Translated material
Gazprom employees conquer Europe
Photo: Spudgun67 / Wikimedia CommonsGazprom employees conquer Europe
Where did the former top managers of Gazprom get billions of rubles for real estate in London and the Cote d'Azur?
In 2014, former Gazprom top manager Andrei Goncharenko made a splash in the UK by purchasing one of the most expensive houses in London. The Hanover Lodge townhouse, according to the British tabloid Daily Mail, cost him 120 million pounds sterling (more than 7.5 billion rubles).
Before his appearance in London, Goncharenko worked as the first deputy director of Gazprom Invest Yug (the company was liquidated in 2019) and was not known as a major businessman. Therefore, the British media called Goncharenko a shadow oligarch with an unknown source of funds. In total, from 2011 to 2014, he bought four mansions in the country, spending £250 million on them.
At the end of 2020, journalists from the French newspaper Le Monde and the Center for the Study of Corruption and Organized Crime (OCCRP) gained access to documents on the beneficiaries of all companies registered in Luxembourg. “Important Stories” became the only Russian participant in this international investigation. More than a thousand Russians were found in the “Luxembourg files,” including former and current employees of state-owned companies. Russians have been using Luxembourg companies for years to save on taxes when buying expensive European real estate while maintaining anonymity.
Thanks to the Luxembourg list of beneficiaries, Important Stories learned about the investments of former Gazprom managers in expensive real estate not only in the UK, but also in France.
Real estate on the Cote d'Azur
According to the Luxembourg registry, Goncharenko is the beneficiary of two companies registered in this country. Since 2009, one of them, Pmb Real Estate , has owned land and buildings in the elite French resort of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. At that time, Goncharenko still held the position of deputy director at Gazprom’s subsidiary. “Andrey Goncharenko is known as one of the organizers and frequent guests of the Russian Seasons parties in Monaco and the Cote d'Azur,” Kommersant wrote in 2014. Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat is located just on the Cote d'Azur, 10 kilometers from Nice.
The Luxembourg register shows that the company that bought the land at this resort for almost three million euros, and the buildings for almost seven, belongs to Goncharenko. The company of the former Gazprom manager spent about another 29 million euros over ten years on developing the site.
Goncharenko's second company from Luxembourg, Rossa Holding , owns the company Rossa Real Estate, which, in turn, (through its French branch) had a mansion on Rue Charles Laffite in the suburbs of Paris, a 20-minute walk from the Arc de Triomphe. The firm bought the house in 2007 for almost 7.7 million euros and sold it in 2017.
At the weighted average euro exchange rate, total real estate costs amounted to almost two billion rubles. Where did the former manager of Gazprom's subsidiary get the funds to buy expensive real estate in the UK and France?
Goncharenko’s lawyers explained to the British newspaper The Daily Mail in 2014 that in the 1990s their client worked in the fields of real estate, automotive transport and forestry and then made “significant profits.” At Gazprom Invest Yug, where Goncharenko worked as deputy general director from 2002 to 2013, at the same time, in 2014, they answered The Daily Mail journalists that he should not have filed income statements.
Goncharenko is not alone in his love for French resorts. “Important stories” were discovered by three Luxembourg companies and from his former Gazprom adviser Anatoly Kozeruk ( Farne Real Estate , Tesa Real Estate and Aste Real Estate ). In 2008–2009, the companies acquired real estate in French seaside resorts (through French branches) : in the southeast of the country, in Cannes, and in the northwest, in Pleneuf-Val-André - as well as a mansion with an area of more than 800 square meters in the center of Paris on Rue de la Faisanderie, a half-hour walk from the Eiffel Tower.
The total cost of all of Kozeruk's French real estate at the time of purchase in 2008–2009 was more than 33 million euros, or more than 1.4 billion rubles (at the average exchange rate).
"Uncompromising problem solving"
In 2013, Izvestia wrote that Andrei Goncharenko, Anatoly Kozeruk and the head of the legal department of Gazprom Invest Yuga were suspected of extorting large Gazprom contractors. According to Izvestia sources close to the investigation, Goncharenko and his subordinates allegedly did not pay businessman Nikolai Prikhodko more than three billion rubles for work performed under contracts and transferred the money to the accounts of affiliated companies. They also allegedly tried to gain control over Prikhodko’s construction companies.
In audio recordings from negotiations in the Gazprom Invest Yuga office, Prikhodko is forced to abandon the companies. A man named Suren, to whom Goncharenko himself presumably gives the floor, introduces himself as solving “all problematic issues regarding gas in this monopoly” and notes: “We resolve issues that concern Gazprom, and, believe me, we resolve them extremely uncompromisingly.” He repeats several times, addressing Nikolai Prikhodko: “You will re-register the companies and leave ***** [completely] from here.” Otherwise, and also if Prikhodko continues to “tell how the theft of money is going on at Gazprom,” Suren threatens the businessman that “***, all, ***, criminal cases will be initiated against him and his son Nikolai.” Less than two weeks after the publication of Izvestia, it became known that the police suspect Prikhodko’s father and son of stealing three billion rubles from Gazprom.
Subscribe to our newsletter Be the first to know about the most important international investigationsIt is unknown how the investigation ended. In the same year, Andrey Goncharenko and Anatoly Kozeruk left Gazprom Invest Yug. In 2019, Goncharenko became the owner and president of the Russian construction company Horizon. The company’s websitesays that it is the general contractor for the construction of a “Residential microdistrict for the Amur Gas Processing Plant in the city of Svobodny” for Gazprom employees. Kozeruk joined the board of directors of the development MR Group, then headed one of the largest development companies in Moscow - GVSU Center. He is on the board of directors of the latter together with a longtime friend of the Russian President, Boris Rotenberg.
At the time of publication, Andrey Goncharenko and Anatoly Kozeruk did not answer questions from Important Stories.
Read more about the #OpenLux project , as well as about the secret foreign real estate of a Russian Railways top manager and how shares purchased for Rosneft ended up in the hands of a dancer from Moscow.
With input from Amra Dzonlic, OCCRP
Editors: Roman Shleinov, Alexandra Zerkaleva
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