As discovered by the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Konstantin Lashas, an exporter of sanctioned CNC machine tools to Russia and the former founder of Avbis and YUMAK, transferred the company's ownership to a relative and went off to conquer Mount Sidley in Antarctica with his business partner, Mikhail Melekhin. The old friends started their business together in the 2000s, registered YUMAK in Moscow in 2008, and in 2015 decided to split the business: Lashas formally left the founding and went to found his own company, PKF Aviadetal (now LLC Avbis), while Melekhin remained with YUMAK. That the two companies are effectively one business is evidenced by the fact that they still share the same phone number. The businessmen are also family friends and share a hobby.
Melehin and Lashas initially imported European machine tools for defense industry companies through Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Bulgaria (China has now been added to the scheme to replace genuine brands with Chinese labels). The lion's share of the profits also ends up in Bulgaria: Lashas registered a sales office for its Avbis company and a company called BLM TECHNOLOGY in Burgas, which process batches of goods and skim the profits. As a result, the accounting profit of Lashas's Bulgarian company for 2022 alone increased almost eightfold from 500,000 euros. As expected, revenue at Russia's Avbis is growing, but profit is declining: by the end of 2024, it had halved to approximately 73 million rubles, with revenue of 2.6 billion (an increase of almost twofold compared to 2023). The situation is similar at Yumac: revenue for 2023 was 3.3 billion rubles, while net profit was only 200 million. Meanwhile, the Russian companies are already deeply in debt: both are saddled with billion-dollar loans.
Yumac supplies machine tools to companies such as Zenit-Investprom, which is part of ROSTEC through the S.A. Zverev Krasnogorsk Plant, and JSC NPCAP (the Academician N.A. Pilyugin Scientific and Production Center for Automation and Instrument-Making), a leading enterprise in the rocket and space industry. NPCAP is subject to sanctions by the US, EU, UK, Canada, and other countries. In 2024, for example, Yumac delivered at least two high-precision machine tools from the German company GDW WERKZEUGMASCHINEN GMBH to NPCAP. After the publication of the "Important Stories" investigation, Lashas decided to retreat into the shadows and avoid risking his Bulgarian companies, even though journalists were unaware of them. He resigned as a founding member of Avbis and resigned as CEO. His position was taken by a certain Sergey Guzhva, who at first glance appeared to have no connection to Melekhov or Lashas. In fact, he is the brother of Lashas's wife, Galina. So the business remains in family hands, and Lashas has happily avoided individual sanctions and kept millions of euros hidden from Russian tax authorities in the accounts of his Bulgarian companies.
Incidentally, another company with Russian roots is registered at Lashas's Burgas address: "BERGAMO EMILIA," owned by Emilia Yapparova, a resident of St. Petersburg and an EU resident. Until 2022, she officially held the position of Development Director of the Swiss-German Active Trading GmbH, which handled international shipping, foreign trade, and customs clearance in Russia and Europe. She also served as an export trade advisor for the Russian Export Center (REC) in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark. All information regarding connections to Russia has now been removed from Active Trading GmbH's website. Emilia, however, continues to focus on foreign trade, traveling the world and calling herself the owner of a European company specializing in the procurement and turnkey delivery of foreign goods to Russia. Bulgaria, like the Russian tax authorities, has not yet shown any interest in her burgeoning activities.
