In Sweden, a criminal case was opened against a Bombardier subsidiary. In Sweden, a Bombardier employee from Russia was arrested in a bribery case. He promised, but didn’t sell.

Swedish authorities detained for two weeks a Russian citizen, an employee of the local division of the Canadian company Bombardier Transportation, Evgeniy Pavlov, on suspicion of bribery. This was reported on Friday, March 10, by the AP agency, citing the country's prosecutor's office. He and several other company managers, who had previously been temporarily detained, are suspected of corrupt transactions with Azerbaijan. Pavlov's lawyer said he denies all charges.

In response to a media request, the Swedish division of Bombardier said that it had checked the activities of Multiserv Overseas and made sure that it complied with the requirements and ethical standards. Bombardier claims that the London-based company does not just resell, but also provides a number of other services.

According to Swedish prosecutors, Azerbaijani officials received kickbacks from Bombardier for approving a deal for the supply of railway signaling. Law enforcement agencies point out that in 2013, other companies that offered lower prices participated in the tender for this deal, but the contract was signed with Bombardier. The maximum penalty for corruption crimes in Sweden is six years' imprisonment.

Connections with Russia

The Russian subsidiary Bombardier Transportation (36% of which belongs to the Russian state concern Russian Railways) also participated in the modernization of the railway section in Azerbaijan. This company carried out direct work on updating automation systems, using equipment from the same Swedish division of Bombardier, which appears in the investigation of the Swedish prosecutor's office. This is reported by Novaya Gazeta, which wrote about dubious transactions through the London-based Multiserv Overseas during a study of documents from the so-called.

As Novaya found out, the first director of Multiserv Overseas was Yuri Obodovsky, one of the key partners of Alexei Krapivin, the son of a former adviser to the ex-head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. In addition, the first contract for the purchase and sale of signaling equipment between the Swedish division of Bombardier and the Multiserv company was signed by Anton Belyakov, an employee of several companies associated with Krapivin. As a result, due to the difference in the price of equipment in the two contracts, more than $80 million could have ended up in the accounts of the London company Multiserv Overseas, Novaya concludes.

See also:

• The largest leak in history

  A little over a year ago, an unknown person provided the Süddeustche Zeitung newspaper with a huge archive of internal documents of the Panamanian company Mossack Fonseca, which is involved in registering offshore companies. More than 11 million documents with a total volume of 2.6 terabytes fell into the hands of journalists. The Panama Papers became the largest information leak in history.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Mathematics from Mossack Fonseca

From the Mossack Fonseca archive it follows that the company helped establish offshore companies for 12 world leaders, as well as family members or the immediate circle of heads of state. In total, the documents mention 140 heads of state and eminent politicians and 214 thousand offshore companies from 200 countries.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

A big name in the offshore market

Established in 1977, Mossack Fonseca is one of the world's largest offshore company registration firms. Its main office is located in Panama. The company was founded by the German Jürgen Mossack, whose father emigrated to Panama after World War II, and the writer Ramon Fonseca. The company's offices are located throughout the world.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Presidents, kings, prime ministers...

From Mossack Fonseca documents it became known that the companies established with its help are in one way or another connected with the “powers that be.” Among those mentioned in the Panama Papers are Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Spain's former King Juan Carlos, Argentine President Mauricio Macri and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

...and their immediate family

Many offshore companies turned out to be registered in the names of the wives, sisters, daughters and cousins ​​of world leaders. Among those involved in the Panama Papers are the entire family of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the grandson of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the father of British Prime Minister David Cameron.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Cello in the bushes

Among the clients of the Panamanian company were people from the inner circle of President Vladimir Putin. For example, his longtime friend, the famous cellist Sergei Roldugin. The documents show that he owns several offshore companies, in whose accounts hundreds of millions of dollars were deposited - a small part of the $2 billion that passed through companies associated with people and companies close to Putin.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Promised but didn't sell

Journalists who studied the Mossack Fonseca archive found Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to have offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus and the Netherlands. As it turned out, the assets of his Roshen confectionery factory, which Poroshenko promised to sell before the presidential elections, were transferred there. Now in Ukraine a tax audit has begun against the president.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Not only politicians

Among those involved in the Panama Papers was actor Jackie Chan. At least six offshore companies under the management of Mossack Fonseca are registered under it. However, it does not follow from the documents that the Hollywood star used them for criminal purposes. The Panamanian company's archive also mentions the name of Argentine footballer Lionel Messi. In his case, tax evasion has long been an open secret.



