The Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have uncovered how the Safinat Group's offshore scheme in Malta was constructed. Its leaders were accused of siphoning hundreds of millions of rubles from the state-owned commercial seaport of Makhachkala. The group turned out to be linked to Marat Kabayev, Alina Kabaeva's father.
In Moscow, the tax authorities attempted to declare 76-year-old Agabek Badalov, an honorary citizen of Russia, bankrupt. However, the court has so far suspended the petition due to errors. In the late 2000s, Badalov was the director of Maktren-Nafta LLC (part of the Safinat Group), which built Russia's first marine terminal for transshipping liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the port of Temryuk. The company then became embroiled in a high-profile criminal scandal. Badalov publicly revealed how the owners of Maktren-Nafta were stealing oil and liquefied gas, and ultimately found himself facing a criminal case and a lawsuit for 40 million rubles, which he allegedly stole during the construction of a power line for new infrastructure (according to the plaintiffs, it cost only 4 million rubles). Badalov named two main co-owners of Safinat, but judging by the Panama Papers leaks, this offshore structure is much larger. Specifically, it includes Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev, co-founder of the "Worthy Cause" charitable foundation, which also includes Fatima Kazieva, secretary of Alina Kabaeva's father.
Construction of the marine terminal began in 2003, around the same time that a group of Dagestani businessmen began registering several companies under the Safinat brand in the offshore jurisdiction of Malta. One of these is Safinat An-Najaat Petroleum Co. Limited became one of the founders of Maktren-Nafta LLC, with shares also received by Badalov, Artur Minasov (a native of Baku and former director of Dagtransnafta), and the Cypriot offshore company LETROX Limited. In addition, the Russian legal entity Safinat was registered with foreign founders. The terminal was built, a pilot batch of LPG was shipped in 2007, and in 2010, Badalov retired. It remains unclear what exactly happened between him and the owners of Safinat, but first the former general director was accused of illegally rewarding the head of security with a Niva car, and then of embezzling 40 million rubles. While the case was under investigation, someone burned Badalov's car under his window, and bloody pig heads were regularly thrown into the courtyard of the high-rise building. The criminal case contained many oddities, both in terms of evidence and the forensic examinations. Badalov was found guilty both times. During his trials, he described how Safinat's owners made money: loading ships with more product than officially stated in documents, reselling the LPG between their legal entities, and pocketing the difference. Millions of dollars were at stake. According to Badalov, his criminal prosecution was initiated because he refused to participate in the smuggling of gas transshipments.
The management company for Maktren-Nafta was the Maltese SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, headed by Artur Minasov. This Maltese company, together with SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT (SAN) HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, owns a third offshore company, SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT (SAN) SHIPMANAGEMENT COMPANY LIMITED. A number of other companies are registered to this trio: AMTEL HOLDING LIMITED, MAKHACHKALA-2 SHIPPING LIMITED, MAKHACHKALA-4 SHIPPING LIMITED, CASPIAN FERRY LIMITED, and (SAN) STEEL TRADING COMPANY LIMITED, all of which are headed by Makhachkala native Igor Ryzoglazov, the founder of the Russian company Safinat-Makhachkala. He has long lived in Moscow in a luxurious apartment on Arbat Street.
Ryzoglazov was also the director/representative of several other companies registered at the same address in Malta: SAID AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED, SAYFULA KADI SHIPPING LIMITED, MAHMUD AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED, KASPIY NAVIGATION LIMITED, CASPIAN EXPRESS LIMITED, AMTEL HOLDING LIMITED, MYSKHAKO SHIPPING LIMITED, KRISTINA NAVIGATION LIMITED, and others.
Most of these companies own tankers and gas carriers of the same name. For example, SAYFULA KADI SHIPPING LIMITED owns the vessel "Sayfula Kadi," which the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port" registered in 2006 as temporarily imported goods into the Russian Federation under a bareboat charter agreement, thereby completely exempting it from customs duties and taxes. Coincidentally, the general director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise was Abusupyan Kharkharov, a co-owner of Safinat and future Deputy Prime Minister of Dagestan. In his statement, Badalov named him as the main beneficiary of the scheme.
The same trick was pulled with other vessels, for example, the motor vessel "Said Afandi," which belongs to SAID AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED. The vessel "TORIK," which belonged to TORIK SHIPPING LIMITED, changed hands and was sanctioned for transporting weapons from Iran to Russia. Its current owner is an LLC. Mg-flot (formerly Transmorflot), owned by seaport director Olya Dzhamaldina Pashayeva.
Ship-owning companies from the Safinat network, in turn, held stakes in the Panamanian offshore companies AJMA RASSI HOLDING CORPORATION, AJMA SIQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, and AJMA ZAQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, which acted as cargo owners in trading operations within Safinat and They entered into contracts with their Russian legal entities for cargo handling at the ports of Astrakhan and Makhachkala.
