In mid-May, the so-called “Regional Leasing Company” (“Regionalnaya lizingovaya kompaniya”) of the occupiers, controlled by the criminal “ministry of economy,” announced the transfer of two new horizontal directional drilling rigs “worth over 23 million rubles, thanks to a preferential leasing program,” to a certain “Crimean enterprise specializing in the installation of communications and gas pipelines.”
The name of the “enterprise” has not been disclosed, but it appears to be the Simferopol-based “Crimean drilling company” (“Krymskaya burovaya kompaniya”), headed by Igor Konovalov, closely linked to the previously operating “Krymtransneft” company, which was added to the occupation “register” in 2014 by Yaroslava Maksimenko and Maksim Nosanov.
Moreover, the full namesake of this “founder” is a high-ranking Ukrainian official, previously a member of the supervisory board of the Odessa Port Plant. Nosanov’s full namesake owns the “Granit Group” structure in Dnipro, and the company “Krymtransnafta” in Kyiv.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the occupiers have declared third-country companies as the “founders” of the aforementioned “Crimean Drilling Company,” namely, the Cypriot “Sunstem Limited”, the British Virgin Islands offshore company “Wellney Limited”, and the British company “Worldwide Trade and Investment L.P.”
The beneficiaries of the offshore company “Wellney Limited,” with registration number 1789489, are not publicly known, as are the founders of “Sunstem Limited,” with registration number EE 196655.
And the Scottish company “Worldwide Trade & Investment L.P.”, with registration number SL010372 and hidden founders, was dissolved back in 2018, but the occupiers chose to “ignore” both this fact and the fact that the “founders” of the “Crimean Drilling Company,” as described, are located in “unfriendly countries.”
The occupiers are also not disclosing the brand of the horizontal directional drilling rigs now brought to the peninsula, which could clearly be used to support the occupiers’ military and critical infrastructure.
However, from the published photo, it is clear that this is a DDW 45/22 drilling rig, manufactured by the Chinese company “Dewei Tuxingsun Engineering Machinery (Beijing) Co., Ltd”. These drilling rigs are manufactured using hydraulic motors from the French company “Poclain” and a main oil pump from the German company “Linde”.
Clearly, this situation requires a systemic response, especially given the fact that sanctions have not yet been imposed on either the “Crimean Drilling Company” or the occupiers’ “Regional Leasing Company”.
