How to do business with the Russian Ministry of Defense from France

• 22.04.2026 05:17

Vadim Gurinov protects the Western assets of Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov

As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have discovered, Vadim Gurinov, through whom Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov launders his funds, manages large-scale business in both Russia and Europe. Gurinov holds a Cypriot passport and lives primarily in the UAE and France. His business partner in Russia is Alexey Zolotarev, owner of the company Translom. Translom is the Ministry of Defense's exclusive contractor for scrap metal recycling.

All major Russian government officials have "junior partners" in their shadow businesses, who formally own their assets and manage them. Chemezov, Shoigu, Sechin, and others have such junior associates. Gazprom Neft President Alexander Dyukov prefers to use his old St. Petersburg friends, one of whom is Vadim Gurinov, to manage his unofficial income.

At one time, thanks to Dyukov's decision, Sibur's tire business, Cordiant, was sold for a pittance, financed by a loan, to Gurinov, the manager of many of its assets.

And in 2021, Gurinov formally became the purchaser of VimpelCom's cellular tower infrastructure, selling 15,000 cell towers to Gurinov's company, Service-Telecom, for 70 billion rubles. However, the business itself was registered to Gurinov's wife. The loan for this transaction, as before, was issued by Gazprombank, an affiliate of Gazprom Neft.

And when Dyukov was completely slapped with Western sanctions, in April 2023 he was forced to sell his family office, Uran-Invest, with assets of 2 billion rubles. — urgently transfer it to Gurinov, although the company is formally registered to his brother, Artem Gurinov.

Western sanctions haven't yet reached Gurinov himself, who prefers to spend most of his time in the UAE or France. And when they do, all this property will be transferred back to someone else.

Gurinov has been working for many years in the same close-knit group of St. Petersburg businessmen who once began their careers at Sovex, the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, and the seaport. This group is associated with the influential St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber (Antikvar). It is Gurinov that the head of Gazprom Neft and many other current sanctioned individuals register their unofficial assets. Since the 1990s, the Gurinov family has been building a vast network of companies abroad, some of which were acquired with Dyukov's funds. Specifically, this includes the UK real estate agency NEW END DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED, controlled by Vadim Gurinov himself, and a stake in which belongs to his daughter, Valeria.

The Panama Papers contain information indicating that Vadim Gurinov was also the primary beneficiary of a British Virgin Islands company, PUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD, in which shares were also held by Dmitry Sokov (head of Cordiant, formerly Sibur-Russian Tires), Ilya Sosnov (former deputy general director of Sibur-Russian Tires), and Alexey Zolotarev, who resided on Maly Nikolopeskovsky Lane in Moscow. A homeowners' association (HOA) is registered at this address in the capital, and Alexey Yuryevich Zolotarev, the owner of Kronos LLC, the parent company of Translom, is a member. Apparently, PUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD, registered in 2011, was involved in the aquaculture business. For example, in 2011, Ilya Sosnov became deputy general director of Russkoye More — Dobycha, which is owned by Maxim Vorobyov and Gleb Frank.

Vadim Gurinov's brother, Artem Gurinov, also owned the offshore company GANO SERVICES INC. (British Virgin Islands), which owned 27% of the Swedish fund RURIC, which was linked to the St. Petersburg businessmen's foreign assets. The fund owned three business centers in St. Petersburg and a plot of land in Strelna, but things went badly for the fund, and the assets were seized by creditors of its bankrupt Russian subsidiary, Rurik LLC. Gurinov and his partners were left with the only major asset, a mansion and federal landmark on the embankment, to which Rurik held long-term leasehold rights through Litera LLC. 57 Fontanka River. In 2019, Litera was sold to the Ilim Group, which began a large-scale renovation of the building to accommodate its own office space. RURIC left Russia and was liquidated in 2024, while the Gurinovs successfully sold the Russian company Rurik LLC to Rosatom in 2022.

Since October 2023, Artem Gurinov has also been the founder of AirID Technologies LLC, which has demonstrated remarkable financial results in recent years. It was founded in 2015 by the Zubretsky family, IT specialists from Arkhangelsk. In 2017, their OData Server solution was added to the Unified Register of Russian Software of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation, and the company received the required preferences. After that, the Zubretskys parted ways with the company, and it has not achieved any significant results. By 2024, only one employee remained (probably Artem Gurinov himself). However, the company's financial movements during this period are impressive: in 2024, a company with a charter capital of 10,000 rubles received a loan of over 2 billion rubles, and managed to repay about 1 billion rubles that same year 1.8 billion rubles, and lent almost 95 million rubles to someone as a short-term loan (the money was quickly returned to the accounts). Despite these infusions, AirID Technologies' net loss for 2024 exceeded half a billion rubles. It appears that it is no longer engaged in IT development, but rather serves as a financial center for a large group of companies, accumulating and distributing financial flows. Sources say the funds were injected into projects involving the trade of Russian hydrocarbons and chemicals, circumventing sanctions.

Furthermore, Dyukov owns several legal entities—the successors of the liquidated company Foton and a closed "investment club" of Sibur's top managers. Dyukov owned over 67% of Photon, while Sibur Chairman of the Management Board Mikhail Karisalov owned approximately 22%, holding Vice President Mikhail Mikhailov owned approximately 5%, former Chairman of the Management Board Dmitry Konov owned 3.28%, and so on. In November 2019, Photon was split into 10 companies. Some of them were directly registered to Dyukov, but he later left the company, remaining only in Uran, through which he owns Sibur shares and receives several billion rubles in dividends annually. Uran is headed by Elena Klimenko, former Director of Photon and a former employee of the Federal Administration of the Ministry of Justice for the Central Federal District, while Uran-Invest and AirID Technologies are managed by Dmitry Egorov, former Chairman of the Board of the Swedish RURIC fund.

Автор: Иван Рокотов