"Recognizing" Sergunin: did the sanctions reveal a possible "feeder" of the vice-mayor of Moscow?

The European Union imposed sanctions against the Deputy Mayor of Moscow Natalia Sergunina and NtechLab (Ntech Lab LLC), which created the FindFace face recognition application. The same company is one of the largest contractors of the Moscow mayor's office, whose involvement in the work may have a scandalous character - Director-at-Large of Rostec Vasily Brovko.

The EU authorities claim that Sergunina and NtechLab are responsible for some "human rights violations" in Russia. However, the philanthropy of Western sanctions is difficult to believe - most likely, this statement is only a screen.

But if NtechLab, "mastering" multimillion-dollar state contracts, is Sergunina's "money box," through which budget money can be withdrawn from the country for her comfortable life in retirement, then the actions to close this "feeder" to put pressure on the Moscow authorities look quite logical.

Details - in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post.

The European Union claims that Natalya Sergunina "is responsible for the development and use of a face recognition system and the transfer of relevant data to the police department," since he "heads the Moscow Department of Technology and Information." Writes about this "Kommersant".

Vigil for DIT

But there is no Department of Technology in the Moscow City Hall. There is the Department of Information Technology (DIT), headed by Eduard Lysenko. Lysenko, like DIT itself, was also under sanctions. It turns out that either this is just a translation error, or the EU is convinced that the real head of DIT is not Lysenko at all, but Mrs. Sergunina?

It turns out that it can also be related to the mass of corruption scandals that regularly rattle around the department and the mayor's office as a whole. And Eduard Lysenko, we recall, is the longtime hero of our publications himself - billions of rubles from the treasury pass through his department.

For example, we wrote about the case of the beneficiary of the IT company "Redsis" Vasily Vasina, a large partner of the Moscow mayor's office, who, according to investigators, deliberately hid taxes. They wrote about the Social Monitoring application, which took 200 million rubles from the treasury, and from which Muscovites were simply furious and indignant, and about many other potentially "sawing" schemes.

It turns out that Sergunina could oversee all these questions, and Lysenko was only a simple executor of her will? And in what case - would he become the first candidate for the role of "scapegoat"?

Vasily Brovko discovered

As for NtechLab, which has developed a face recognition system that is used by the capital's security forces to ensure law and order on the streets, it received state contracts worth 82 million rubles, of which 46 million were from the Moscow Department of Information Technologies.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

Recall also that NtechLab is a Russian startup, the exact distribution of shares in which is unknown. But it is known that the founders of the company, Alexander Kabakov and Artem Kukharenko, left the company due to disagreements with management and investors.

According to Forbes, allegedly they were unhappy with the situation in the country, tried to stop the work of the company and re-associate employees. But they could not.

At the same time, since 2018, Rostec has been present in the capital of this startup - its subsidiary received 12.5% plus one share. Another 25% plus one share - at the company "Vardanyan, Broitman and Partners." This is the Criminal Code, where the oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, the former beneficiary of the scandalous investment company Troika Dialog, plays a leading role.

The latter in 2019 was suspected of withdrawing $5 billion abroad. Is it worth checking right now where NtechLab's finances go under such "patronage"? Especially considering that at the end of 2022, the company received revenue of 1.2 billion rubles, and at the same time turned out to be unprofitable by 228 million rubles. Is it really "drawing" reports to underpay taxes?

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

However, the real owner of the company has long been the people of the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov. And more specifically - the director of Rostec on special assignments and the husband of Tina Kandelaki Boris Brovko, who has been shining for the past year in scandals related to extortion of money for blocks in Telegram channels.

Officially, the startup is registered on the Cyprus offshore "N-TEH.LAB LTD." It is easily located in the register of legal entities of Cyprus. There is not a word about Brovko, but the information could simply be cleaned. After all, the web archive has a link to the same page from the register, which indicates that Vasily Brovko was previously the director of the company.

