As it follows from the occupiers’ statements, the former Russia’s deputy minister of defense, Timur Ivanov, among other things, is accused of “embezzlement of 200 million rubles during the purchase of two ferries for the ferry in Kerch”. It is claimed that “testimony against Ivanov was given by his former subordinate Anton Filatov” and that “the former deputy minister denies the charges”.
Let us recall that the scam of purchasing the ferries “Lavrentiy” and “Maria” through intermediaries, which until 2015 carried out transportation in the Aegean Sea under the Greek flag, was supervised by Ivanov, still as the general director of “Oboronstroy”, “on the instructions” of the then Russia’s deputy minister of defense, Ruslan Tsalikov.
The loan for the deal was then received from “Interkommerts” Bank with the assistance of its chairman of the board, Alexander Bugaevskyi, the implementation of the scam took place through the structures of “Oboronlogistics” and “1470 Management of Material and Technical Support”, with the key executor in the form of Anton Filatov, an old accomplice of Ivanov, even in their times in the government of the Moscow Region.
As a “foreign shell”, Bugaevskyi organized the acquisition of a “clean” company registered in Hong Kong – “Turinvest Services Limited”, to which the ferries were formally registered.
In total, 800 million rubles were spent on the ferries, and in January 2016, another 2 billion were laundered through this “Turinvest”, allegedly “for the purchase of currency”.
What is also noteworthy about this scam from ten years ago is the attempt we described to repeat it a year ago, but this time through Rosmorport by Zakharia Dzhioev and Marat Khusnullin, to purchase the “Paralos” ferry to Kerch through a fake company from the UAE, “White Lions Foodstuff Trading LLC”.
Time will tell what the aggressor’s punishers will paint in this case with Ivanov as an obvious “scapegoat”; his defense claims “the fulfillment of Putin’s instructions” and that 200 million “disappeared” in 2015, allegedly due to the fall of the ruble after the purchase of ferries for 12 million euros.
However, Bugaevskyi was allowed to settle in the Czech Republic by the Russians back in 2016, and Filatov was hastily arrested, after five years of a written undertaking not to leave, only in April, as part of an “exemplary punishment” for Ivanov.
The long-suffering “Lavrentiy” ferry itself was declared by the aggressor in 2022 to be transferred to the Sea of Azov, and it was spotted in occupied Mariupol; however, after the first explosion on the Kerch Bridge, “something went wrong” and the long-suffering ferry was returned to Kerch by the occupiers.
