Offshore operator of the Mishustin family, Alexander Udobov: how luxury life in Europe is financed outside of sanctions through VAT fraud schemes and the shell network “Eurokora”
Alexander Udobov, who is linked to the management of assets of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, continues to own foreign companies despite sanctions.
In Russia, he has expanded his business activities, registering some companies under trusted individuals, including his common-law wife, Russian-Algerian supermodel Amina Kaddour, with whom he has two children.
37-year-old Kaddour was among the 20 highest-paid models in the world. She was born in Algeria to Svetlana Korneyeva (Kaddour), a Moscow native, and Algerian father Omar Kaddour. At least since 2020, Amina has been employed at Alexander Udobov’s Aforra Group, using corporate email and listing LLC “Aforra Property” as her workplace when obtaining access passes during the pandemic.
In addition, Amina previously had an individual entrepreneur status in Moscow, and in 2020–2021 she owned a 30% stake in the Moscow-based company Transvagon LLC, which organizes freight railway transportation across the country. This stake was later transferred to Ekaterina Galanina, who also manages other companies linked to Udobov. In 2020, the company reported revenue of 420 million rubles, 4.2 billion rubles in 2021, and nearly 6 billion rubles in 2024.
Galanina is also listed as the sole founder of the Moscow-based company Business Elite LLC and serves as CEO of Aforra Development LLC, one of Udobov’s main companies formally registered in his name.
Galanina also holds stakes in companies with a combined 2024 revenue exceeding 4.5 billion rubles, including a 35% share in the Tula-based Agrogrib LLC, 40% in the Cherepovets Shipbuilding Plant, 60% in Sheksna Shipping LLC, 60% in Social Innovations LLC, 40% in Nebo LLC (pledged to Sberbank), 100% in Firma “Aistán”, 60% in Krasnaya Mashina LLC (whose business partner is Crimean winemaker Ruslan Pankin), as well as a 50% stake in Zheldorkonsalting.
Udobov previously owned the German freight carrier VG Cargo GmbH, based at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. After he came under sanctions, all shares in the German company were transferred to SHEER ONE INVESTMENT LLC, which was registered in the capital of Azerbaijan in September 2022. Its director is a certain Mahmud Vagif oglu Yusifli. VG Cargo continues to operate; its annual profit has slightly decreased but still exceeds 1.5 million euros.
In addition, one of Udobov’s numerous apartments is located in Prague, which was first revealed through wiretapped conversations between Colonel Zakharchenko and businessman Yevgeny Selyakov. In the Czech Republic, Udobov still owns Avrora Capital s.r.o., a company engaged in real estate activities. He has also been linked to several other “Avrora” entities in different countries — including Avrora Trading in the Marshall Islands and Avrora Capital Ltd in the United Kingdom. The latter was reportedly owned by a former relative of Mishustin through the offshore company Krestvale Ltd (British Virgin Islands).
A stake in the Canadian Golden Energy Group Inc., which is involved in real estate development in the province of Quebec, as well as 12 companies in the United Kingdom, was registered under this offshore structure. One of them, PETONE LLP, is still active today. According to financial reports as of the end of 2024, PETONE owns real estate worth £2.3 million, including an apartment in Rome valued at around $300,000. Until November 2025, the company was controlled by Australian accountant Graham Briggs, who became known following the “Pandora Papers” leaks as one of the architects of offshore schemes used to conceal oligarch wealth worldwide and as an administrator of assets linked to Sberbank CEO German Gref. PETONE is currently managed by Jason Anthony Tabone, who also appears in the “Paradise Papers” leaks.
By the way, until the end of 2009, the British and offshore “Avroras” owned the German company ULS Realty GmbH, whose director in 2009 was Artyom Udobov, the son of Oleg Udobov, Alexander Udobov’s brother. This company was part of the ULS Global group, which was at the center of a global smuggling scheme involving goods imported into Russia through the port of Ust-Luga — clothing was brought in under the guise of construction materials, while containers declared as picture frames were allegedly found to contain smartphones, among other items.
ULS Realty GmbH is still active today and has been managed since 2017 by Zeki Firat.
He also manages Universal Logistics Systems GmbH, which was previously controlled by Valery Benaguev (Zion Benya), one of the top managers of ULS and a defendant in a criminal case involving customs duty evasion. Germany extradited Benaguev to Russia in 2020, and a court in St. Petersburg released him in 2021. Thus, the entire German business network linked to Udobov and Mishustin remains active.
