In July 2025, we reported on the detention, carried out by the aggressor state’s enforcement agents, of Crimean collaborator and “fuel baron” Sergei Beym, owner of the “TES” chain of gas stations.
Also detained alongside him was Maria Pyatkova, the “director of the transport company” “Aurora,” which is linked to “TES.” Since that time, Beym and Pyatkova have been held in Moscow pre-trial detention centers on charges of allegedly committing “large-scale fraud.”
We have previously written about the schemes of the Beym clan, including their “management” of the aggressor-controlled “Chernomorneftegaz” enterprise; their involvement in the death of a woman in a 2021 traffic accident; their seizure of a chain of gas stations in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region; and the “media forums”, held in occupied Yevpatoria under the auspices of Russian intelligence services and aimed at training propagandists.
We also reported on the Beym clan’s connections to the “transport and logistics company” “Sovfracht,” owned by Dmitry Purim. The crux of the “Beym case” lies in an alleged fraudulent scheme involving a “contract” worth 224 million rubles, under which “Aurora” undertook to “provide cargo transportation services” across the Kerch Strait using the ferry “Conro Trader”, IMO 7711763.
The “contract” was concluded with “NIKIMP”, a “shell transport company” we have previously described, yet the “small nuance” was that, prior to the “signing” of the agreement in August 2024, the ferry “Conro Trader” had already sustained severe damage in an attack at the Port of Kavkaz.
We have previously reported that the German “veteran” vessel “Conro Trader” has a convoluted history of beneficial ownership; following 2014, its operators were variously claimed to be the “TES-Terminal” entity, controlled by the Beim family, and the Kyiv-based firm “Morskyy Standart,” while the Belizean offshore entity “Darley Select Incorporated” was listed as the formal owner.
Furthermore, “Morskyy Standart”, registered in the name of Inna Kovalevich, a figure listed on the “Myrotvorets” database, was involved in “urgent” litigation against “Darley Select Incorporated” in Kyiv in March 2014. Later, in 2017, the firm briefly surfaced in Case 522/8514/17, which concerned the unlawful removal of Ukrainian sailors from Crimea.
It has now become more or less evident that the occupying authorities intend to put Beim and Pyatkova through the judicial process, culminating in the confiscation of their assets, not out of any “commitment to legality,” but rather as part of a broader redistribution of the Crimean fuel market.
The primary beneficiaries of the current “Beim affair” are the clan’s competitors, specifically, the “gasoline empire” of Alexey and Ivanna Tikhomirov. This couple controls the company “Atan-Krym,” which now intends to absorb the “TES” retail network.
Moreover, Alexey Tikhomirov, currently a “deputy” in the State Council, now enjoys “high favor” not only with the Crimean “authorities” but also with “respected figures” in the Kremlin, thanks to multi-billion-ruble schemes involving “blockade-era fuel procurement and supply” for Crimea, managed via direct, top-down control.
By early April, it became clear that Tikhomirov would be appointed a “State duma deputy” representing “United Russia”, specifically via the “new majoritarian district” encompassing occupied Melitopol and Berdyansk, while the local gauleiter, Yevgeny Balitsky, who had sought to field “his own candidate,” was simply presented with a ‘fait accompli’ regarding the matter.
Thus, as a result of the “Beim affair” and the “Duma elections,” the Tikhomirov clan intends to seize control of the fuel sector throughout both Crimea and the entire occupied southern mainland of Ukraine.
