Special Career as a Ticket Controller

A former adviser to the Karelian governor was detained. It's easy to recognize this Finn as a Russian

Aleksi Raumo, a former freelance adviser to the head of Karelia and first deputy general director of the Republic Development Corporation, was arrested on the evening of December 10 in one of the Petrozavodsk hotels. For the current Karelian governor, Artur Parfenchikov, this detention became another “black mark”. Raumo is considered his protégé, although he was not as close a friend to the regional leader as Vladimir Lyubarsky, the ex-deputy governor who was arrested in November on charges of receiving a large bribe.

In Petrozavodsk, Raumo is still remembered as Alexey Ocheretko, a graduate of the 17th school, where many of the current republican leaders studied, including Parfenchikov himself. In the 90s, the grandson of senior KGB officers (as he described himself) moved to Finland, where he received a Finnish passport in the name of Alexi Raumo.

The newly made citizen of Finland tried to get into politics, but was unsuccessful. In 2012, he participated in municipal elections from the center-right Coalition Party, but never received a parliamentary mandate. Then Raumo-Ocheretko managed to work in Finland as a controller in public transport, appeared in a commercial for the Finnish construction company Skanska, where he said that his wife serves as a diplomat and she has to fly quite a lot, so it is convenient for their family to live in the Vantaa area, not far from airport.

Raumo-Ocheretko also tried to do business. Several years ago, he founded the company ECO Profi OY, which is an agent in the construction and lumber market, and in this status, by the way, Raumo was supposed to participate in a meeting of the Commission of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia on interparliamentary and international cooperation, which was scheduled for December 11.

Another speaker at the meeting was Raumo's double compatriot, pro-Russian Finnish political scientist Johan Beckman, who recently received Russian citizenship. But the security forces prevented the two Russians from meeting.

Upon returning to Karelia, Alexi Raumo was initially introduced as a special correspondent for the Helsinki News newspaper. However, neither the name of this Helsinki newspaper nor the name of its “special correspondent” turned out to be unfamiliar to Finnish journalists. But in his native republic, he became a columnist for a government publication and a freelance gubernatorial adviser on relations with Finland. And in 2022, Ocheretko-Raumo, with the support of Parfenchikov, headed the Center for attracting foreign investment in the Republic of Karelia.

Five million rubles were allocated from the regional budget for the creation of this autonomous non-profit organization, although the parliamentary opposition of Karelia immediately had doubts about the advisability of these expenses.

Very noteworthy was the decree of the republican government dated January 28, 2022, which approved the procedure for determining the volume and provision of subsidies to the ANO “Center for Attracting Foreign Investments in the Republic of Kazakhstan” for the costs of its maintenance. According to the government decree, these expenses included wages for the center’s employees, their costs for postal, cellular communications and the Internet, creation and support of their website, rental of premises and utilities, travel expenses, purchase of office furniture and computer equipment, organization of republican and interregional and international events to “search and attract foreign investors,” including the cost of paying translators, and so on.

But the most interesting thing is that the result of all these investments was supposed to be “the provision of services to attract foreign investment to the Republic of Karelia,” that is, without any specific result.

As stated in the government decree, the indicators of services provided will be

• “the number of events at which the economic potential and investment attractiveness of the Republic of Karelia will be presented;

• the number of concluded agreements/protocols between executive authorities of the Republic of Karelia and foreign investors on intentions to implement investment projects on the territory of the Republic of Karelia;

• the number of published information materials revealing the economic, investment and tourism potential of the Republic of Karelia in the media.”

In other words, if we discard agreements and protocols of intent, then all the work of the Center to attract foreign investment in the Republic of Kazakhstan should have consisted of organizing presentation events and PR.

Be that as it may, after February 2022, it became obvious that this center would not attract any foreign investors that the Karelia authorities were counting on, and soon Raumo-Ocheretko was employed by the Republic Development Corporation, where he took the post of first deputy general director.

Instead of Finnish companies, Parfenchikov’s protégé began negotiating with African diplomats, convincing them to invest money in the distant Russian border region.

However, in the past year, Ocheretko-Raumo unexpectedly left his position.

What this departure was connected with remains a mystery to many in Karelia. But Ocheretko-Raumo himself said in a telegram channel that he had to leave the country “for geopolitical reasons.”

“Naturally, a huge layer of responsible and important work performed by the first deputy general director of the Karelia Development Corporation cannot be left to chance, and therefore another employee, very experienced and trained, has now been appointed to this position,” said Ocheretko-Raumo .

And two months later, the former freelance adviser to the governor and first deputy general director of the Karelia Development Corporation was detained in one of the Petrozavodsk hotels.

It is interesting that the dizzying success of the former controller from Helsinki in Karelia did not go unnoticed in Finland. In 2022, the Finnish magazine Seura published an article under the telling title “The special career path of Alexi Raumo. A ticket inspector from Helsinki has risen to the elite level of the Republic of Karelia.” Journalist Outi Salovaara tried to figure out how a former public transport inspector from the Finnish capital ended up surrounded by the current Karelian governor and what Mr. Ocheretko-Raumo was doing at the Center for Attracting Foreign Investments, especially after Russia came under international sanctions due to military actions in Ukraine. But in December 2024, this “special career path” ended.

According to unofficial information, Raumo is suspected of intermediary in receiving a bribe.