Billions on sanctioned electronics: how Abramov’s Marsala and Tarasov’s IT-Shuttle, with offshore firms and Interior Ministry veterans, bypassed customs and underpaid the Russian budget

• 01.12.2025 06:40

A vast supply chain for sanctioned electronics, established back in 2022 by the Merlion Group (owned by Citylink owners Alexey Abramov, Oleg Karchev, and Vladislav Mangutov) through Moscow-based Marsala LLC, continues to operate in Russia.

Part of the scheme was dismantled in early 2023 following the revelation in the British Financial Times of a connection to the supply of computer equipment to Russia through MYKINES CORPORATION. However, it was replaced by companies from the UAE, Seychelles and China.

All last year, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of goods were imported into Russia through a network of companies, at least one of which is linked to veterans and former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, the "patriots" were unwilling to pay the legally required customs duties to the Russian budget and understated the value of the goods.

To do this, they used the same scheme that Marsala had used with MYKINES and Saldor Corporation (Seychelles): the supplier sent the Russian company an official letter stating the absence of public price lists from the equipment manufacturer and attached its own price list, with significantly reduced prices. The wording in the letters was copied exactly from that received by Marsala. Customs had to calculate the product price not based on average objective prices, but on these manipulated lists.

Several companies replaced Marsala on the Russian electronics import pipeline. One of them was IT-SHUTTLE, owned by Alexander Tarasov, which imported goods into the country until at least the end of 2024. The seller, according to the documents, was the Seychelles offshore company Alpenglow Management Inc.

Under contracts with this entity, IT-SHUTTLE declared electronics—specifically those manufactured by the Taiwanese company MCI—as well as electrical appliances, printer components, and other goods, including the same precious “paper” at $500,000 per kilogram, as previously sold by Marsala.

Tarasov, 46, is a graduate of the Ulyanovsk Higher Military Technical School. In the phone numbers of his colleagues and acquaintances, he is listed, among other things, as “Director of the Administrative and Economic Department” and “Alexander OSK-Tekhnologii.”

A Moscow company with this name worked on projects in electrical engineering, industrial processes and production, mechanical engineering, and safety engineering. The company was liquidated in 2020. However, there is another company, OSK-Tekhnologii (St. Petersburg), which manufactures and supplies ships and vessels built at the facilities of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC Rostec) with communications, navigation, hydroacoustics, and marine automation systems. Judging by Tarasov’s diploma, this is precisely his specialty.

Before IT-Shuttle, in 2022, Tarasov was the founder of Device-Vector LLC, then transferred the company to a certain Luiza Shabanova, who owned several private security companies in various regions of the country. Currently, the infamous banker Timofey Resnyansky holds a stake in Device-Vector through the same Marsala.

The trade followed a complex scheme: Alpenglow Management Inc. would send Tarasov a personal price list, which specified prices only for IT-SHUTTLE. The parties would then negotiate packaging and volumes in private correspondence, and Tarasov would transfer the funds—not to the Seychelles offshore company, but to an entirely different entity.

The goods arrived at Moscow customs without half the required import documents and at a clearly reduced price. As a result, customs assessed additional fees amounting to tens of millions of rubles. Overall, Tarasov imported at least a hundred shipments worth several billion rubles.

For example, in late December 2023, IT-SHUTTLE transferred approximately 900 million rubles for deliveries through two payment orders alone to a certain Denali Corp-FZSO. This is a UAE-based shell company with a representative office in Russia. It conducts no real business and is used solely for money laundering and fund siphoning.

This summer, the organizers began to feel the heat—IT-SHUTTLE alone faces approximately 70 legal cases with customs—and decided to shut down this supply line. IT-SHUTTLE was liquidated in July of this year, surviving only two weeks longer than its foreign supplier, Alpenglow Management Inc. (liquidated on June 16, 2025).

A certain Yuri Didkovsky was appointed to clean up the mess at IT-SHUTTLE, acting as the company’s liquidator. He is a retired colonel, co-founder of the Patriot Charitable Foundation for Social Support, which supports the Russian military, and a veteran of the Chechen campaigns.

Among the foundation’s founders is also Alexander Varavin, the former head of Department “K” of the “tech” branch of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ BSTM. Didkovsky also headed the Patriot private security company, which also closed its doors this summer.

Maria Sharapova