An Irish company with assets of more than €8 million is linked to a sanctioned Russian businessman and former KGB general who is a long-time associate of President Vladimir Putin.
Holytown Ltd, with a registered address in the Beacon South Quarter, Sandyford, Dublin 18, is the owner of a seafront villa on its own grounds in the “New Golden Mile” area of Estepona, near Marbella, on the Costa del Sol. It also appears to own other, unidentified assets.
The Irish company is owned by a company in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) called Penimar Holdings Ltd, but the ultimate owners are the stepdaughter and mother-in-law, respectively, of sanctioned Russian businessman Sergey Chemezov (69), according to the Irish register of beneficial owners.
Chemezov is the chief executive of the Russian state-owned military and industrial conglomerate Rostec, a position to which he was appointed by Putin. He is regularly described as being among the most powerful figures in Russia and one of those closest to Putin.
Last month the authorities in Spain seized a €110 million superyacht, the Valerie, on the basis that it was owed by Chemezov, even though it is legally owned by a BVI company that is in turn owned by the same stepdaughter who ultimately owns half the shares in Holytown.
A few days before the Spanish authorities seized the yacht, Chemezov issued a video message to hundreds of thousands of Rostec staff in which he claimed the invasion of Ukraine was necessary for the security of Russia and that western sanctions, although they would create difficulties, would not defeat it.
“If you glance at Russia’s history, almost all of that history Russia has battled with different sanctions, with enemies which encircled her, and she always came out as the victor,” he said.
Soviet spy
Chemezov served as a Soviet spy with Putin in the former German Democratic Republic, when the two men lived in the same apartment building in Dresden. Later both men served in the administration of the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin. When Putin replaced Yeltsin as president, he appointed Chemezov to a number of senior roles in his administration, before appointing him head of Rostec in 2007.
Rostec is involved in a range of sectors including arms production for the Russian military, and had a turnover of almost 1.9 trillion roubles in 2020 (more than €20 billion). Both Chemezov and Rostec have been on the European Union and US sanctions lists since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
According to the Irish register of beneficial owners, Chemezov’s stepdaughter, Anastasia Ignatova, and his mother-in-law, Liudmila Rukavishnikova, are the ultimate owners of Holytown. Rukavishnikova’s daughter, Yekaterina Ignatova, is Chemezov’s second wife. They married in 2004.
On March 3rd, the US added Anastasia and Yekaterina Ignatova to their sanctions list. They are not sanctioned persons under EU law.
Leaked documents seen by The Irish Times show that Ignatova and Rukavishnikova are the shareholders of a number of BVI companies that in turn own assets worth hundreds of millions of euro.
The documents, the Pandora Papers, were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which shared them with The Irish Times and other ICIJ media partners.
According to a leaked document dated March 2018, Ignatova and Rukavishnikova owned the shares in Penimar Holdings, with the shares having been transferred to them in July 2017 from a nominee shareholder with an address in Cyprus. In the documents Ignatova, a former university lecturer, is described as a businesswoman, while Rukavishnikova is described as a real-estate agent.
The Valerie, which is berthed in Barcelona, is owned by a BVI company called Delima Services Ltd, which in turn is owned by Ignatova. The link between the company and Chemezov was disclosed last year when the first reports based on the ICIJ’s Pandora Papers were published.
Property in Spain
Holytown Ltd was incorporated in 1998 for the sole purpose of owning a single unlet property in Spain, according to documents in the Companies Registration Office (CRO) in Dublin. Although an Irish company, it was domiciled in Gibraltar and it appears it was ultimately owned by an individual in Spain.
Penimar acquired Holytown in 2014, thereby acquiring the villa in Estepona. The filed accounts for Holytown show that the value of the company’s fixed assets jumped to €8.3 million, from €1.34 million, during 2014, but the accounts do not say what lay behind this increase in value. A villa on the same street in Estepona as the Chemezov villa – Calle Castilla – was on the market recently for about €2.5 million, so it appears Holytown now owns other assets in addition to the Spanish villa. There are no mortgages registered against Holytown.
Email requests for comments sent to Chemezov at the Rostec press office in Moscow met with no response. Likewise an email request for a comment sent to a Moscow lawyer who acts for Ignatova met with no response.
The registered address for Holytown is a suite in the Cubes Offices, in the Beacon South Quarter, in Sandyford. The suite is the business address of Trinity FS, a business name owned by Trinity Wealth Management Ltd, of the same address.
Trinity Wealth Management is owned by Stanislava Jurcova, of the Czech Republic, who acquired the business from businessman and company services provider Paul Newman (53), of Greystones, Co Wicklow, in 2018. Trinity FS describes itself as a global provider of independent fiduciary and family office services to professional advisers, international corporate groups and private clients.
A BVI company called the Trident Trust Company provides services to Penimar and other offshore companies linked to Ignatova, including Delima Services Ltd. Fiduserve Management Ltd, of Cyprus, also provides services to Penimar and other BVI companies linked to Chemezov’s family.
The directors of Holytown are Katerina Iosif and Christina Tillyrou, both with addresses in Cyprus. Iosif works for Fiduserve and has acted for a number of companies linked to Ignatova. Both Cypriot directors’ names appear frequently in the Pandora Papers in relation support services for offshore companies.
Tillyrou became a director of Holytown in February 2020, when she replaced a Spanish director with an address at Platja D’Oro, on the Costa Brava. Filings in Dublin show that Holytown’s Irish auditors also resigned in February 2020. The company has not filed a set of accounts since January 2019.
On Thursday, March 31st, The Irish Times sent emails to Newman and Trinity FS asking that they make contact to discuss Holytown Ltd and its links with Chemezov, but received no response. On Wednesday of last week a filing was sent to the CRO by Trinity FS advising that an associated company, Kea Secretaries Ltd, had stopped acting as secretary of Holytown as of February 1st last.
Kea Secretaries is ultimately owned by a company in England called Gledswood Ltd, which was formerly owned by Newman but is now owned by Jurcova. According to Companies House in the UK, Newman was the person who had significant control of the company up to January 2020, when he was replaced by Jurcova, who is resident in the Czech Republic. Newman is described as being resident in Panama.
Up to its resignation, Kea Secretaries was one of two companies that acted as joint company secretaries to Holytown. The other company, Trea Secretarial, of Cyprus, is a subsidiary of Fiduserve and is still acting as secretary to Holytown, according to the filings in the CRO in Dublin.
Sanctions
Under EU law, persons or entities that believe they may be trading with or providing services to a sanctioned person or entity, or their agents, are obliged to contact the local authorities. They are prohibited by law from accepting payment for any services provided to a sanctioned person or entity, or their agents.
Asked to comment on its relationship with Penimar, a spokesman for Fiduserve said it could not comment on client matters but that, as a regulated entity, it was committed to observing the law “including the strict implementation of sanctions and other measures”.
A spokeswoman for the Trident Trust said it was a global business committed to ensuring compliance with all local legal obligations “in relation to sanctions orders and other associated restrictions. We have enhanced monitoring and due-diligence processes in place across our global business to ensure this.”
At the time the Spanish authorities seized the Valerie, they said they had “good reason to suspect” that the 85m vessel was owned by Chemezov. Late last month a court in Madrid refused a request that the yacht be released.
In March 2019 the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project reported that Ignatova was the owner of a large villa in the gated community of S’Agoro, in the Costa Brava. Spanish land registry documents seen by The Irish Times confirm this. The registry documents show the villa was bought by Ignatova in her own name in 2017, while before this it was owned by a company based in Liechtenstein. No action has been taken by the Spanish authorities to seize the villa.
