A few days ago, OCCRP published an interesting report about Eduard Apsit, the owner of Clean World, a prominent cleaning business in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Allegedly they used ABLV bank to launder tens of millions of euros. Apsit and his business came under scrutiny during an investigation into ABLV‘s finances. Latvian financial investigators froze around €40 million belonging to Apsit and €33 million belonging to a Ukrainian man believed to be his proxy.
ABLV Case: ABLV was one of the biggest banks in the Baltic region before it was shut down in 2018 because of a U.S. Treasury Department decision to block it from carrying out transactions using the U.S. dollar. The U.S. said ABLV had essentially “institutionalized money laundering as a pillar of [its] business practices,” and that it had taken in billions of dollars from corrupt actors from former Soviet states, including Russia and Ukraine. OCCRP has investigated ABLV numerous times: The bank featured prominently in the Troika Laundromat and Pandora Papers projects.
The investigation revealed that Apsit’s holding company, Facilicom, spawned numerous other companies in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine that won state cleaning tenders worth over €120 million in Russia, €40 million in Belarus, and €7.5 million in Ukraine. Latvian authorities can freeze funds suspected of money laundering without establishing a predicate crime. Although Apsit has not been charged, prosecutors may press charges as the investigation progresses. Apsit’s lawyer declined to comment on the asset freeze.
A lack of cooperation from Russia and Belarus has hindered the investigation, OCCRP reports. However, journalists have uncovered information about Apsit’s business practices by examining procurement contracts in the three countries. The investigation suggests that Apsit’s companies bid against each other to win contracts, raising concerns about fair competition. Apsit’s companies won around 600 tenders worth €120 million in Russia, and journalists discovered links between these companies and a major Russian procurement fraud scandal involving defense contracts.
Read the full OCCRP report here.
Latvian investigators have also opened an asset seizure case involving a Ukrainian man, Serhiy Semeniuk, whom they believe acted as Apsit’s proxy. Semeniuk’s frozen funds amount to around €33 million held in accounts by offshore companies. Latvian authorities suspect that the Wondermax holding, controlled by Semeniuk, was actually controlled by Apsit. The investigation suggests that Apsit transferred his Russian business interests to Semeniuk after the 2014 annexation of Crimea, possibly to obscure the origin of funds earned from Russian government contracts, particularly in occupied Crimea.
