To the death of Tamm. How the Solntsevskaya group is connected with the FSB of the Russian Federation and "United Russia"

To the death of Tamm. How the Solntsevskaya group is connected with the FSB of the Russian Federation and "United Russia"

On March 20, in Moscow, the funeral of Arnold Tamm (Spivakovskiy), a notable figure in the Solntsevskaya organized crime group, also known by the nickname Arnosha, took place.

The Russian opposition publication The Insider uncovered some details of Tamm’s Spanish case, as well as how the Solntsevskaya group is connected with the FSB, “United Russia,” and Russian oligarchs. Many of the individuals mentioned in this article have close ties to Ukraine and to corrupt individuals in the higher echelons of the Ukrainian government.

On March 20, Arnold Tamm’s (Spivakovskiy) funeral, a prominent figure in the Solntsevskaya organized crime group also known as Arnosha, was held in Moscow. Among those present were his former common-law wife Lolita Milyavskaya, notable figure Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (Taiwanchik), producer Viktor Drobysh, and other famous personalities. The cause of the 51-year-old’s death has not yet been disclosed.

However, there are all reasons to be interested in it, as Tamm was under a travel ban in Spain and was awaiting trial for money laundering by members of the Solntsevskaya organized crime group. Judging by a similar trial against the Tambovskaya organized crime group, the testimonies of notable figures and materials of the case can reveal very intriguing insights into connections with high-ranking Russian officials and security forces. The Insider uncovered some details of Tamm’s Spanish case, as well as how the Solntsevskaya group is connected with the FSB, "United Russia," and Russian oligarchs.

Arnold Spivakovskiy (formerly Tamm), Spivakovskiy is the last name of his former wife, was arrested in Spain in September 2017 along with Oleg Kuznetsov, Sergey Dozhdev, Aleksandr Greenberg, and other individuals on suspicion of tax evasion, money laundering, and participating in the activities of the Solntsevskaya crime group. In total, 11 people were arrested by the court. Arnold Tamm, in the report of the preliminary investigation of the Civil Guard, which was at The Insider’s disposal, was listed as the third most prominent member of the Solntsevskaya organized crime group, following Sergey Mikhailov (Mikhas) and Viktor Averin (Aver). In February 2018, Spivakovsky was released on 750,000 euros bail pending trial.

The trial of the Solntsevskaya group in Spain

The Spanish investigation primarily focused on two commercial companies established in the town of Mijas, Malaga province. One of them was quite immodestly named "Mikhas’s Water" (Agua de Mijas). Later on, it was renamed "Agua Sierra de Mijas" ("Mountain Water of Mijas"). It’s a play on words: Mijas is the name of a settlement and also of a mountain in Spain. The investigation involves another company as well, "Arrendamientos de maquinaria industrial Mardoz SL" ("Mardoz Industrial Equipment Leasing"). The first company was managed by Sergey Dozhdev and his wife. Additionally, Oleg Kuznetsov and Ekaterina Kadina were partners. The shareholders in the second company included Sergey Dozhdev, Ekaterina Kadina, and Valery Kulibaba.

The co-owner of both companies, Ekaterina Kadina, is the widow of Vladimir Kadin, former vice president of the Boxing Federation in Volgograd, who was killed during drug business-related conflicts in Russia in 2011. Her involvement in the companies was seen as a form of compensation for her husband’s murder. Dozhdev and Kuznetsov (like Tamm, they were arrested and released on bail a few months later) are considered representatives of the Solntsevskaya organized crime group by the Spaniards. They were frequently seen with Arnold Tamm in Spain on yachts and at FC Marbella’s football matches (one of the sponsors, "Mikhas’s Water," was owned by Aleksandr Greenberg, who is also under investigation).

In Spanish commercial records accessed by The Insider, "Mikhas’s Water" declared a turnover of 1.7 million euros in 2015 and 3 million euros in 2016. This was a significant amount for selling mineral water that was only available in Malaga.

Footage of Solntsevskaya members being searched by the Civil Guard

Spanish authorities listened to conversations between Dozhdev, Arnold Tamm, and other figures. In one of them, Dozhdev asks Tamm to assist in transferring his friend serving a sentence in Krasnoyarsk to another prison, and Tamm promises to help. The fact that Tamm could resolve such issues impressed the Spaniards. During interrogations, neither Dozhdev nor Tamm could provide a clear explanation regarding this recording.

Dozhdev acknowledges keeping a lot of cash in a safe at his home in Spain, stating: "credit cards don’t always work." He explains the source of the cash by claiming he "wins money at the casino."

Recently, according to financial statements, "Mikhas’s Water" has been reporting continuous losses. Dozhdev denies the existence of double accounting at the company, and investigators present a conversation with his partner, Valery Kulibaba, in which he inquires if they are "deliberately in the red," to which Dozhdev replies "yes" and adds that a certain Augustin processed a loss of 300,000 euros on paper.

"The Solntsevskaya group gradually expanded its presence in legitimate business, ultimately allowing this criminal organization to gain an image of legality, an effective mechanism for laundering money, and representation in both national and international economic sectors," writes the Spanish Civil Guard in its report.

