Venemaa oligarh Gennadi Timtšenko seotud Eesti valimistel erakondadele rahade eraldustega läbi aegade. Iltalehti kirjutab sellest pikemalt.
Ex-KGB operative Gennadi Timšenko funded Estonian election campaigns. Traces found that KGB operatives worked from the cover of offshore companies and forged connections to various political establishment all though the 90's
https://twitter.com/pmakela1/status/1509490138878988291Oligarch Tymoshenko protects herself with a Finnish passport - new references: Spies influenced man's companies even longer than reported
Russian oil and gas money has attracted political decision-makers across Europe to cooperate. As early as 1995, Gennady Timchenko and his network of businessmen affiliated with the KGB were major sponsors of the Estonian Prime Minister's Party.
For years, Putin scholars have warned Putin loyal oligarchs to pursue Russia's political goals with their money.
According to a report by Iltalehti, Gennady Timchenko 's corporate cluster was already a major election financier in Estonia in 1995.
Former executives of Timtchenko's Finnish company in the 1990s have involved political decision-makers from Azerbaijan to Finland and Estonia in their business.
The role of the companies founded by Gennady Timtchenko and KGB officers in Finland and Sweden in the background of Estonia's 1995 election financing contains many indications of what Putin's researchers have been warning about for years.
In addition, the activity seems to have continued for longer than reported.
Over the past decade, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the oligarchs loyal to Putin have published a wealth of investigative journalism, nonfiction, and government reports. One key reminder of them is that under the break-up of the Soviet Union, the state security service, the KGB, transferred funds west to the shelters of covert networks. The purpose was to secure the status of intelligence officers and the funding of their ongoing and future operations.
During Putin's reign, these KGB-era networks have been activated and the strategic sectors of the economy - the most strategic of all - the energy sector - have been concentrated in the management of former security personnel loyal to Putin. Over the years, there has been a lot of evidence that the fabulous profits that disappear into complex corporate networks do not end up being the joy of the oligarchs alone. The funds will also be used to pursue Russia's foreign policy goals.
Tymoshenko is one of the wealthiest businessmen during Putin's reign. He obtained Finnish citizenship in 1999.
Iltalehti previously reported how the oil trading company led by Tymoshenko in Finland had strong connections to Soviet foreign intelligence. Tymoshenko has always denied working for the KGB herself and has emphasized that she is only a skilled businessman.
The United States put Tymchenko on its sanctions list as early as 2014, but the Finnish passport has protected him from EU sanctions until the end of last February. At that time, Tymoshenko was also added to the EU sanctions list.
New reports from Iltalehti reveal strong indications that Tymoshenko worked in the oil business with intelligence officers for longer than has been reported to the public. The study also reveals that political connections were built through the corporate network, at least in Estonia in the early years.
Election money scandal in the portIn the late 1990s, the Estonian National Audit Office investigated a scandal involving a company called Scantrans, which operated an oil terminal in the port of Paljassaare in Tallinn.
The company was a major contributor to the Estonian Coalition in the 1995 parliamentary elections. The party-led election coalition won the election, and Tiit Vähi became the prime minister of the scandalous government.
Iltalehti 's reports on Gennady Timchenko reveal that an oil trader close to Putin and his KGB-based group of companies were behind the election finance company Scantrans. Later, Timtchenko's partners built a new port in Estonia with Vähi, which lives off trade between Russia and the EU.
A mystery company in IrelandScantrans, which operated the Paljassaari port oil terminal, was founded by the Port of Tallinn and the Swedish oil broker Urals Scandinavia. The majority of the company was owned by the Estonian state-owned company Tallinna Sadam.
However, a share issue was made in the company in 1995, in which a significant number of new shares were subscribed for by the unknown Irish Voncare Investments. The management of the Tallinn Port Company decided not to purchase new shares. As a result, the state-owned company's shareholding fell to less than one-fifth and control of the company passed from the state-owned company to Voncare in Ireland.
At the same time as the role of Scantrans as a major financier of the Prime Minister's Party became clear to the Estonian media, the scandal was over. The owners of Voncar could not be identified at the time.
In a book on the Estonian oil transit business in 2013, Estonian journalist Sulev Vedler said that much later, Toomas Tuul , CEO of Scantrans, admitted that he had owned Voncar together with Valeri Golovuškin , “CEO of Lukoil Europe” .
Urals and the KGBDocuments related to Scantrans appeared in Iltalehti's report on Timchenko's business in Finland. Iltalehti has reported on the background of Timtchenko, who acquired Finnish citizenship in 1999, in a previous story .
