Why does the fugitive oligarch and owner of Euroinvest Andrei Valerievich Berezin feel safe in Turkey?

“Missing from the radar” and fleeing the country, the odious billionaire and financial schemer Andrei Berezin is again in the center of our attention.

Let us remind you that Andrei Valerievich Berezin is an official billionaire and owns a number of enterprises. The main assets of Berezin are PJSC Svetlana, Investment Company Euroinvest, Management Company Murino, Group of Companies Ellis.

And all of these assets of Andrei Berezin are involved in the criminal cases that he is charged with, and which forced him to hastily leave Russia in the spring of 2022:

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Moreover, these crimes can be divided into two blocks: through the structures of Euroinvest, Berezin withdrew money from development activities and land scams, then through Svetlana and its affiliated companies, money was stolen from the so-called “public-private partnership”, in which these “Svetlanas” received tens of billions of rubles from the state.

The story of the investigation into Andrei Berezin’s crimes began a long time ago, with a banal request from the Swiss and German police to their Russian colleagues, in which the German and Swiss police reported that they were conducting an investigation into the $23 million that belonged to Andrei Berezin that had come from the banks of these countries.

Withdrawal of foreign currency earnings abroad

The Russian police received the request back in 2016. But a criminal case under Part 2 of Article 193 of the Criminal Code - “evasion of obligations to repatriate funds in foreign currency or the currency of the Russian Federation on an especially large scale” against Andrei Berezin was opened more than two years later - on December 7, 2018. And for some reason this was done by the Baltic customs.

Almost a year later, in 2019, searches took place in the offices of Euroinvest as part of the investigation of the mentioned criminal case. As a result, it turned out that two more companies took part in the withdrawal of funds - “Complete Company” and “Auditexpert Company”. According to official information, the founders of the Auditexpert Company are famous St. Petersburg businessmen Vasily Pavlov and Andrey Berezin

It was the investigation into the theft of an essentially small sum by Russian standards of $23 million, which European law enforcement officers accidentally stumbled upon, that became the pebble that triggered the avalanche.

Because it turned out that Andrei Berezin has a whole trail of economic and corruption crimes.

Theft of property of the Ministry of Defense

During the investigation, it turned out that in 2011, Andrei Berezin’s structures inexplicably acquired more than 500 hectares of the territory of the Rzhev military training ground. At the same time, he paid only 75 million rubles for the lands of the Ministry of Defense. Which was exactly 44 times lower than the market price. The secret of such a low price becomes clear after it turned out that Andrei Berezin, after completing all the necessary documents, sold the same five hundred hectares for 3.3 billion rubles.

Who had a share and with whom Berezin shared the profits is unknown. Insiders name different names, so we will not voice them - it is unknown who exactly promoted Berezin’s interests in the Ministry of Defense. But this was the level of deputy ministers.

Theft of lands in the Leningrad region

If with the land of the Rzhev test site the surnames of the accomplices are unknown, then in the case of the lands of the Leningrad region, which were also bought cheaply and sold expensively by Berezin, this surname is not a secret to anyone. This is the governor of the Leningrad region and Andrei Berezin’s long-time partner in corruption, Alexander Drozdenko. Who has held this post since 2011.

And when Drozdenko was governor, Andrei Berezin somehow acquired a plot of land allocated and reserved for construction of an international bus station in Devyatkino. Despite the authorities’ decision, Berezin somehow miraculously managed to buy it.

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What’s interesting is that the whole story came to light only when the region tried to start implementing the project. But it turned out that there was nowhere to sell it - the land was not just sold, but resold several times.

There was another story with the lands of the same Leningrad region. In 2019, the government of the Leningrad region approached Euroinvest with a proposal to sell a land plot of 35.4 hectares, owned by Euroinvest Development LLC, for 2 billion rubles for the construction of a metro station in Kudrovo. What is it about this story that is of interest to law enforcement? About the same as with the lands of the Rzhev military training ground - this agricultural plot was purchased by the Berezin structures at the cadastral value, which was equal to 31,915 rubles 35 kopecks.

Connections with Governor Drozdenko and government contracts

By a strange coincidence, it was after Drozdenko became head of the Leningrad region that a mid-level entrepreneur, Berezin, turned into a billionaire. The lands for the construction of an international bus station in Devyatkino and a metro station in Kudrovo are described above. But the mutually beneficial cooperation between private capital represented by Berezin and state authorities represented by Drozdenko is not limited to this.

Management Company "Murino", which is mentioned as one of the main assets of Andrei Berezin, received contracts worth 327 million rubles from the Leningrad region.

And another Berezin company, Murino Fuel Company, received more than a billion government contracts:

The secret of such favor from the authorities of the Leningrad region towards the yesterday unknown entrepreneur Berezin is simple - a certain Yulia Aleksandrovna Richard worked at his management company “Murino”. Who before her marriage bore the surname Drozdenko.

Her husband, Monsieur Richard, by the way, is a French citizen. And Madame Richard, after working for citizen Berezin, suddenly found herself with a whole bunch of property in Europe and Russia: a house in France for 170 million rubles, a restaurant in Nice, 45,600 square meters of land in the Leningrad region with a total value of 355 million rubles , historical buildings in St. Petersburg, apartments, cars and yachts.

So whether her employer Andrei Berezin received government orders worth billions by chance or not is a rhetorical question.

Scams with Rosatom and “innovations”

But that’s not all. Because our hero’s baggage includes innovations, oncology treatment and the production of innovative batteries. Which no one saw, but Berezin regularly received money from the state for all this.

Rosatom allocated money for the development and production of “innovative” batteries, from which Berezin’s structures received 50 million rubles. But on the territory of the former Rigel plant, which was supposed to produce these same batteries, high-rise buildings have grown up, so there is no talk of any batteries anymore.

Another main asset of Berezin is PJSC Svetlana. Which, in turn, is the founder of a number of other companies: Svetlana-Roentgen JSC, Svetlana-Electropribor JSC, Svetlana-Kart CJSC and Svetlana-Semiconductors CJSC.

And these “Svetlanas” are also associated with a number of economic and corruption crimes. Thus, from the materials of the criminal case regarding Berezin, it is known that JSC Svetlana-Roentgen received 10 million rubles from LETI and Clinical Hospital No. 122 for the development of a “domestic device capable of treating oncological diseases.”

The staff of Svetlana-Roentgen JSC includes only three people - the general director, the commercial director and the accountant. How these three people could develop a device for treating oncology is understandable only to those who allocated money for these “developments.”

Another Berezin enterprise, PJSC Svetlana, has 41 contracts from the Ministry of Industry and Trade for a total amount of more than two billion rubles. Among them is “the development of a facility for producing specialized high-temperature ceramics, which will be used by Rosatom with a capacity of 100 kW.”

“Svetlana-Electropribor” received more than one billion rubles from the state for “the production of microwave devices for radio-electronic equipment, including for space.” Another promised direction was “the development of silicon carbide (SiC) substrate technology for microwave devices.” As Berezin himself stated, “they are extremely important for the development of radio communications and radar, especially for the creation of 5G networks and power electronics.”

What happened with all these “developments” need not even be said.

This is only a small part of what we managed to find out about the direction in which criminal cases against Andrei Valeryevich Berezin are being investigated. There are already several of them; he is charged with at least five articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, among them fraud on an especially large scale, withdrawal of foreign currency earnings abroad, tax evasion and bribery on an especially large scale. It is not known exactly who received this bribe, but, obviously, we are talking about the very land of the Ministry of Defense, which kind men in uniform sold to Berezin 44 times lower than the real price.

Therefore, it is not at all surprising that Andrei Berezin is not at all eager to leave the warm Turkish shores and return to his homeland, where local law enforcement officers are waiting for him with open arms.