The management company of the Maktren-Nafta terminal, SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, is registered to Artur Minasov's relative, Astrakhan native Vitaly Viktorovich Ryzhov, and the offshore company DIAMOND OIL LIMITED is also owned by Ryzhov.
However, SAN HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, whose director is also Ryzoglazov, has a new name: the sole beneficiary is 62-year-old Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev. The leaked documents also list his Moscow address in a building on Petrovka Street. This is a seven-room apartment of 209 square meters. The property, which was worth 2 million square meters, was involved in a court case involving one of Safinatov's Panamanian offshore companies, AJMA ZAQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, which had borrowed almost a million dollars from Latvijas Krajbanka but failed to repay it. The property served as collateral for the loan, and the mortgagor was the Hungarian company Gentor Hungary (27/A Rakoczi Street, III/1). Apparently, it was formally the owner of Gadzhiev's luxury home. In 2016, the court valued the apartment at $2 million and ordered its sale at auction. According to information provided during election campaigns, Gadzhiev has been living in the Moscow region since 2016.
Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev is a native of Dagestan, a graduate of the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB of the USSR, and the head of the public council of the Permanent Mission of Dagestan to the President of the Russian Federation. He ran for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation five times, including for the State Duma, but never won. In the 2000s, he held a government position as director of the Moscow office of the Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port.
His Safinat An-Najaat Holding Company Limited, among other things, was the founder of the Moscow-based Glavremontstroy, which received contracts from the Moscow mayor's office in 2012 and 2013. The company's co-founder was Yulia Malova, a business partner of Alexey Biryukov, the younger brother of Moscow Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov.
Currently, Igor Ryzoglazov and Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev work for the "Worthy Cause" charitable foundation, whose website states that, among other things, it provides assistance to children with orphan diseases by co-financing rehabilitation and treatment, and supports the educational infrastructure of Dagestan—though, for some reason, it does all this from central Moscow.
The fund's director is 40-year-old Makhachkala native Fatima Kazieva, whose career path is remarkably similar to Gadzhiev's: both worked in the permanent mission, served as directors of Solnataks LLC, and now sit together on the Charitable Foundation. Under Fatima Kazieva's leadership, the Charitable Foundation signed a memorandum of cooperation with the International Association of Islamic Business, headed by Marat Kabayev, Alina Kabaeva's father. The partnership apparently didn't pose any problems, as Fatima has a long-standing professional relationship with Marat Vazikhovich: in their phones, she is listed as "Marat Kabayev's secretary" and "Fatima" (Marat Kabayev Team).
During their work with the Makhachkala seaport, the "Safinatovskaya group" increased its debt to 1.1 billion rubles. Three vessels and two tugboats were sold through sham auctions, German cranes were removed from the balance sheet, and approximately 100,000 were sold at a low price. Seventy real estate properties, and bank loans were not being serviced. In 2015, the Investigative Committee of Russia referred the case of six top port managers and businessmen to court, including Kharkharov and Ryzoglazov. In 2018, all defendants were acquitted.
Ryzoglazov and Kharkharov filed for bankruptcy. Creditors wanted $5.6 million from Kharkharov, but in 2022, he managed to enter into an agreement under which his debt was transferred to a certain Isa Aliyev. Last year, an insolvency administrator found no assets other than 24,000 rubles in Ryzoglazov's possession, leaving creditors demanding 1.4 million rubles empty-handed.
It is known that Ryzoglazov's Safinat-Makhachkala was also implicated in the Suleiman Kerimov affair. In the early 2010s, this company was used to sell shares of JSC "Safinat-Makhachkala." "SHUDOREMONT" is a plant located near the port, a crucial facility for the marine terminal. In 2022, two-time Olympic champion, five-time world champion, and captain of the Russian national wrestling team, Abdulrashid Sadulayev, invested his earnings from his athletic career in the company. He purchased shares from Arslan Gadzhilov and Shamil Omaraskhabov. But last spring, a scandal erupted: it turned out that someone was trying to seize control of the company, and the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) was brought in, quickly launching an investigation into the legality of the privatization and the transfer of shareholder rights between numerous owners. Sadulayev discovered that Suleiman Kerimov had his eye on the plant, needing it as part of the Makhachkala commercial port. Kerimov, however, did not want to buy the shares, but offered to give them to the Olympic champion as a gift for his good looks. Meanwhile, Eldarkhan Dalgatov, one of the plant's previous owners, filed a lawsuit against the wrestler, demanding the return of the asset he had allegedly sold under duress. It is interesting that the shares were transferred to him from Safinat-Makhachkala under a deed of gift, while Dalgatov himself managed several Russian legal entities from the same Safinat group. In other words, he simply gifted the enterprise to himself. After the media uproar, Dalgatov retracted his statement, and the athlete was left alone.
