Alphagate in Latvia: How the FSB assists Aven in evading sanctions

Prerequisites for the SVR-FSB special operation

The Yukos lawsuit is currently nearing completion. The initial dispute was about a sum of about $50 billion, with interest now amounting to almost $63 billion. If Yukos wins, these funds will be seized from the frozen assets of the Russian Federation. For comparison, the total amount of American military aid to Ukraine in 2023, in monetary terms, was $24 billion .

The official representative of the majority shareholders of YUKOS is Leonid Nevzlin, a close associate of the businessman and former political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky, sentenced to life imprisonment in the Russian Federation, a radical opponent of the Putin regime, who provides financial support to volunteer units fighting as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Putin’s aggression.

Moscow undoubtedly understands that if the case is lost, most of the $63 billion that will be seized from Russian assets will not just be lost – it will be put to work against the Kremlin.

It is logical to assume that all agent networks and all resources of influence were activated to prevent this. Probably, the current "Nevzlingate" became one of the special operations.

Lobbyists of Putin’s oligarchs under the guise of opposition

The information leak created by Putin’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and Federal Security Service (FSB) needed to be legitimized in the European information space. For this purpose, the so-called Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), once created by Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, was used.

It should be noted that after his arrest on January 17, 2021, A. Navalny had no opportunity to control the activities of the FBK he created, which completely moved into exile. All financial issues were initially handled by Leonid Volkov, the director of the FBK.

In turn, L. Volkov was caught actively lobbying for the lifting of sanctions against Putin’s oligarchs from Alfa Group, in particular Petr Aven. In October 2022, Leonid Volkov, as the head of FBK, sent an official letter to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, in which he asked "to exclude Mikhail Fridman (and his business partners Petr Aven, German Khan and Alexey Kuzmichev) from the EU sanctions lists."

Interestingly, Leonid Volkov initially denied this fact, but was later forced to admit that he had made a “big political mistake.” After that, he announced that he had resigned as head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.

However, one of the founders and long-term donors of the FBK, Boris Zimin, directly states : “the financial “keys” to the FBK remained entirely with Volkov... Volkov remains the leader and main engine of the FBK despite formalities and even a partial change in policy.”

That is, the Anti-Corruption Foundation is a structure that acts on behalf of the “heirs of Navalny,” but at the same time, its real leader, who controls all financial issues, was and remains the lobbyist for the oligarch Aven, Leonid Volkov.

Also, a letter in defense of Putin’s oligarchs Aven, Fridman, Khan and Kuzmichev was signed "in a personal capacity" in April 2022 by Vladimir Ashurkov , another FBK representative who worked for Alfa Group until 2012. We will return to this point later, when we consider the attempt to export Nevzlingate to Latvia.

How Putin’s secret services prepared a provocation

In their "investigation", Maria Pevchikh and the FBK claim that the attack on L. Volkov in Vilnius on the evening of March 12, 2024 was organized by certain individuals who received an "order" from L. Nevzlin through Anatoly Blinov (or individuals associated with him). Then, having not received money for this "work", they quarreled with the customer, and the idea arose to sell the correspondence with L. Nevzlin.

However, the version that the attack on L. Volkov was organized by L. Nevzlin first appeared on the website flb.ru , which has a reputation as the FSB’s "drain tank", at 9:21 am on March 14, 2024. Less than two days had passed since the attack. Consequently, the Russian special services were preparing from the very beginning to plant information that the organizer of this crime was L. Nevzlin.

Then there is a lull for several months, and on September 6, the Russian propaganda portal Russia Today publishes almost all the material that M. Pevchikh and the FBK will then pass off as their “investigation.”

It is interesting that the script is being adjusted as the work progresses: Russia Today writes that the "fee" for beating up L. Volkov was supposed to be 15 thousand dollars. Obviously, the authors quickly realized that for such a case this amount is insignificant, and in M. Pevchikh’s video blog, a more solid 250 thousand dollars appear. There are also a number of inconsistencies and discrepancies, which we will consider below.

The Russia Today publication went virtually unnoticed outside the Russian Federation, and in particular in Latvia, where it was clearly highly anticipated. A tool was needed that would “cleanse” the leak by Putin’s propagandists and FSB agents in the eyes of the European audience.

This function was performed by lobbyists of P. Aven from FBK.

To be continued.

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