Bombardier is a market-leading manufacturer of private jets with over 4,700 aircraft in operation across 115 countries. It is based in Montreal.
Between 2008 and 2009, Flashback Services Ltd., a company in the Troika Laundromat network, made three payments totalling US$42,473,768 to Bombardier for an aircraft. Flashback had received the funds as loans from Quantus Division Ltd., the British Virgin Islands-based company at the core of the Troika Laundromat.
Some of the money may have originated from the fraud exposed by Sergei Magnitsky, who discovered the theft of $230 million from the Russian Treasury and subsequently died in prison from mistreatment and inadequate medical care. Roberta Transit LLP was a London-based shell company integrally involved in laundering the stolen funds Magnitsky revealed. And three days before Quantus sent Flashback the first installment for the Bombardier aircraft, it received nearly $5.9 million from Roberta Transit LLP.
Less than a year after making its final payment to Bombardier, Flashback sold a plane for $19 million. The buyer was HydroAir Ltd., another British Virgin Islands company that in the same year became a shareholder of RusHydro. This major Russian hydroelectric company is a successor to RAO Unified Energy System, a state power holding company.
Mark Masluch, a spokesman for Bombardier, told OCCRP’s Canadian partner The Globe and Mail in an email that the company has a rigorous due diligence process that takes into account holding companies as well as their beneficiaries.
He said the agreement to sell a Bombardier jet in this case was originally made in 2006 with a German company, which was taken over by Flashback a year and a half later.
“Bombardier was formally notified of the change of control of the entity after it occurred,” he said. “A due diligence performed on Flashback in January 2008 did not reveal any anomalies. Bombardier can reaffirm that all our aircraft sales comply with a robust due diligence process. This due diligence includes pre-sale background checks through independent databases.”