Together with Udobov, the US sanctions lists included offshore entities affiliated with him, in particular LEADING CAPITAL INVESTMENT LTD (British Virgin Islands), which manages real estate assets. Instead of liquidating the company, Udobov renamed it and changed its correspondence address. It is now called RELLCOT LTD, and its London representative office uses an address in an upscale residential complex at Lancelot Place — where apartments are valued at approximately £5–6 million.
Since 2022, the beneficial owner of the company has been listed as 50-year-old Seychelles resident Danny Dominic Lowlam. The same individual served until the end of 2024 as director of the Cypriot company SONGORO TRADING LIMITED, which owned the Russian firm SV Trans. Both legal entities have since been liquidated, with SV Trans going through bankruptcy proceedings as early as 2018.
Notably, SV Trans reportedly owed its creditors, including VEB-Leasing, nearly 5.8 billion rubles. The bankruptcy trustee sought to hold the company’s beneficiaries and management jointly liable, but the court rejected the request — and the trustee did not appeal the decision.
The name of the offshore shareholder is not even recorded in court documents. And finally, during the supervision stage of the SV Trans bankruptcy proceedings, the company received a full VAT refund from the Russian state budget — nearly 743 million rubles — which was used to finance the bankruptcy process itself (in particular, more than 20 million rubles were paid to the bankruptcy trustee, apparently for his cooperation), at the end of which all remaining debts were written off.
It is worth recalling the international scandal involving Udobov related to VAT refunds in 2009–2010, involving a similar sum of around 5.2 billion rubles. At that time, Udobov was treated as a witness, and the investigation was closely handled by German and Swiss authorities. German investigators believed that Udobov was funneling money out of Russia and laundering it through his company VG Cargo GmbH.
Danny Dominic Lowlam was also a co-owner of the Estonian company XRG3OLB OÜ, with assets of €262,000, although it has had no financial activity in recent years. His business partner is Estonian citizen Ivan Abramov, the founder of a dozen other local companies. Abramov has a brother who lives in St. Petersburg.
Lowlam has reportedly been working with Udobov/Mishustin for a long time. Back in 2014, he was involved in a scandal surrounding the sale of shares in the Moscow hotel “Yunost.” A quarter of ZAO “Yuncom” (which owned the hotel) belonged to the Lenkom Theatre, while the rest was owned by Yunost’s longtime Soviet-era director Farid Akhverdiev. Lenkom director Mark Varshaver accused Akhverdiev of embezzling Lenkom’s stake and selling shares to a third party — the Singaporean company ETK INVEST (S’ PORE) http://PTE.LTD, on behalf of which Danny Dominic Lowlam signed the agreement.
Akhverdiev was ultimately sentenced to 8 years in prison — in absentia, as he had already fled with his family to Azerbaijan.
The Singaporean company ETK is part of the Eurasian Pipeline Consortium, on whose board Alexander Udobov also served. The holding was ranked by Forbes among the largest private Russian companies, with an estimated value of 57 billion rubles. At the time, the main beneficiary of ETK was entrepreneur and long-time Udobov associate Alexander Karmanov.
The shares in “Yunost” were later transferred by the Singapore-based firm to the Russian company ETK-Invest. At the same address on Myasnitskaya Street, 46, a number of other legal entities belonging to the ETK group are also registered, including ETK Promo Production, LLC ETK (renamed in April 2025 to BB Media), and others.
The same address also hosts assets linked to Udobov, including the microfinance company Pegas (100% owned by Udobov), its subsidiary Kuarpos (owner of the QRPOS payment system), as well as LLC Aforra-Energia and Arendoff, which Udobov transferred in November 2025 to the company Eurokor. The president of Eurokor is Vitaly Gorny, who was previously a founder of LLC ETK until 2016. Udobov himself was also, until April 2022, a co-founder of Solaris Promo Production together with ETK Promo Production — both registered at the same Myasnitskaya 46 address.
Overall, the group’s assets are regularly reshuffled between affiliated individuals, suggesting a highly interwoven and closely connected business structure between Udobov, the ETK group, and Eurokor — to the point where the ownership structures appear largely indistinguishable.