In the last years of the Soviet Union, Tymoshenko and KGB officers created a business arrangement to import oil products from the Kirishi refinery near St. Petersburg to the West at a large profit.
During the Soviet era, Kirišineftorgsintez (Kinef), a St. Petersburg refinery company, had its own export unit, Kirišineftekimexport (Kinex), which in the 1980s exported oil past a state monopoly. Gennady Tymchenko was one of Kinef's leaders alongside Yevgeny Malov and Andrei Katkov .
In 1989, a company called Urals was established in Russia. Urals companies were also established in Finland, Sweden and Denmark in the early 1990s. According to the financial newspaper Vedomost, the establishment of Urals was approved by Leonid Šebarš , the then head of the KGB's foreign intelligence service, and was led by Andrei Pannikov , a KGB officer who had been deported from Sweden last year after Säpo was exposed as a spy in the oil industry.
In co-operation with Vladimir Putin , Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, who issued export licenses , Kinex sold the oil to Urals in Russia, which resold it to Urals companies established in the Nordic countries for resale.
Tymoshenko's Kinex partner Malov was originally appointed to Urals Finland's board, and Golovushki, who was named Pannikov's KGB comrade in Vedomost. A year later, they were allowed to make room for Pannikov and Tymchenko.
Tymoshenko and her partners acted as sellers of oil in Kinex and as buyers in Urals. The arrangement was reminiscent of numerous similarities with which the KGB transferred funds to the West to secure both the living standards of KGB men and the financing of operations under the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Along with Tymchenko, Andrei Katkov was one of the leaders of Kinex in the late 1980s. During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the men, together with KGB officers, also established an oil brokerage company in Finland. ITAR-TASS News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo
Urals change their nameAccording to a public story, Timtchenko and the KGB men parted ways in 1994 when, along with other leaders, he privatized the export unit of the Kirishi oil refinery, Kinex.
According to an employee interviewed by the Russian business newspaper Vedomost, Urals Finland was under the control of the security service until Timtchenko's Kinex bought the company from KGB officer Andrei Pannikov . In 1994, the name of the Nordic Urals was changed to International Petroleum Products and Tymchenko became their director.
However, the case of Scantrans in Estonia puts things in a different light. Until March 1995, Golovushkin, who was named Pannikov's KGB comrade in Vedomost, was the director of the Danish branch of the Swedish IPP Sweden.
At the same time, however, at the time of leaving IPP's management, he secretly became the owner of IPP's associated company Scantrans through a company established in Ireland. Iltalehti went through the company's documents from the 1990s, and Golovushkin's name is not revealed at all. The company’s directors are two Swiss men and the owner is an offshore company registered in the Isle of Man that hides the ultimate owners and powers behind nominal directors and shareholders.
Building relationshipsGolovushkin's move from IPP to tax haven companies alongside Tymchenko suggests that the paths of oil traders and intelligence officers did not necessarily part ways in 1994, but that cooperation continued in secret.
Participating in Estonian election funding, on the other hand, suggests that the Putin-backed circle of businessmen and, in his own words, former spies, also actively engaged in relations with politicians from the outset. This in itself is not a surprise.
In Finland, Urals or its Followers do not appear in election or party funding announcements for at least the last decade. Instead, Kai Paananen , a businessman who has worked closely with Timtchenko on profitable exports of Kiris refinery products , has financed politicians through his company.
Among other things, he donated 6,500 euros to Sauli Niinistö 's presidential election campaign in 2012. According to Helsingin Sanomat , he also funded Timo Laaninen 's campaign as the party secretary of the city center.
Paananen told Iltalehti that he had supported the parties “from side to side”. One of the supporters was the Coalition Party's Jukka Kopra , who demanded in a press release that the Finnish Foreign Ministry “complain” about the sanctions imposed by the United States on Paananen in 2014 to assist Timtchenko.
In 2013–2014, Harry Harkimo sold less than half of the Jokers hockey team and his stake in Hartwall Arena. The buyers were Tymoshenko and another Putin creditor, Boris Rotenberg , who had acquired Finnish citizenship . Kauppalehti estimates that Harkimo received approximately EUR 3.4 million from the Joker half and approximately EUR 16 million from its Arena shares .
Harkimo rose to the parliament in the spring 2015 elections as a representative of the Coalition Party, but is now leading the founding of the Movement Now party.
