The Troika Laundromat supported an Armenian lifestyle magazine started by Gor Nakhapetyan, founding partner of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo and a former managing director and vice president at Sberbank CIB, a subsidiary of Sberbank.
The print version of the English language magazine ceased production on Aug. 13, 2013, and the company behind it, Ethnopress JSC, no longer exists. However, the magazine still publishes a website available in Armenian, English and Russian under the name Yerevan Productions.
Between February 2008 and August 2011, Yerevan Magazine received US$ 1,148,964 from the Laundromat for printing costs.
In 2013, the magazine donated a painting, the Portrait of the Actress Pastukhova (1955), to the Martiros Sarian House-Museum. The painting had previously been sold to Gotland Industrial Inc. in 2006 for $30,000.
On his Facebook page, Nakhapetyan posted photos of former investment banker and entrepreneur Ruben Vardanyan. He also posted photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 2016 International Economic Forum. Nakhapetyan’s vision for the magazine was built around a concept called “Armenia 2020,” in which the country aims to become a competitor in the global marketplace in almost every dimension.
In addition to supporting Nakhapetyan’s magazine, documents show his medical expenses were paid for by Brightwell Capital, another Laundromat company. Avi Medico, a Munich-based medical services company, received $11,697 in 2006.
Records also show that Ethnopress’s chief executive officer, Viktoriya Dobrovolskaya, received $250,000 in loans from the Troika Laundromat, $130,000 of which the documents show she repaid.
The company behind the magazine, Ethnopress JSC, was described in documents sent to Lithuania’s now-shuttered Ukio Bankas as a “permanent partner” of Popat Holdings, a key offshore company in the Troika Laundromat that was used to trade shares in Russian energy businesses and which also invested in Vardanyan’s property fund.
