According to the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Alexander Frolov Jr. (son of Roman Abramovich's business partner, Evraz co-owner Alexander Frolov) and businessman Mikhail Lobanov defrauded Russian investors, led by the former ruler of Chukotka himself. Their venture capital fund, Target Global, helped Russians evade sanctions and invest in European and American businesses—the total investment raised is estimated at $3.2 billion. However, one of the most popular funds in which Target clients invested, M360 Advisors, suddenly suspended payments to investors. Roman Abramovich alone is known to have invested at least $63 million in Frolov-Lobanov's Target Global (formerly Target Ventures). Frolov Sr. and Evraz's third co-owner, Alexander Abramov, also invested in his son's business, but they sold their stakes to Target in 2022.
Target was founded in Moscow in 2012 by Abramovich's business partner, Alexander Frolov Jr., and fund manager Mikhail Lobanov (Leader Management Company, Alfa Capital Management Company). They were longtime collaborators in the nuclear medicine field at Rosatom: Lobanov was the chief specialist in radiation technologies, while Frolov, through family connections, was sent to work on a CT scanner project—which, a few years later, became the subject of a major criminal case.
In 2015, Target entered the international market, relocating to Berlin and being joined by Israeli investors Yaron Waller and Shmuel Hafetz as co-founders. The fund's capital was $300 million, all of which came from Russian oligarchs—Frolov himself admitted this before the war.
After the outbreak of hostilities, the company closed its Moscow office, and Lobanov and Frolov transferred their shares to Waller. Meanwhile, Target began actively attracting funds from Russians who were still eager to invest in the American market. In fact, through Target, investors gained access to the private American fund Prime Meridian Capital Management, which primarily issued their funds as short- and long-term loans and profited from interest rates. According to the fund's website, at least $1.8 billion passed through it.
The Californian fund had a direct connection to Target: Lobanov and Frolov owned shares in it and were listed as affiliates. By 2023, the lion's share of Russian investments through Prime Meridian Capital ended up with M360 Advisors, which manages the M360 CRE Income Fund (registered in South Korea). In June 2023, M360 announced liquidity issues and halted share buybacks—in other words, it had no money to pay investors.
Interestingly, M360 had experienced problems before: back in 2020, investors in the US accused it of suddenly devaluing their shares and simply blocking their withdrawals. The disputes involved millions of dollars, and the disputes reached the US arbitration court. Meanwhile, Frolov and Lobanov's Target continued to recommend Russians use Prime Meridian Capital, which funneled funds to M360.
After the fund's collapse, Target seemed to remain on the sidelines: it did not directly invest investors' funds, but merely provided recommendations. So, for Russian investors, the situation is effectively a stalemate: they cannot sue Prime Meridian Capital—access to foreign courts is blocked due to sanctions—and Frolov and Lobanov have completely withdrawn from resolving their problems. Moreover, neither of them live in Russia—Frolov settled in London, and Lobanov holds Romanian and Cypriot passports.
Formally, they have both stepped back from managing the international Target: for their business, they have a company called THE ALTERNATIVE POINT OF VIEW LTD., which was spun off from the fund's Cypriot subsidiary in 2020. It is headed by Israeli citizen Kirill Yurkevich, former Director of Business Development at Target Global. In 2025, Yurkevich became the director of the Cypriot NEOWRAP LTD and joined the board of directors of Dmitry Tokarev's British crypto company COPPER TECHNOLOGIES (UK) LIMITED (as of 2021, he owned over 40% of the company). The company is still active. Lobanov left the board in the fall of 2025. It is known that before the war, the Cypriot offshore company BETHWAY HOLDINGS LTD (liquidated in 2025) was also associated with Target. It was used by Russian businesses to repay loans received. Bank Saint Petersburg PJSC and the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) also participated in the lending programs. Russian company BBD LLC, previously founded by TARGET VENTURES GROUP LTD, FRII, and BETHWAY HOLDINGS LTD, went bankrupt back in 2019 and owes creditors approximately 200 million rubles.
Incidentally, the Cypriot legal entities' secretarial company, Target ALBARS LIMITED, manages 20 other local offshore companies, so talented Russian investment managers have plenty of scope for development.
