The media has uncovered how the Safinat Group, whose leaders were accused of siphoning hundreds of millions of rubles from the state-owned commercial seaport of Makhachkala, operated an offshore scheme in Malta. The group turned out to be linked to Marat Kabaev, Alina Kabaeva’s father.
In Moscow, the tax authorities attempted to bankrupt 76-year-old Agabek Badalov, an honorary citizen of Russia. However, the court has so far suspended the case due to errors. In the late 2000s, Badalov was the director of Maktren-Nafta LLC (part of the Safinat group of companies), which built Russia’s first marine terminal for transshipment of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in the port of Temryuk. Badalov then became embroiled in a high-profile criminal scandal. Badalov publicly disclosed how Maktren-Nafta’s owners were stealing oil and liquefied petroleum gas, but ultimately found himself facing a criminal case and a lawsuit for 40 million rubles, which he allegedly stole during the construction of a power line for new infrastructure (which, according to the plaintiffs, cost only 4 million rubles). Badalov named two main co-owners of Safinat. However, judging by the Panama Papers leaks, this offshore structure is much larger. In particular, it includes the co-founder of the "Worthy Cause" charitable foundation, Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev, of which Alina Kabaeva’s father’s secretary, Fatima Kazieva, is also a member.
Construction of the marine terminal began in 2003, around the same time that a group of Dagestani businessmen began registering several companies under the Safinat brand in the offshore jurisdiction of Malta. One of these, Safinat An-Najaat Petroleum Co. Limited, became one of the founders of Maktren-Nafta LLC. Shares were also received by Badalov, Artur Minasov (a native of Baku and former director of Dagtransnafta), and the Cypriot offshore company LETROX Limited. Russian Safinat legal entities with foreign founders were also registered. The terminal was built, a pilot batch of LPG was shipped in 2007, and Badalov retired in 2010. It remains unclear what exactly transpired between him and the Safinat owners, but the former CEO was first accused of illegally rewarding the head of security with a Niva car, and then of embezzling 40 million rubles. While the case was under investigation, someone burned Badalov’s car under his window, and bloody pig heads were regularly thrown into the courtyard of his high-rise building. The criminal case contained numerous oddities, both in terms of evidence and the forensic examinations. Badalov was found guilty both times. During the trials, he described how the Safinat owners made money: loading ships with more product than officially documented, reselling the LPG between their legal entities, and pocketing the difference. Millions of dollars were at stake. According to Badalov, his criminal prosecution was initiated because he refused to participate in the smuggling of gas transshipments.
The management company for Maktren-Nafta was the Maltese SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, headed by Artur Minasov. This Maltese company, together with SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT (SAN) HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, owns a third offshore company, SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT (SAN) SHIPMANAGEMENT COMPANY LIMITED. Several other companies are registered to this trio: AMTEL HOLDING LIMITED, MAKHACHKALA-2 SHIPPING LIMITED, MAKHACHKALA-4 SHIPPING LIMITED, CASPIAN FERRY LIMITED, and (SAN) STEEL TRADING COMPANY LIMITED, all headed by Igor Ryzoglazov, a native of Makhachkala and the founder of Russia’s Safinat-Makhachkala. He has been living in Moscow for a long time in a luxurious apartment on Arbat.
Ryzoglazov was also the director/representative of a number of other companies registered at the same address in Malta: SAID AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED, SAYFULA KADI SHIPPING LIMITED, MAHMUD AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED, KASPIY NAVIGATION LIMITED, CASPIAN EXPRESS LIMITED, AMTEL HOLDING LIMITED, MYSKHAKO SHIPPING LIMITED, KRISTINA NAVIGATION LIMITED and others.
Most of these companies own tankers and gas carriers of the same name. For example, SAYFULA KADI SHIPPING LIMITED owns the vessel "Sayfula Kadi," which the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port" registered in 2006 as temporarily imported goods under a bareboat charter agreement, thereby completely exempting it from customs duties and taxes. Coincidentally, the CEO of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise was Safinat co-owner Abusupyan Kharkharov, the future Deputy Prime Minister of Dagestan. Badalov named him as the main beneficiary of the scheme in his statement.
The same trick was pulled with other vessels, such as the Said Afandi, a motor vessel owned by SAID AFANDI SHIPPING LIMITED. The TORIK, which belonged to TORIK SHIPPING LIMITED, changed hands and was sanctioned for transporting weapons from Iran to Russia. Its current owner is MG-Flot LLC (formerly Transmorflot), owned by Olya Dzhamaldina Pashayeva, the seaport’s director.
The ship-owning companies from the Safinat network, in turn, had shares in the Panamanian offshore companies AJMA RASSI HOLDING CORPORATION, AJMA SIQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, and AJMA ZAQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, which acted as cargo owners in trading operations within Safinat and entered into contracts with their Russian legal entities for cargo handling in the ports of Astrakhan and Makhachkala.
