It turns out that there is much in common between gas and perfumery. The businessman Dmitry Firtash, who controls 45% of Russian-Ukrainian gas mediator RosUkrEnergo, also owns the Hungarian trader, Euronit Kereskedelmi ES Szolgaltalo KTF. Previously, the company used to participate in the scheme of supplying the Turkmen gas in exchange for goods and food. At the time being, it has a 10-year contract with RosUkrEnergo and – as was established by Novaya Gazeta – is associated with Moscow firms of Mogilevich’s ex-wives and the spouse of his old business partner Igor Fisherman. These firms and people used to have direct relation to Arbat Prestige that is being investigated scandalously within the frames of criminal case about tax avoidance.
According to unified register of enterprises, Moscow representative office of Euronit appeared in February 2004. It was registered at same address with the firm named General Company Resource where former Mogilevich’s wife, Olga Schneider, was registered as the head. The firm changed its address several times in its registration documents.
The phone pointed by Euronit at its registration – 933 6981 – is equal to that registered with a little-known Moscow firm Transkomplekt. The latter firm is interesting with the fact it was founded by Mogilevich’s ex-wife Galina Telesh and the spouse of former Mogilevich’s business partner Igor Fisherman, who was mentioned in the American indictment against Mogilevich who is searched for by FBR.
Rinway Company was another co-founder of Transkomplekt. In 2003 it possessed 40% of the stock of Arbat Prestige. The newspaper Vedomosti reported that that time Galina Telesh, former Mogilevich’s wife, and Olga Zhunzhurova, Fisherman’s spouse, and Maria and Dmitry Firtash were co-owners of Rinway.
Representative office of Hungarian Euronit in Moscow was run by Alexander Emelin. He was a Moscow employee of the Elmstad Trading Limited (Cyprus) since 2002. That time it was Oleg Palchikov who headed Moscow office of the latter company. Afterwards, he became one of the executive directors of RosUkrEnergo holding the position till April 2007.
In the mean time, the Cyprus Elmstad was one of the co-founders of General Company Resource and Rinway firm that had 40% of Arbat Prestige’s stock in 2003.
RosUkrEnergo said that connections of its shareholders do not have any relation to the company itself. Dmitry Firtash gave no comment on the situation. However, it appears that a series of coincidences is turning into regularity.
Who is who
Semen Mogilevich’s former wife, Olga Schneider, worked in Ritual-Service as a lawyer till 2001. Then she went to work in Chamber 12 of the Moscow Bar Association. Evgeny Baru, director of Chamber 12, confirmed to Novaya Gazeta that Mrs. Schneider worked as a civil lawyer.
“Several years ago she left our agency as she wished to have easier working schedule. If I’m not mistaken, she was going to start a legal aid agency. Olga Schneider acted mainly as a civil lawyer. She is independent and competent specialist. She worked in the sphere servicing the business but she also got appointments for conducting criminal cases, as a free lawyer” recalls Baru.
Answering the question if the office was aware about Semen Mogilevich, Baru said that such a topic was not discussed:
“There were no complaints about her from her client’s side and we had no other reasons for judging about her professional activities.”
For some while, Olga Schneider was registered as the head of General Company Resource. Its today’s director Viktor Egorushkin was an employee of Mosukrainsnab in 2000. In that period the mentioned company received 4,290,048,991 rubles from Naftogas of Ukraine. This amount had been paid by Gazprom to Naftogas for transit of the gas through the Ukraine’s territory. Same day Naftogas transferred the money to Mosukrainsnab as pre-payment for gas. Later, however, Naftogas asked to change the purpose of payment for pre-payment under the contract for supply of commodities. Afterwards, Naftogas attempted to get in law with Mosukrainsnab putting a suit against it in the Ukrainian commercial arbitration court. However, the Moscow court of review denied the Ukrainian court’s decision made in favor of Naftogas.
The Swiss Lars Haussmann, the President of RosUkrEnergo, worked in the management of the Swiss company Cronos Im-Ex AG that traded chemical products, and goods and equipment for chemical industry. Alexander Emelin from Moscow was the Director of the company from Russian side. Search for Emelin was difficult due to the fact that the Swiss register does not require pointing the birthdate or patronymic of the Director. We tried to find Emelin in Moscow and we found Alexander Emelin, born 1965, who was in charge of some Gazprom projects, but he said he has no relation to that company.
Now we have found another Alexander Emelin, born in 1969, who was the Dmitry Firtash’s Euronit representative in Moscow and after 2002 he was a Moscow employee of the Cyprus Company Elmstad Trading Limited, where he worked together with the future Director of RosUkrEnergo Oleg Palchikov. The Swiss lawyer Lars Haussmann, the member of board at the RosUkrEnergo did not comment the situation. We failed to get in touch with Emelin.