"Panama Papers": Petro Poroshenko and Jackie Chan in the same boat

Resigned...temporarily

From the Panama Papers it became known that the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, also has an offshore company. After this, thousands of Icelanders took to the streets to demand his resignation. As a result, Gunnlaugsson actually decided to leave his post. True, as it later turned out, the head of the Icelandic government resigned only for a while.

How Yuri Obodovsky and Alexey Krapivin pushed the Canadian giant onto the CIS railways for a share and cash in offshore companies

Olesya Shmagun

Swedish police are investigating a criminal case against the Swedish subsidiary of the global transport giant, Bombardier Transportation. This investigation began after Novaya Gazeta published documents from the Panama Archives about offshore empire of Alexey Krapivin, son of a former adviser and good friend of the ex-president of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin. One Bombardier Transportation employee, Russian citizen Evgeny Pavlov, was arrested, and three more members of the board of directors are considered suspects in a bribery case. Novaya Gazeta, together with journalists from OCCRP, Swedish public television SVT, news agency TT-news and Radio Canada, received materials from the criminal case. Documents show: the global giant Bombardier used the connections of close acquaintances of Vladimir Yakunin to conquer the markets of the CIS countries.

Those close to the former head of Russian Railways received tens of millions of dollars in offshore accounts, shares in common enterprises with Bombardier, and the management of the transport giant asked the Canadian authorities not to include Vladimir Yakunin on the sanctions list (due to the events in Ukraine) for his contribution to the development of the joint business .

"Partners ask to keep negotiations secret"

At the moment, the police are interested in one deal: the reconstruction of the railway in Azerbaijan, from Baku to the Georgian border.

In 2013, the Azerbaijani railways held an international competition, the winner was a consortium of companies led by the Russian Bombardier Transportation (Signal), a joint subsidiary of Russian Railways OJSC and the Swedish Bombardier. The consortium was supposed to replace outdated signaling equipment on the railways and equip them with the Swedish Ebilock-950 - the consortium estimated the total cost of the work at $340 million. Most of the money for the project came in the form of a loan from the World Bank to the Azerbaijani government.

The largest companies from Italy, Turkey, China, Korea and the Czech Republic submitted their proposals to the competition. The price offered by Bombardier was not the lowest, but several bidders were withdrawn from the competition because they did not meet other tender parameters.

According to the Swedish police, Bombardier was directly involved in writing the tender documentation. This version is confirmed by documents at the disposal of Novaya Gazeta.

“I had several informal meetings with the management of Azerbaijan Railways and local representatives of the World Bank,” Bombardier employee Evgeniy Pavlov, who is currently under arrest, wrote to his colleagues in November 2012, six months before the official tender. - They are ready to draw up competition documents so that Bombardier meets all the conditions. Our partners ask us to keep our negotiations secret, so we need to keep this secret within the company. In order to help the employees of Azerbaijan Railways draw up the “correct” tender documentation, I propose to create a group of employees whom we can trust...”

"A small group of influential people"

The CIS countries are a promising market for the company's development: the railways here are long, but the equipment is often outdated and requires modernization. However, the market is quite competitive: for example, in 2009, Bombardier was unable to agree with Russian Railways on the production of trains for the Olympic Sochi, the contract went to the German Siemens.

But in the railway automation market, Bombardier is a long-time leader in the post-Soviet space. Since the late 1990s, the company has equipped 180 stations in Russia, as well as stations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan with its Ebilock-950 systems.

In 2010, Bombardier announced that it was beginning to localize the production of Ebilock-950 in Russia. To do this, in 2011 the company acquired from Russian Railways a stake in the Russian company Elteza, which owns seven factories for the production of railway automation. But, as Novaya Gazeta found out, Bombardier did not own 50% -1 share of Elteza for long. The privatization deal was a little more complicated than was announced by Russian Railways and Bombardier itself.

At the moment, Russian factories are run by Russian businessmen close to Vladimir Yakunin. Judging by the documents at the disposal of Novaya Gazeta, they also helped Bombardier obtain lucrative contracts in the post-Soviet space.

The documents sent by the Swedish police to the court contain internal correspondence from Bombardier Transportation employees who mention the names of Yuri Obodovsky and Alexey Krapivin.

"They are part of a small group of influential people who have direct access to Vladimir Yakunin, and through him, to virtually all the heads of railways in the former Soviet republics."

These words from the company’s internal correspondence once again confirm what Novaya Gazeta and other publications have repeatedly written about in their investigations.

Andrei Krapivin and Yuri Obodovsky are well known in Russia; they manage a business empire built on government orders from Russian Railways; for the last 10 years, their companies have received billions of rubles from the state-owned company.

Thomas Fosberg, a Swedish police officer involved in the investigation, refused to say whether the police are interested in Bombardier's Russian partners: “It is difficult for me to make any statements at this stage, we do not yet know how exactly we will use this information. But, without a doubt, we will try to trace the movement of money. We see that Bombardier edited the tender documentation for the Azerbaijani project to suit itself. This kind of assistance from the customer, of course, cannot be free. So we suspect a bribe. But we cannot yet say with certainty who exactly got the money.”

Movement of money towards Yakunin’s acquaintances

Lifehack. How to increase the cost of a product 5 times

The Swedish branch of Bombardier sells Ebilock-950 to the fictitious British company Multiserv Overseas Ltd for 126 million kroner (about $19 million). Multiserv Overseas Ltd has neither an office nor employees; its owners are located offshore. But the company was registered in 2010 by Yuri Obodovsky.

“We believe that the money deposited in the accounts of Multiserv Overseas Ltd was subsequently used, among other things, as a bribe to “thank” those who helped Bombardier win the competition in Azerbaijan,” says prosecutor Thomas Fosberg.

Multiserv Overseas Ltd enters into contracts that several experts have called "fictitious" in order to divert money further into offshore accounts. The money goes to the company, where Krapivin is the ultimate owner.

“Apparently, these contracts are needed only to ensure that the money does not remain in the accounts of the British company, but goes further to offshore jurisdictions, where there are virtually zero taxes,” says Carl Pelletier, a financial consultant and certified fraud detection specialist from Montreal.

“This whole scheme was created in order to siphon money and distribute it among interested people. These are bribes,” agrees auditor and board member of Transparency International in Sweden Louise Braun.

Stage 4. The equipment is purchased by the final owner, taxpayers pay for everything

The money was transferred to offshore accounts, and the equipment from Bombardier (Signal) was purchased at full cost by the state company Azerbaijan Railways.

The deal in Azerbaijan is only part of the overall picture. As customs data show, along exactly the same route, signaling equipment enters Russia for the needs of Russian Railways. Since 2011, Multiserv Overseas Ltd has supplied equipment worth $150 million to Russia. However, now Novaya Gazeta does not have documents that could show what part of the money ends up in the accounts of Multiserv Overseas Ltd for Russian transactions.

Novaya Gazeta has documents confirming that when supplying the same equipment to Mongolia, Bombardier also used intermediary companies associated with Obodovsky and Krapivin.

Prosecutor Thomas Fosberg said Swedish police were currently investigating exclusively the deal in Azerbaijan. “It’s too early to say whether we will deal with episodes with Russia or other countries. But in general this is standard practice, we have good connections with law enforcement agencies in other countries, and if I need any help in the future, I think I will get it.”

However, the degree of involvement of Krapivin and his partners in Bombardier’s business in Russia is not limited to mediation in the supply of Ebilock-950. As Novaya Gazeta found out, he is also one of the co-owners of the Elteza company, privatized in 2010 through a holding company in the Netherlands. Until now, it was believed that Elteza was owned 50/50 by Russian Railways and Bombardier.

Not just money

The holding company in the Netherlands was registered six months before the deal, and at first, indeed, it was 100% owned by Bombardier. But a week later, the company’s ownership structure changed. Using open sources, it is impossible to track all stages of the resale of the asset, but at least since the end of 2012, Alexey Krapivin has appeared in the ownership structure - from 2012 to the present, he owns 36% of the Dutch company. That is, Krapivin’s effective share in Eltez is almost 20%.

“It’s difficult to talk about anything with confidence, because we don’t see the structure of the deal, we don’t know how much Krapivin paid for his share in the company,” says Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of Transparency International Russia. But, of course, all this looks suspicious: a major international player wins the privatization competition, and after a short time the share in the state-owned company ends up in the hands of structures close to the head of Russian Railways, that is, the seller. It can be assumed that there is a corruption component here, that the share in the business was a form of remuneration on the part of Bombardier for winning the competition.”

It is worth mentioning another service provided by the Canadian company to the head of Russian Russian Railways. As the largest Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, reported in 2014, when the issue of imposing sanctions against Russian citizens due to the events in Ukraine was discussed in Canada,

Bombardier lobbied for Yakunin’s exclusion from the sanctions list. Now sanctions against the former head of a Russian state-owned company have been imposed in the United States, but not in Canada.

“We have informed the country's authorities about our investments in Russia and how our business interests may be harmed by the imposition of sanctions,” Bombardier said in a statement to the Globe and Mail.

In a written commentary for Novaya Gazeta, Yakunin’s representative Grigory Levchenko once again confirmed that the ex-head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin actually knew Krapivin. “At the same time, they never had a joint business,” Levchenko added. - I also have no reason to believe the documents presented to the Stockholm court. Yakunin never met Yuri Obodovsky, so the words that he had direct access to Yakunin are incorrect. In addition, the assumption that any person could have access to “everyone” and manipulate the results of international competitions seems to me an implausible fairy tale,” says Yakunin’s representative.

Novaya Gazeta repeatedly tried to contact Alexei Krapivin, Yuri Obodovsky, the Swedish branch of Bombardier and the company's main office in Canada. No one responded to requests from Novaya Gazeta and media partners.

Last week, Bombardier's head office issued a press release noting that the company was assisting Swedish police with the investigation and was conducting its own internal review of the deal. “So far we have no confirmation that company employees have somehow violated the law.”

Swedish police have opened a criminal case against a subsidiary of the Canadian transport company Bombardier-Bombardier Transportation, which was suspected of illegal transactions involving people from the circle of ex-president of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, reports Novaya Gazeta.

Suspicions arose after the publication of the Panama Archives (see). Then it became known about the offshores of Alexei Krapivin, the son of Yakunin’s old acquaintance Oleg Krapivin. Documents from the criminal case, cited by Novaya Gazeta, show that Yakunin’s close acquaintances helped Bombardier conquer the market of the CIS countries, for which tens of millions of dollars were transferred to their offshore accounts.

Now the Swedish police are interested in the details of the deal between Russian Railways and a transport company for the reconstruction of the Azerbaijani railway from Baku to the border with Georgia. The $340 million tender was then won by a consortium of companies led by Bombardier Transportation (Signal), a subsidiary of Russian Railways and Bombardier. The documents of the criminal case confirm the information that the company was directly involved in writing the tender documentation.

“We see that Bombardier edited the tender documentation for the Azerbaijani project for itself. This kind of assistance from the customer, of course, cannot be free. So we suspect a bribe,” Novaya Gazeta reports the words of Swedish police officer Thomas Fosberg .

The documents sent by the Swedish police to the court contain internal correspondence from Bombardier Transportation employees who mention the names of Yuri Obodovsky and Alexei Krapivin. They, according to the case materials, allegedly “are part of a small group of influential people who have access to Vladimir Yakunin, and through him to almost all the heads of railways in the former Soviet republics.” Swedish police believe that fictitious contracts were used during the transaction, and the cost of equipment for Azerbaijan ultimately increased fivefold.

However, these are not the only frauds that Bombardier carried out during the supply of equipment, law enforcement officers believe. The publication reports that intermediaries associated with Obodovsky and Krapivin were also used for deliveries to Mongolia.

Bombardier's head office has not responded to inquiries, but company officials issued a press release last week saying the firm was assisting Swedish police and conducting its own investigation. Yakunin’s representative confirmed that the ex-head of Russian Railways knew Krapivin, but noted that they never had a joint business.

Swedish police are investigating the international transport giant Bombardier Transportation following the publication of Novaya Gazeta and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) as part of the so-called Panama Papers. The case is related to transactions for the supply of railway equipment to Azerbaijan. Russian Evgeny Pavlov from Bombardier Transportation (Signal) was arrested in Sweden.

In April 2016, based on documents from the Panama Archives - a massive leak of data from the internal database of the offshore Mossack Fonseca - Novaya Gazeta, as the Swedish subsidiary of Bombardier, supplies Ebilock-950 equipment to Russia and Azerbaijan through the company Multiserv Ovearseas , registered in London.

Multiserv Ovearseas had neither an office nor employees; it actually existed only on paper. And the first director of this company was Yuri Obodovsky, one of the key partners of Alexei Krapivin, the son of former adviser Vladimir Yakunin.

The equipment was purchased by the Russian company Bombardier Transportation (Signal), 36% of which belongs to the state-owned PJSC Russian Railways.

Until recently, Novaya Gazeta did not know how much money was deposited in the accounts of Multiserv Ovearseas - neither the Russian nor the Swedish representative office of Bombardier responded to the newspaper’s requests.

Now Novaya already has at its disposal a complete set of documents on one of the transactions between the Swedish manufacturer Ebilock, the Russian buyer - Bombardier Transportation (Signal) - and the English intermediary Multiserv Ovearseas. The documents were provided to Novaya Gazeta by colleagues from the Swedish public television SVT and the news agency TT-news.

Deal

In 2013, the Azerbaijani government held a tender to update automation systems on the section of the railway leading from Baku to the Georgian border. The contract, totaling $288 million, was won by a consortium led by Bombardier Transportation. Work on the site was carried out by the Russian Bombardier Transportation (Signal) using Swedish equipment.

Novaya Gazeta has two contracts at its disposal that show how the deal took place.

Here's the first one.

According to the first contract, on June 16, 2014, the Swedish branch of Bombardier sold signaling equipment for 46 stations to the British company Multiserv Ovearseas for 126 million kroner (about $19 million). The contract on behalf of Multiserv is signed by Anton Belyakov, an employee of several companies associated with Alexey Krapivin.

Here is the second contract.

According to the second contract, Multiserv Overseas sells the same equipment in the same quantity to the Russian company Bombardier Transportation (Signal) for $104 million. The two contracts are identical in everything except price.

Thus, there were more than $80 million in Multiserv Overseas accounts.

The Russian state company Russian Railways, which owns 36% in Bombardier Transportation (Signal), could also lose from this deal.

Investigation

Today, the Stockholm district court arrested Russian citizen Evgeny Pavlov, an employee of the Swedish Bombardier, on suspicion of bribery. Several company managers, including one board member, were questioned by police.

Novaya Gazeta is working on investigative journalism with OCCRP, Swedish public television SVT, news agency TT-news and Radio Canada. The investigation will be published at the end of March.

Swedish police are investigating a criminal case against the Swedish subsidiary of the global transport giant, Bombardier Transportation. This investigation began after the publication of documents from the Panama Archives about the offshore empire of Alexei Krapivin, the son of a former adviser and good friend of the ex-president of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin. One Bombardier Transportation employee, Russian citizen Evgeny Pavlov, was arrested, and three more members of the board of directors are considered suspects in a bribery case. Novaya Gazeta, together with journalists from OCCRP, Swedish public television SVT, news agency TT-news and Radio Canada, received materials from the criminal case. Documents show: the global giant Bombardier used the connections of close acquaintances of Vladimir Yakunin to conquer the markets of the CIS countries.

Those close to the former head Russian Railways received tens of millions of dollars in offshore accounts, shares in common enterprises with Bombardier, and the management of the transport giant asked the Canadian authorities not to include Vladimir Yakunin on the sanctions list (due to the events in Ukraine) for his contribution to the development of the joint business.

"Partners ask to keep negotiations secret"

At the moment, the police are interested in one deal: the reconstruction of the railway in Azerbaijan, from Baku to the Georgian border.