In 1996, the Prime Minister of Finland Paavo Lipponen (center) and the Prime Minister of Estonia Tiit Vähi participated in the Baltic Sea Summit in Visby. The company, which is linked to Gennady Timtchenko and the KGB's foreign intelligence, had been a major sponsor of the Least Party in last year's election. BPA
A small oil port entrepreneurEstonian Prime Minister Tiit Vähi resigned in the middle of his term. He later became a businessman in the Russian oil transit business himself. He left as a partner and director in a company that built the port of Sillamäe in the Gulf of Narva in the Baltic Sea. Timtchenko's business partners Katkov and Malov became the least business partners and investors in the project.
International Trade Register data reveals that Malov still owns the port through a Swiss-Estonian company chain. The owner of the second share is the Austrian Reiffeisen Bank, which hides the beneficial owner. The same bank was used to hide one shareholder in the gas brokerage Rosukrenergo, which overthrew the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. At least in 2016, Katkov has said that he owns a quarter of the company.
Statesmen for energy exportsDuring the opening of the port in 2005, it was described as “the easternmost port in the European Union and the westernmost in Russia”. Little emphasized how the recent agreement between German Chancellor Gerhad Schröder and Vladimir Putin on the Baltic gas pipeline, Nord Stream, underlined the interdependence between Russia and Europe.
Schröder took over from the post of Chancellor in the same year as Chairman of the Board of Nord Stream. In 2008, the former Prime Minister of Finland, Paavo Lipponen (sd), first became a lobbyist for Nord Stream and continued to work for the successor Nord Stream 2 project.
The director of the Nord Stream project company was Matthias Warnig , a former East German intelligence officer . According to the Wall Street Journal, Warnig helped Putin recruit agents from the West while Putin was serving as a KGB colonel in Dresden in the 1980s. Warnig has denied this.
The companies owned by Timtenko and Boris and his brother Arkadi Rotenberg , on the other hand, have been the main Russian contractors in the Nord Stream projects and other gas projects by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
Friendship and assistanceLike Schröder and Lipponen, Vähi has emphasized the importance of co-operation with Russia as a guarantor of peace in Europe. Few even demanded the resignation of the Estonian government due to a statue dispute that tightened the country between Russia in 2007.
All three were critical of imposing economic sanctions on Russia after the occupation of Crimea in 2014. Little publicly demanded their easing in 2016 and Schröder in 2017 when he was appointed to the board of the oil company Rosneft.
Golovushkin rises to the surfaceValeri Golovushkin, who represented the KGB forces in the Urals, also rose to international prominence when the NGO Global Witness published its report on the oil trade in Azerbaijan in 2013.
According to the report, the Azerbaijani state oil company Socar had set up its own oil sales company, Socar Trading, in Switzerland. A study by Global Witness showed that the state-owned Socar owned only half of the billion-dollar company. Valeri Golovuškin and an unknown Azerbaijani businessman were revealed to be the owners of the second half - at least in nominal terms - through complex corporate reorganizations.
As a result of the arrangement, significant revenues from the oil trade of the state of Azerbaijan were diverted to the corporate chains controlled by Golovushkin and the Azerbaijani businessman. According to an article published in the blog of the German think tank Surkhan Latifov , political scientist Golovushki served in the KGB together with Haidar Aliyev .
Aliyev, who died in 2003, was a Soviet-era KGB general who led Azerbaijan as an authoritarian president from 1993 to 2003. Since then, the country has been ruled by his son, Ilham Aliyev .
Guardians of Putin's moneyGennady Timchenko has always denied that he had anything to do with the KGB or any illegal or unethical business. For a long time, he also denied that he knew Putin better.
After receiving a Finnish passport, Tymchenko moved to Switzerland in the early 2000s. He became a very important figure in Russian business after Mikhail Khodorkovsky , the most important oil oligarch of Yeltsin's time, was imprisoned in 2003.
Following Khodorkovsky's verdict, his oil company Yukos was split among companies loyal to Putin. A significant portion of Yukos' oil exports were then diverted for sale to Gunvor, established by Tymoshenko in Switzerland. Out of complete obscurity, the company quickly rose to become one of the world’s largest oil brokers and Tymoshenko one of the world’s richest people.
In the end, however, Tymoshenko is only believed to be in possession of Putin's money. This also seems to have been the case with his Urals business partner and later Tiit Vähi's port business partner, Yevgeny Malov.
The Panama Papers leak revealed in 2016 how Malov had sold its shares in Rossija Bank to a $ 425,000 offshore company. Two days later, the company resold them for $ 13.6 million. The owner of the offshore company revealed musician Sergei Roldugin , a former principal of the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra - and the godfather of Putin’s daughter .
https://www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/4 ... 73f88e07ba