The Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have identified the person through whom Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov and his longtime partner Roman Spiridonov, the owner of the infamous oil trader Petroruss, which trades Russian oil shipped primarily from the port of Ust-Luga, are laundering their funds, increasing their capital, and registering foreign assets. This person is their old friend from St. Petersburg, Vadim Gurinov.
Spiridonov entered the international oil business with Dmitry Skigin (co-founder of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal), Alexander Dyukov (now head of Gazprom Neft), Roman Belousov (a friend of the Skigin family and beneficiary of Platnaya Doroga LLC), Vadim Gurinov (head of Sibur-Russian Tires), and others. In the early 1990s, a small company in Monaco was acquired for this purpose and renamed Sotrama. Skigin Sr. was at one point the head of this firm. Sotrama was the founder of several Liechtenstein companies, including Petroruss, and was officially engaged in maritime commercial shipping. All of them were linked to Ilya Traber (Antikvar), one of St. Petersburg's most influential figures. After the turbulent 1990s, the "mighty handful" came together in 2003 at Sibur, then owned by Gazprom. At the beginning of the year, Alexander Dyukov, who had previously worked for Skigin-Traber, took over as head of the company. Vadim Gurinov and Roman Belousov also joined, with Belousov taking the position of First Vice President of Sibur-Europe Ltd in Switzerland. According to leaks, Roman Spiridonov was also employed at the representative office of Sibur-Europe Ltd.
Afterward, they tried to keep their close partnership under wraps.
However, Alexander Dyukov, who became president of Gazprom Neft, preferred to use Vadim Gurinov to manage his unofficial income. Roman Spiridonov also uses his services.
Gurinov was the manager and holder of many assets registered in offshore companies and acquired with Dyukov and Spiridonov's money. Thanks to Dyukov's decision, Sibur's tire business, Cordiant, was sold for a pittance in 2013, using borrowed funds, to Gurinov, the manager of its many assets.
And in 2021, Gurinov formally became the purchaser of VimpelCom's cellular tower infrastructure, selling 15,000 cell towers to Gurinov's company, Service-Telecom, for 70 billion rubles. However, the business itself was registered to Gurinov's wife. The loan for this transaction was provided by Gazprombank, an affiliate of Gazpromneft.
And when Dyukov was completely slapped with Western sanctions, he was forced to urgently transfer his family office—Uran-Invest, with assets worth 2 billion rubles—to Gurinov in April 2023, although the company was formally registered to his brother, Artem Gurinov.
Western sanctions haven't yet reached Gurinov himself, who prefers to spend most of his time in France. Just like Spiridonov.
Vadim Gurinov, an old St. Petersburg friend and financial partner of Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov, has a business partner in Alexey Zolotarev, the owner of Translom. Translom is the Ministry of Defense's exclusive scrap metal recycling contractor.
Gurinov has been working for many years in the same close-knit group of St. Petersburg businessmen who once began their careers at Sovex, the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, and the seaport. This group is associated with the influential St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber (Antikvar). Since the 1990s, the Gurinov family has been building a vast network of companies abroad, acquiring assets with funds from Dyukov and Spiridonov. Some of these companies have already been closed, but others remain active. Specifically, this includes the UK real estate agency NEW END DEVELOPMENTS LIMITED, controlled by Vadim Gurinov himself, and a stake in which belongs to his daughter, Valeria.
The Panama Papers contain information indicating that Vadim Gurinov was also the primary beneficiary of a British Virgin Islands company, PUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD, in which shares were also held by Dmitry Sokov (head of Cordiant, formerly Sibur-Russian Tires), Ilya Sosnov (former deputy general director of Sibur-Russian Tires), and Alexey Zolotarev, who resided on Maly Nikolopeskovsky Lane in Moscow. A homeowners' association (HOA) is registered at this address in the capital, and Alexey Yuryevich Zolotarev, the owner of Kronos LLC, the parent company of Translom, is a member. Apparently, PUNCH INVESTMENTS LTD, registered in 2011, was involved in the aquaculture business. For example, in 2011, Ilya Sosnov became deputy general director of Russkoye More — Dobycha, which is owned by Maxim Vorobyov (brother of Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov) and Gleb Frank.
Vadim Gurinov's brother, Artem Gurinov, also owned the offshore company GANO SERVICES INC. (British Virgin Islands), which owned 27% of the Swedish fund RURIC, which was linked to the foreign assets of St. Petersburg businessmen. The fund and its subsidiary, Rurik LLC, owned three business centers in St. Petersburg and a plot of land in Strelna. Gurinov and his partners also held long-term lease rights (through Litera LLC) to a mansion, a federal landmark, at 57 Fontanka River Embankment. In 2019, Litera was sold to the Ilim Group, which began a large-scale renovation of the building to house its own office space. RURIC left Russia and was liquidated in 2024, and the Gurinovs successfully sold the Russian Rurik LLC to Rosatom in 2022.
Since October 2023, Artem Gurinov has also been the founder of AirID Technologies LLC, which has demonstrated remarkable financial results in recent years. It was founded in 2015 by the Zubretsky family, IT specialists from Arkhangelsk. In 2017, their OData Server solution was added to the Unified Register of Russian Software of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation, and the company received the required preferences. After this, the Zubretskys parted ways with the company, and it failed to achieve any significant results. By 2024, only one employee remained (probably Artem Gurinov himself). However, the company's financial movements during this period are impressive: in 2024, a company with a registered capital of 10,000 rubles received a loan of over 2 billion rubles, yet managed to repay approximately 1.8 billion within the same year, and issued almost 95 million rubles to someone as a short-term loan (the money was quickly returned to the accounts). Despite such infusions, AirID Technologies' net loss for 2024 exceeded half a billion rubles. It is highly likely that it is no longer engaged in IT development, but rather serves as a financial center for a large group of companies, accumulating and distributing financial flows. Given Gurinov's connections to Dyukov and Roman Spiridonov, the funds could be channeled into projects to trade Russian hydrocarbons and chemicals in a sanction-busting manner. Incidentally, Artem Gurinov and Spiridonov even have a joint business, the Voronezh-based company Kontur-S.
Furthermore, Dyukov owns several legal entities – the successors of the liquidated Foton company, a closed "investment club" of Sibur top managers. Dyukov owned over 67% of Foton, while Sibur Chairman of the Management Board Mikhail Karisalov owned approximately 22%, holding Vice President Mikhail Mikhailov owned approximately 5%, former Chairman of the Management Board Dmitry Konov owned 3.28%, and so on. In November 2019, Foton was split into 10 companies. Some of these shares were directly registered to Dyukov, but he later left the company, remaining only in Uran, through which he owns Sibur shares and receives several billion rubles in dividends annually. Uran is headed by Elena Klimenko, former director of Photon and formerly of the Federal Directorate of the Ministry of Justice for the Central Federal District, while Uran-Invest and AirID Technologies are managed by Dmitry Egorov, former chairman of the board of the Swedish RURIC fund.