Photo: https://web.archive.org/web/20221223155117/https://i-cyprus.com/company/505987

The name of Mikhail Kireev is also written there. This may be Mikhail Kireev, senior vice president of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). His chief is Kirill Dmitriev. Earlier, The Moscow Post suggested that billions of budget rubles could be withdrawn from the RDIF through offshore companies from the country, and Dmitriev himself could do business with the people of the Ukrainian oligarch Yevgeny Chernyak.

It turns out that Natalya Sergunina can also be related to this whole cheerful company of state managers.

At the same time, as they said, in the last year the name of Vasily Brovko sounds in the context of scandals with extortion of money for a block of negative information in Telegram. Brovko in this case was held as a victim.

And recently, another criminal case of extortion arose - against the administrator of the Telegram channel "Kremlin laundress," a former FSB officer Mikhail Polyakov. And here is what is interesting: according to the authors of the Telegram channel "Narratives", allegedly, among other things, Polyakov was also engaged in hacking the Internet mail of large officials, among whom was Natalya Sergunina.

We will not draw conclusions, but it seems that Sergunina may indeed be associated with Vasily Brovko, the work of NtechLab and scandals in the Russian segment of Telegram. What can be the reason, except for the opportunity to earn serious money "past the cash register"?

Deputy for Lobbying or Secrets of the Offshore Yard

But this is only a small addition to the huge grief of negativity, which has long been spreading about Mrs. Sergunina. After working with Sobyanin for more than 12 years, she seems to have managed to make friends with all businessmen close to the mayor and learn how to maneuver well in budget flows. Today she oversees the entire property and economic blocks of the capital.

At the same time, Sergunina herself may be a lobbyist for large development structures. On the market, they are trying to connect it with the construction holding Capital Group Pavel Te, who, according to rumors, allegedly connects more with the deputy mayor than friendship.

At the same time, Capital Group is allowed to be built even where, before the arrival of Te, there was almost a conservation area. This situation, for example, in the Northern River Port, part of the territory of which Sobyanin with one stroke of his pen deprived the status of a natural complex.

It is also significant that the mayor's office bought part of the Eye Tower from Pavel Te. After that, Sergunina moved her office there and made expensive repairs. Of course, at the expense of the budget. According to "Courier.Media", the repair cost 3 billion rubles, the office itself - 9 billion rubles. Living well isn't against the law...

As for whether money could be withdrawn from NtechLab abroad in favor of Sergunina, she herself may have offshore companies. Of course, those recorded are not at all on her. As the same "Courier.Media" writes, the family of Natalia Sergunina found billions of assets in Austria, and after this information was made public, an article dedicated to Sergunina disappeared from Wikipedia. She's not there now.

It looks extremely suspicious. Especially against the background of information that The Moscow Post provided its own source. He claims that a certain Cypriot named Aaron Elizer Aronov is in fact none other than the Russian businessman Lazar Telmanovich Safaniev, who changed his name, who is the husband of Irina Safanieva (before marriage Sergunina) - the younger sister of Natalia Sergunina. Here's a family business for you?

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

At the same time, the companies Jen Ventures and Genome Ventures were registered for Safaniev (Aaron?). The co-founder in both was the former head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, Alexander Voloshin. At the same time, Jenum Ventures, through its subsidiary Profilium, is related to VEB.Venchurs (the structure of the ВЭБ.РФ state corporation) and one of the largest construction companies in Moscow, Monarch, Sergei Ambartsumyan. Again, the developer - which is significant.

Earlier, Profilium was registered with the offshore Sink Technologies LTD, and now it belongs to a whole conglomerate of owners. Among them are Jen, Genom, and VEB.Venchurs, and the structures of the Enlightenment Group, where 25% belongs to the same VEB. I.e. if this is a "feeder" - everyone who is not lazy is "fed" with it.

And money can, again, be withdrawn to the West - to the same Austria. And, apparently, in order to cover this possible green trickle from the Russian Federation, putting pressure on the vice-mayor, it was brought under sanctions - immediately together with NtechLab. Money, money, and nothing but money. What human rights are there...