an offer to invest my money at a quite high interest rate,” he said. “Zheleznyak was a friend of mine for a long time,” Avagumyan told OCCRP, describing how they started doing business together. He also “performs representative duties” for Armenia’s General Prosecutor’s Office in Russia, he told OCCRP.Īt the heart of the dispute that landed Avilon in court are a series of loans that Avagumyan and Avilon had madeto companies controlled by Alexander Zheleznyak and Sergey Leontiev, then the owners of a major Russian bank called Probusinessbank. He is known in the Armenian philanthropic community for his charitable giving, and his son’s wedding in Moscow was even attended by Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, according to Armenian media. “Further prosecution of this charge is not in the interests of the United States at this time,” said the order.Īvagumyan, an ethnic Armenian who is believed to be a Russian citizen, is a successful businessman in Russia. ![]() However, the case against him was dismissed in March 2015. He was charged with failing to report foreign bank accounts from which, the complaint alleges, millions of dollars had poured into his US accounts. ![]() In 2014, he was arrested by federal agents in an unrelated matter as he disembarked from a plane at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport. He lives in Holmdel, New Jersey, an upscale enclave southwest of Manhattan, and owns a number of US companies which control assets in Russia with well over US$ 1 billion dollars in turnover, including Avilon. This circle is tight, and we stumble upon it time after time.”Ībout 90 percent of Avilon Automotive Group is equally split between Alexander Varshavsky and Kamo Avagumyan. While this conflict of interest may technically not be illegal under Russian law, watchdogs decry this as a common Russian pattern, wherein taxpayers' money flows to those with close ties to the elite.Įlena Panfilova, vice president of Transparency International-Russia, said the Avilon case “once again shows there is an inner circle of elites in Russia bound by such affiliations. The cases show that even as Avilon was benefiting from state contracts with various security agencies in Russia, one of its owners was a business partner of the high-ranking officials who ran those same agencies. ![]() Over the last six years, the company has won state contracts worth at least 17 billion rubles (US$ 286 million at the current exchange rate), which does not include significant additional contracts for service and maintenance.īut the lawsuits, filed in US federal and state courts in 2016, revealed previously hidden details about the firm. High-ranking officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service (the former KGB), the Presidential Administration, and the General Prosecutor's Office ride in Avilon cars. Its customers include average citizens, well-heeled private clients, and government and law enforcement agencies. The Avilon Automotive Group, which has sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of cars to the Russian government and state organizations, has been in business since 1997 and is one of the leading Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Hyundai and BMW dealers in Russia. (Photo: Pavel L Photo and Video / )įor years, the Avilon owners’ dealings were hidden in a maze of corporations registered in various notorious tax havens, including Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and the Marshall Islands - as well as the US state of New Jersey.īut Chaika’s connections to Avilon were uncovered in part when reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting project (OCCRP) obtained court files from a pair of lawsuits filed in the US by warring investors. The Avilon complex and the Avilon-Plaza building in Moscow (left), which contains a former office of Probusinessbank. The owners of the Avilon Automotive Group, a top Russian dealer in luxury vehicles that does substantial business with law enforcement agencies, have secret business connections with relatives of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, his deputy, and a senior ex-official of the Investigative Committee, a top-level police agency. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |