Can an Estonian meat packing house morph into a Russian “laundromat”?

Russian business is a headscratcher for Western Europe. How does it work out that Russians are poor while they're spending more money on food and purchases abroad than Europeans? What is going on with democracy in Russia when voters vote in mass for a never-changing candidate to become president without any alternative?

In any case, residents of the EU are more concerned with their own problems than what's going on behind the “velvet curtain”. Special forces, meanwhile, are a whole other animal on their own. Give them welfare and they’ll take the keys to the city! Particularly when it's not a myth, but reality.

Recently, UralinformBureau Information Agency found out that Estonian citizen Natan Mekler received two debt securities for a total sum of 18 million euros. How did the 77-year old toast master come across such luck? Judging by donations to the Jewish community of the capital of Estonia, he is just able to make do – 5-10 euro contributions testify to that.

The luck came from Russia. Debt securities made out by GazEnergoStroy – Ekologicheskye Tekhnologii, LLC. The company is registered in Moscow and is part of GazEnergoStroy Corporation of the former member of the Public Chamber of Russia Sergey Chernin, announced persona non grata in Latvia.

The issuer of the debt securities with a registered capital in the amount of 10,000 roubles (150 euros) in 2016 on a non-competitive basis, in shady fashion, received a government contract from the Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev for the elimination of poisonous dumps in the Nizhny Novgorod Region next to the Volga in the amount of 7 billion roubles.

About 1 billion of that sum had already been credited to the account of GazEnergoStroy – Ekologicheskie Tekhnologii. Sergey Chernin is not disclosing his Corporation’s income amount of this profitable contract. Let’s assume that it’s 20%, or 1.5 billion roubles. Converted to euros, that’s about 18 million euros.

Judging by the data on Lursoft’s website, the debt securities were written out on March 15, 2018, and on March 16th they arrived in Riga for appraisal by lawyer Normunds Slitke. He conducted a groundbreaking evaluation of the capitalization of GazEnergoStroy – Ekologicheskie Tekhnologii and established the value as 7 million euros each.

Immediately that rose the question “How did the securities cross the border?” They were supposed to be declared in Russia and the EU as well. There is of course the possibility that the director of the Russian company made a trip to the Baltics with his company’s seal and signed the documents there.

A debt security is essentially a delayed payment. What services for the amount of 14-18 million euros could possibly the Tallinn toast master render to Sergey Chernin’s company? If one were to assume that he supplied some sort of equipment to Russia, then where is this foreign trade agreement by GazEnergoStroy – Ekologicheskie Tekhnologii, LLC, that was registered with a Russian bank subject to currency control? And who originally extended credit to Natan Mekler?

The ensuing loop of Russian debt securities puts in doubt the hypothesis that the Corporation of Sergey Chernin used them to pay for some type of delivery. Natan Mekler deposited the debt security as the authorized capital of two firms registered on March 21 in the Latvian town of Valmiera: Granulated Glass Group and Baltic Utilization Group (Production Group).

Then, two days later, these companies were transferred to the disposal of a new investor, also with Estonian roots – Vicarelli AS. The authorized capital of this Tallinn company was comparatively small – 25,560 euros. It was founded in the year 2000 as a meat processing business. It is currently headed by 52-year-old Eduard Kozlik. There also was a time when the CEO of Vicarelli AS was Natan Mekler.

This seems to suggest that there is the Chernin-Mekler-Kozlik chain. What plans could these businessmen be cooking up?

RusBusinessNews surveyed an array of experts in the financial and law enforcement fields. They proposed an array of hypotheses.

The first was that thanks to the debt security capitalization of the two companies, Sergey Chernin's Corporation could have obtained cheap European credit. It was unknown what the later received 5-10 million euros were spent on.

The second hypothesis was that 18 million euros would be extracted in the form of payment for the debt securities from Russia into Latvia. That would provide the basis to believe that the companies just created by the Estonians were “laundromats”.

The third hypothesis was that the person holding the debt securities would submit them for immediate acquittal and apply for the bankruptcy of GazEnergoStroy – Ekologicheskie Tekhnologii, LLC, which would cause the failure of the continued implementation of the ecological project on the Volga. It might very well be that Sergey Chernin is completely content with the money he received out of the Russian budget and he is planning to “take a French siesta”.

It must be noted that in Chernin's business scheme that UralinformBureau disclosed to public, companies are listed that are registered in Great Britain and the Seychelles. Could it possibly be that the businessman, presenting himself as a doctor of technical sciences (which fact has still not been officially confirmed), is using the Baltic region “corridor” to pump money farther away from the control of the Kremlin?