Ravenscourt Holdings Ltd. was a Cyprus shell company within the Troika Dialog group and later Sberbank, after it acquired Troika. Leaked data from Lithuania’s Ukio Bankas reveals that Ravenscourt also was part of a financial pipeline that funneled more than US$50 million into the Troika Laundromat.
Between 2007 and 2008, Ravenscourt issued a series of promissory notes — legal documents that contain a written promise to pay a specific amount to another party. Ravenscourt issued these notes, each worth millions of dollars, to a string of shell companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands (BVI).
But the companies never cashed these valuable promises. Instead, they sold them for $100 apiece. The buyers were two BVI companies, Delco Networks S.A. and Kentway S.A., both created on behalf of the Troika Dialog network by the corporate formation agent IOS Group.
Shortly after purchasing the notes, Delco and Kentway asked Ravenscourt to transfer their full promised value, plus interest. This way, between July 2007 and June 2009, Delco received more than $38.5 million and Kentway more than $13 million, all of which was immediately wired to other Laundromat companies, according to leaked documents.
The transactions make no business sense. They appear to be financial manipulations designed to launder money, evade taxes, bribe individuals or some other potentially illegal activity.
In one instance, $10 million of Ravenscourt’s cash appears to have helped pay for a plane built by Bombardier Inc., a Canadian private jet manufacturer.
At the same time, Delco and Kentway were involved in several well-known stories of shady dealings: their Ukio bank accounts sent $1.5 million to the Roldugin network, as compensation for cancelling share purchases in Russia’s third largest company: the state-owned oil and gas giant Rosneft. Three months before, Delco had helped to launder millions of dollars stolen from the Russian treasury. Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in police custody in 2009, uncovered the tax fraud scheme.
In 2008-2009, Kentway also received $16 million in its Ukio Bankas account from a massive Russian tax evasion scheme dubbed the Reinsurance scam.
Because Ravenscourt is a shell company, no officers or directors could be identified to contact for comment.