In 2013, the Azerbaijani railways held an international competition, the winner was a consortium of companies led by the Russian Bombardier Transportation (Signal), a joint subsidiary of Russian Railways OJSC and the Swedish Bombardier. The consortium was supposed to replace outdated signaling equipment on the railways and equip them with the Swedish Ebilock-950 - the consortium estimated the total cost of the work at $340 million. Most of the money for the project came in the form of a loan from the World Bank to the Azerbaijani government.

The largest companies from Italy, Turkey, China, Korea and the Czech Republic submitted their proposals to the competition. The price offered by Bombardier was not the lowest, but several bidders were withdrawn from the competition because they did not meet other tender parameters.

According to the Swedish police, Bombardier was directly involved in writing the tender documentation. This version is confirmed by documents at the disposal of the editors.

“I had several informal meetings with the management of Azerbaijan Railways and local representatives of the World Bank,” Bombardier employee Evgeniy Pavlov, who is currently under arrest, wrote to his colleagues in November 2012, six months before the official tender. - They are ready to draw up competition documents so that Bombardier meets all the conditions. Our partners ask us to keep our negotiations secret, so we need to keep this secret within the company. In order to help the employees of Azerbaijan Railways draw up the “correct” tender documentation, I propose to create a group of employees whom we can trust...”

"A small group of influential people"

Bombardier is one of the world's largest railway and aircraft manufacturing companies, but in recent years the company has been going through difficult times. In October 2016, head office announced 7,500 job cuts.

The CIS countries are a promising market for the company's development: the railways here are long, but the equipment is often outdated and requires modernization. However, the market is quite competitive: for example, in 2009, Bombardier was unable to reach an agreement with JSC Russian Railways on the production of trains for Olympic Sochi, the contract went to the German Siemens.

But in the railway automation market, Bombardier is a long-time leader in the post-Soviet space. Since the late 1990s, the company has equipped 180 stations in Russia, as well as stations in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Azerbaijan with its Ebilock-950 systems.

In 2010, Bombardier announced that it was beginning to localize the production of Ebilock-950 in Russia. To do this, in 2011 the company acquired from Russian Railways a stake in the Russian company Elteza, which owns seven factories for the production of railway automation. But, as the newspaper found out, Bombardier did not own 50% -1 share of Elteza for long. The privatization deal was a little more complicated than was announced by Russian Railways and Bombardier itself.

At the moment, Russian factories are run by Russian businessmen close to Vladimir Yakunin. Judging by the documents at the newspaper’s disposal, they also helped Bombardier obtain lucrative contracts in the post-Soviet space.

The documents sent by the Swedish police to the court contain internal correspondence from Bombardier Transportation employees who mention the names of Yuri Obodovsky and Alexey Krapivin.

"They are part of a small group of influential people who have direct access to Vladimir Yakunin, and through him, to virtually all the heads of railways in the former Soviet republics."

These words from the company’s internal correspondence once again confirm what the newspaper and other publications have repeatedly written about in their investigations.

Internal correspondence of employees of the Swedish office of Bombardier with a dossier on Yuri Obodovsky

Andrey Krapivin and Yuri Obodovsky well known in Russia, they manage a business empire built on government orders from Russian Railways; for the last 10 years, their companies have received billions of rubles from the state-owned company.

Thomas Fosberg, a Swedish police officer involved in the investigation, refused to say whether the police are interested in Bombardier's Russian partners: “It is difficult for me to make any statements at this stage, we do not yet know how exactly we will use this information. But, without a doubt, we will try to trace the movement of money. We see that Bombardier edited the tender documentation for the Azerbaijani project to suit itself. This kind of assistance from the customer, of course, cannot be free. So we suspect a bribe. But we cannot yet say with certainty who exactly got the money.”

Movement of money towards Yakunin’s acquaintances

Lifehack. How to increase the cost of a product 5 times

Stage 1. An intermediary appears in the transaction

The Swedish branch of Bombardier sells Ebilock-950 to the fictitious British company Multiserv Overseas Ltd for 126 million kroner (about $19 million). Multiserv Overseas Ltd has neither an office nor employees; its owners are located offshore. But the company was registered in 2010 by Yuri Obodovsky.

Stage 2. The intermediary receives 400% of the transaction

At the same time, internal documents of Bombardier show that the equipment went directly from Sweden to Azerbaijan, without any participation of the British company, and only money went along a broken path.