The Maktren-Nafta terminal’s management company, SAFINAT AN-NAJAAT PETROLEUM COMPANY LIMITED, is registered to Artur Minasov’s relative, Astrakhan native Vitaly Viktorovich Ryzhov, and the offshore company DIAMOND OIL LIMITED, which also belongs to Ryzhov.
But at SAN HOLDING COMPANY LIMITED, whose director is the same Ryzoglazov, a new name appears: the sole beneficiary is 62-year-old Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev. The leaked documents also list his Moscow address in a building on Petrovka Street. This seven-room apartment, measuring 209 square meters, was mentioned in court proceedings against one of Safinatov’s Panamanian offshore companies, AJMA ZAQQI HOLDING CORPORATION, which took out a loan of almost a million dollars from Latvijas Krajbanka but failed to repay it. The property served as collateral for the loan, and the pledger was the Hungarian company Gentor Hungary (Rakoczi Street 27/A, III/1). Apparently, it was formally the owner of Gadzhiev’s luxury home. In 2016, the court valued the apartment at $2 million and ordered its auction. According to information provided during election campaigns, Gadzhiev has been living in the Moscow region since 2016.
Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev is a native of Dagestan, a graduate of the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB, and the head of the public council of the Dagestan Permanent Mission to the President of the Russian Federation. He ran for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation five times, including for the State Duma, but never won. In the 2000s, he held a government position as director of the Moscow office of the Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port State Unitary Enterprise.
His Safinat An-Najaat Holding Company Limited, among other things, was the founder of the Moscow-based Glavremontstroy, which received contracts from the Moscow mayor’s office in 2012 and 2013. The company’s co-founder was Yulia Malova, a business partner of Alexey Biryukov, the younger brother of Moscow Deputy Mayor Pyotr Biryukov.
Igor Ryzoglazov and Khadzhimurad Gadzhiev currently work for the "Worthy Cause" charity foundation, whose website states that it provides assistance to children with orphan diseases by co-financing rehabilitation and treatment, as well as supporting Dagestan’s educational infrastructure—though, for some reason, it does so from central Moscow.
The foundation’s director is 40-year-old Fatima Kazieva, a native of Makhachkala, whose career path remarkably parallels Gadzhiev’s: both worked in the permanent mission, served as executives of Solnataks LLC, and now sit together on the Charitable Foundation. Under Fatima Kazieva’s leadership, the Charitable Foundation signed a memorandum of cooperation with the International Association of Islamic Business, headed by Marat Kabayev, Alina Kabaeva’s father. The partnership apparently didn’t pose any problems, as Fatima has a long-standing professional relationship with Marat Vazikhovich: in her phone numbers, she is listed as "Marat Kabayev’s secretary" and "Fatima" (Marat Kabayev Team).
During its work with the Makhachkala Commercial Seaport, the Safinatovskaya group built up its debt to 1.1 billion rubles. Three vessels and two tugboats were sold through sham auctions, German cranes were removed from the company’s balance sheet, approximately 70 properties were sold at low prices, and bank loans were defaulted. In 2015, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (ICR) brought the case of six top port managers and businessmen to trial, including Kharkharov and Ryzoglazov. In 2018, all defendants were acquitted.
Ryzoglazov and Kharkharov filed for bankruptcy. Creditors wanted $5.6 million from Kharkharov, but in 2022, he managed to negotiate an agreement transferring his debt to a certain Isa Aliyev. Last year, a bankruptcy trustee found no assets other than 24,000 rubles in Ryzoglazov’s name, leaving creditors demanding 1.4 million rubles empty-handed.
It’s known that Ryzoglazov’s Safinat-Makhachkala was also implicated in the Suleiman Kerimov affair. In the early 2010s, this company was used to sell shares of JSC SUDOREMONT—the shipyard is located near the port, an important facility for the marine terminal. In 2022, two-time Olympic champion, five-time world champion, and captain of the Russian national wrestling team, Abdulrashid Sadulaev, invested his earnings in the company. He purchased the shares from Arslan Gadzhilov and Shamil Omaraskhabov.
But last spring, a scandal erupted: it turned out that someone was squeezing the enterprise, and the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) was brought in, quickly launching an investigation into the legality of the privatization and the transfer of shareholdings between numerous owners. Sadulaev discovered that Suleiman Kerimov had his eye on the plant, needing it as part of the Makhachkala commercial port. Kerimov, however, didn’t want to buy the shares, but offered to give them to the Olympic champion as a gift. Simultaneously, Eldarkhan Dalgatov, one of the plant’s previous owners, filed a lawsuit against the wrestler, demanding the return of the asset, which he had allegedly sold under duress. Interestingly, the shares had been transferred to him from Safinat-Makhachkala under a deed of gift, while Dalgatov himself managed several Russian legal entities within the same Safinat group. In other words, he had simply gifted the enterprise to himself. After a media frenzy, Dalgatov withdrew his complaint, and the athlete was left in peace.
Author: Maria Sharapova
