Vladimir Avetisyan is a businessman in Russia’s Samara region, north of western Kazakhstan. He has headed the region’s electricity grid operator Samaraenergo since 1999, when it was still a subsidiary of the state-run Unified Energy System of Russia (RAO UES).
Avetisyan was also an RAO managing director and board member between 2004 and 2008.
He and his family were beneficiaries of money that flowed through the Troika Laundromat. Airship Universal, a Panama company set up and entirely funded by the Laundromat, paid for international charter flights on private jets for Avetisyan and others traveling to and from Samara. The company also paid numerous fees to British private schools for Avetisyan’s family members.
Airship also spent more than US$ 1.2 million on guitars and $180,000 on a platinum membership with Huntessential, a hunting trip company operating across Africa. While the documents don’t indicate who received the guitars or went on safari, Avetisyan is a keen guitarist who fronts his own blues band and is an avid hunter.
Two other core Laundromat companies, Brightwell Capital and Quantus Division Ltd., paid a total of $36,500 to a French trucking company to deliver “trophies” for Avetisyan. The transaction data doesn’t specify what is meant by the word, however, Quantus, Airship, and other Laundromat companies also spent hundreds of thousands of euros on taxidermy in France and Switzerland.
When OCCRP reporters asked Avetisyan about the guitars, safaris and hunting trips, charter flights and school fees, he said that Troika Dialog paid his bills by drawing on his personal funds managed by Troika. He said he didn’t know the technical details.
Aside from his personal expenses, Avetisyan also conducted business with several Laundromat companies, which in turn invested and held shares in his companies. A representative said Avetisyan met all the requirements of President Vladimir Putin’s “de-offshoreization” campaign clamping down on offshore tax evasion.