“We believe that the money deposited in the accounts of Multiserv Overseas Ltd was subsequently used, among other things, as a bribe to “thank” those who helped Bombardier win the competition in Azerbaijan,” says prosecutor Thomas Forsberg.

“Apparently, these contracts are needed only to ensure that the money does not remain in the accounts of the British company, but goes further to offshore jurisdictions, where there are virtually zero taxes,” says Carl Pelletier, a financial consultant and certified fraud detection specialist from Montreal.

“This whole scheme was created in order to siphon money and distribute it among interested people. These are bribes,” agrees auditor and board member of Transparency International in Sweden Louise Braun.

Stage 4. The equipment is purchased by the final owner, taxpayers pay for everything

The deal in Azerbaijan is only part of the overall picture. As customs data show, along exactly the same route, signaling equipment enters Russia for the needs of Russian Railways. Since 2011, Multiserv Overseas Ltd has supplied equipment worth $150 million to Russia. However, now the newspaper does not have documents that could show what part of the money ends up in the accounts of Multiserv Overseas Ltd for Russian transactions.

The newspaper has documents at its disposal confirming that when supplying the same equipment to Mongolia, Bombardier also used intermediary companies associated with Obodovsky and Krapivin.

Prosecutor Thomas Forsberg said that Swedish police were currently investigating exclusively the deal in Azerbaijan. “It’s too early to say whether we will deal with episodes with Russia or other countries. But in general this is standard practice, we have good connections with law enforcement agencies in other countries, and if I need any help in the future, I think I will get it.”

However, the degree of involvement of Krapivin and his partners in Bombardier’s business in Russia is not limited to mediation in the supply of Ebilock-950. As the newspaper found out, he is also one of the co-owners of the Elteza company, privatized in 2010 through a holding company in the Netherlands. Until now, it was believed that Elteza was owned 50/50 by Russian Railways and Bombardier.

Not just money

The holding company in the Netherlands was registered six months before the deal, and at first, indeed, it was 100% owned by Bombardier. But a week later, the company’s ownership structure changed. Using open sources, it is impossible to track all stages of the resale of the asset, but at least since the end of 2012, Alexey Krapivin has appeared in the ownership structure - from 2012 to the present, he owns 36% of the Dutch company. That is, Krapivin’s effective share in Eltez is almost 20%.

“It’s difficult to talk about anything with confidence, because we don’t see the structure of the deal, we don’t know how much Krapivin paid for his share in the company,” says Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of Transparency International Russia. But, of course, all this looks suspicious: a major international player wins the privatization competition, and after a short time the share in the state-owned company ends up in the hands of structures close to the head of Russian Railways, that is, the seller. It can be assumed that there is a corruption component here, that the share in the business was a form of remuneration on the part of Bombardier for winning the competition.”

It is worth mentioning another service provided by the Canadian company to the head of Russian Russian Railways. As the largest Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, reported in 2014, when the issue of imposing sanctions against Russian citizens due to the events in Ukraine was discussed in Canada,

Bombardier lobbied for Yakunin’s exclusion from the sanctions list. Now sanctions against the former head of a Russian state-owned company have been imposed in the United States, but not in Canada.

“We have informed the country's authorities about our investments in Russia and how our business interests may be harmed by the imposition of sanctions,” Bombardier said in a statement to the Globe and Mail.

In a written comment, Yakunin’s representative Grigory Levchenko once again confirmed that the ex-head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, indeed knew Krapivin. “At the same time, they never had a joint business,” Levchenko added. - I also have no reason to believe the documents presented to the Stockholm court. Yakunin never met Yuri Obodovsky, so the words that he had direct access to Yakunin are incorrect. In addition, the assumption that any person could have access to “everyone” and manipulate the results of international competitions seems to me an implausible fairy tale,” says Yakunin’s representative.

The newspaper repeatedly tried to contact Alexei Krapivin, Yuri Obodovsky, the Swedish branch of Bombardier and the company's main office in Canada. No one responded to requests from the newspaper and media partners.

Last week, Bombardier's head office issued a press release noting that the company was assisting Swedish police with the investigation and was conducting its own internal review of the deal. “So far we have no confirmation that company employees have somehow violated the law.”