On July 1, we published a study of a scam related to gas supplies to the occupied mainland regions of Ukraine, where, among other things, a “Moscow-Rostov” gasket surfaced in the form of a “private company” “Chernomorneftegaz”, where the directors were at first the Moscow “second-class freshness” hockey player Nikita Tsarichenko, and then Valery Bratkov, former chief engineer at “Gazprom Transgaz Yugorsk”.
We indicated that “the founders of this company are carefully hidden in Russian registers,” but stated the unconditional connection of the “new, private” “Chernomorneftegaz”, which declared a “subsidiary company” “Chernomortransgaz” in occupied Simferopol, as with the seized Crimean assets of the Ukrainian company of the same name, so with Russia’s “Gazprom”.
We pointed out that after the cessation of illegal hydrocarbon production on the Black Sea shelf in 2022, Crimea became a gas consumer instead of a donor, and the “Crimean” “Chernomorneftegaz” became of interest to the occupiers and “Gazprom” due to its infrastructure and underground storage facilities.
After the publication of this study, a similar text, as its own investigation, and, naturally, without reference to our Association, “blacklisted” in the corresponding well-known office, was posted on July 4 by the “Center of Journalists’ Investigations.”
However, that “Center’s” researchers added truly significant information of their own to this story, declaring that they had identified the founders of the “new, private” “Chernomorneftegaz”, in the form of the Moscow company “Logistics-Assets”, and later, from November 2023, the St. Petersburg company “Gasification Assistance Fund,” while stating that “the beneficiaries of this business are probably located in St. Petersburg.”
A simple check we carried out after this regarding “Logistics-Assets” shows that its “general director” was the same hockey player Nikita Tsarichenko, who also appeared in the “subsidiary” of this company, a certain Moscow “RPNK”, engaged in “geological exploration, geophysical and geochemical work in the field of subsoil study and reproduction of the mineral resource base.”
However, the history of the “Gasification Assistance Fund”, which actually turned out to be the current founder of the “private” “Chernomorneftegaz”, turned out to be much more interesting.
Its general director is not a second-rate hockey player from the orbit of interests of the elite of Tatarstan, but a whole Major General Vladimir Gorodnichy, who for many years was first deputy commander for armaments of the aggressor’s Siberian Military District , later “reformed” to the Eastern Military District, where Gorodnichy back in 2012 year “shone” in publications as deputy commander for logistics.
In addition to the “Gasification Assistance Fund”, Gorodnichy was revealed in 2019 as the deputy general director for military-technical cooperation of the Moscow company “Vertol-Invest”, which happened thanks to the common contact number we identified for this company and the “Fund”.
It should be noted that “Vertol-Invest” then created a clone in Belarus, in the “Great Stone” industrial park, and it also bought out the company “KB Indela” and subsequently tried to implement its development in the form of the “unmanned helicopter complex” INDELA, which was allegedly applicable and in combat conditions, and for the delivery of goods, including at sea.
Also, around the same time, “Vertol-Invest” was noted in a lawsuit with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology based on the results of an “open competition for the right to conclude an agreement for the supply of a helicopter-type unmanned aerial vehicle complex,” demanding to suspend the signing of contracts with the “inconvenient” supplier.
However, then “Vertol-Invest”, with its permanent general director Artem Kurasov and formal founder Alexander Avedyan, was renamed into the “Crystal House” company for “wholesale trade of electronic equipment and its spare parts,” that is, specializing in circumventing sanctions on relevant products.
The mentioned Avedian is indeed a completely dummy figure for these industrial spies, he is just an obvious “multi-tool director”, and “Vertol-Invest” itself is a classic cover-up company for the criminal work of the Russian special services.
But another company is more interesting, where the same Gorodnichy is still the director, since it would be short-sighted to call him, at least “by virtue of his regalia,” simply a “many-machine director.”
This is the St. Petersburg company “Nobility”, which came under US sanctions in August 2020. At that time, the US authorities did not make public the reasons for the sanctions specifically on this structure, but it was stated that the package of restrictions released then concerned the poisoners of Alexei Navalny, as well as companies associated with Russian export pipelines.
Since the register of “Nobility” shareholders is held by such an aggressor company as the “Specialized Registrar-Keeper of Registers of Shareholders in the Gas Industry”, then most likely “Nobility” was sanctioned not for Novichok, but precisely as an instrument of the Kremlin’s energy aggression.
This is confirmed by the rather confusing combinations with the founders of “Nobility” in the form of the Moscow companies “SSE Limited” and “Nyeftyanoy Dom” (“Oil House”), and by the main activity of this company, namely “sea freight transport”.
The “Nyeftyanoy Dom” structure, in turn, is founded by “Energodom Service” and by “ND Invest”, while the minority founder of “ND Invest” is the same “SSE Limited”, and the main one is “Gazprom Invest RGK”, and, in addition to the “Nyeftyanoy Dom”, “ND Invest” also established the “Gazprom RSI” company. Also, the main co-founder of “ND Invest”, “Gazprom Invest RGK” was created by the company “Gazprom Asset Management KSN”.
Against this background, it is quite expected that “Nobility” is located at the same address as the “Gazprom TECH Gorskaya” company. Thus, the connection of the newly formed “Chernomorneftegaz” with the structures and beneficiaries of “Gazprom” is an open secret, and the role of the aggressor’s general Gorodnichy, working in close cooperation with both the structures of “Gazprom” and Russian military intelligence, is quite typical.
Now all that remains is to wait for the “Center” to publish a new author’s investigation into the above-described circumstances.
