We have repeatedly described the criminal Crimean operations of Putin’s “trusted oligarch”, Arkady Rotenberg, including multi-billion dollar “infrastructure” scams with the structures of “Regional Construction Company”, “VAD” and “Mostotrest”. We wrote that Rotenberg could have hidden billions of assets from sanctions in France and Monaco by transferring them to his partner, Latvian citizen Maria Borodunova and her children.
However, Rottenberg decided to “develop” some of the funds in occupied Crimea, taking into account his current capabilities for virtually unlimited criminal access to the land resources of the peninsula. This became known because, while continuing to describe the “achievements” of the so-called “St. Petersburg International Economic Forum,” the “Crimean officialdom” let slip about another “luxury project” of the oligarch on the southern coast of Crimea.
We are talking about the development of at least 16 hectares for 11 billion rubles near the “Swallow’s Nest” in Gaspra under a certain “agreement of intent” between the joint-stock bank “Russia” and the “management company” “Vizant Group” “registered” on the occupied peninsula, the beneficiary of which is Rottenberg, and the “general director” is Nelly Shatova from Kabardino-Balkaria.
Let us note that the lands around the Swallow’s Nest belong to the “Perlyna” (“Zhemchuzhina”) sanatorium of the State Customs Service of Ukraine, which was seized illegally in 2014, and development will clearly take place on them. At the same time, even before the St. Petersburg Forum, “Vizant Group” announced the construction by the end of 2026 of a certain “five-star hotel with 180 rooms and a four-star hotel with 140 rooms,” which coincides with the current announcement.
Let us note that earlier, six years ago, the seized territory of “Perlyna”, which in 2014 the occupiers transferred to the criminal “state enterprise” from Sergei Aksyonov’s clan “Solnechnaya Tavrika”, was tried to be developed by a company from the former commander of the aggressor’s missile troops and artillery Vladimir Zaritsky.
It would seem that this “tidbit” was too much for the clan of the colonel general, and now Arkady Rottenberg intends to “skim the cream” on it, but not everything is so simple. This is not the first “luxury hotel” for “respectable gentlemen” on stolen lands transferred to Rottenberg through Crimean collaborators.
The same “Vizant Group” boasts that in 2018 it “received control” of five Crimean sanatoriums, and the details of this scam are not specified; we are talking about the objects “Dulber”, “Ai-Petri”, “Miskhor” and “Morsky Pribyi” (“Sea Surf”), seized since 2014 and these health resorts were transferred, with real owners in the form of “Ukrprofzdravnitsa” and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, just to the company of that same Vladimir Zaritsky. Thus, this general became a cover and a ploy for the transfer of stolen objects specifically to the Rottenberg clan and his Vizant Group.
“Vizant Group” also controls the boutique hotel “Dacha Rachmaninov” located right on the territory of Miskhorsky Park, in the building of the “Miskhor” dacha itself, as well as the “Rodnya” hotel in Koreiz, formerly called “Bagatelle”, with a formal “founder” since 2012 year in the form of Pavel Kamelin, who “re-registered” with the occupiers.
Let us note that a characteristic feature of this “hotel” structure of Rottenberg is the complete absence of local collaborators in the management; for example, the oligarch transferred the “head of the legal service” Olga Kazakova there from “Gazprom Oil”.