Connections of the Solntsevo Group — Mogilevich, Yevtushenkov, Putin

Tamm was first arrested in 1989 in the USSR alongside Mikhas (Sergey Mikhailov) and Averin (Victor Averin) for extortion. However, soon after, witnesses for the prosecution forgot that anyone had extorted anything from them. In 1993, all three moved to Israel and received Israeli passports (later annulled). Mikhas was then arrested in Switzerland in 1996. The main prosecution witness did not survive to testify in court, having been killed in the Netherlands. During the investigation, prosecutors received threats of violence (see confessions of prosecutor Bernard Bertossa), and Mikhas was acquitted at trial.

In March 2002, Spivakovskiy, then Deputy Director of the "Beijing" hotel complex, was charged with illegal drug possession after cocaine was found at his home. Spivakovskiy’s lawyers argued that the drugs were planted on their client and the search was conducted with violations. The prosecution witness had a grenade thrown at his car but Spivakovskiy claimed it was a provocation to discredit him. The witness ultimately withdrew his testimony, and Spivakovskiy was acquitted. The higher court upheld the acquittal in 2003.

Despite everything, during the investigation in Spain, Tamm attempted to deny his connections to the mafia. However, investigators collected a lot of evidence. Among the cellphones seized from Arnold Tamm (six in total), the Spaniards found recent photographs of Mikhas — in the company of State Duma Deputy Vladimir Shamanov and FC Lokomotiv coach Yuriy Syomin (Syomin, in conversation with The Insider, could not recall the circumstances of the meeting), as well as the subsequently famous photograph of crime world leaders — Gafur, Mikhas, Averin, and Semyon Mogilevich, who once topped the list of the most wanted people in the US. The Insider previously wrote that Mikhas was involved in laundering money for Semyon Mogilevich.

Among the images seized from Tamm is also a photo dated May 16, 2017, showing Arnold Tamm with Sergey Lalakin, better known as Luchok and the leader of the Podolskaya organized crime group. "Currently, he controls numerous legal companies, engaged in the food and oil industries," Spanish investigators specified. Among public figures, comedian and businessman Vladimir Vinokur boasts about friendship with Lalakin.

"Luchok" (Solntsevskaya organized crime group) and "Arnosha" (Podolskaya organized crime group), 2017

Tamm was friends not only with gangsters. During his interrogation following his detention in Marbella on September 28, 2017, the text of which The Insider reviewed, Tamm stated, among other things, that he does not exactly remember his address in Spain as he was staying with Oleg Kuznetsov, who was arrested alongside him. Oleg Kuznetsov was the administrator of the "Beijing" hotel from 2002–2016, and since 2016, the "Cosmos" hotel in Moscow. Both hotels are owned by AFK Sistema, according to Tamm. Tamm himself was a shareholder of AFK Sistema, owned by Vladimir Yevtushenkov. An interesting coincidence indicates the connection between the Solntsevo group and "Sistema": in the mid-90s during Mikhas’s trial in Switzerland, an FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who testified against the accused, mentioned Yevgeniy Novitskiy, former president of AFK Sistema, as one of the treasurers of the Solntsevskaya group.

Photo from 23.01.2016. Oleg Kuznetsov (left), Arnold Tamm (third from left), Mikhas — on the right

Meanwhile, Mikhas persistently tries to achieve dissociation from the Solntsevskaya organized crime group: in 2016, he demanded through a court to remove as many as 172 search results linking him to the Solntsevskaya group (one of the largest Russian organized crime groups with reportedly up to 300 members at its peak). Mikhalov even demonstrated a commemorative watch presented to him by Vladimir Putin, mistakenly believing it would confirm his good reputation. However, the spokesperson for Putin, Dmitriy Peskov, quickly issued a statement, saying that the president never gave anything to a criminal authorittative figure— "we never announced such a thing, which means it simply did not happen." However, Mikhailov showed not only the watch but also the documents proving that Putin had indeed gifted them.

Solntsevskaya group and the Kremlin

What do the Solntsevo group members know and what might they tell Spanish authorities? The Insider spoke on this topic with a former member of the Solntsevskaya organized crime group, an Odesa native Leonid Roitman, who served 7 years in the United States for an attempted murder of Moni Elson during internal conflicts within the Solntsevskaya group. After his release, US authorities refused to deport Roitman to his homeland in Ukraine, believing he could be subjected to torture or killed. Roitman’s name appears in an FBI report about the Solntsevskaya organized crime group in the US.

Leonid Roitman describes the events around the "Solntsevskaya" as follows: "There was an occasion when Sergey Mikhailov was detained in Switzerland. We often visited Hungary at that time, communicating with Viktor Averin and Arnold Tamm. I was sent as a living letter to Sevastopol to meet with Iosif Davidovich Kobzon — he was there with his concerts. And I told him that Iosif Davidovich should speak to Gusinskiy — this was a request from Viktor Averin and Arnold Tamm. Gusinskiy was to speak with Chernomyrdin for a letter to be sent to Switzerland stating that the Solntsevskaya organized crime group did not exist. Even though, of course, it does exist to this day, and it is a very powerful criminal organization, one of the most powerful. It is a very bloody criminal group. It is involved in kidnapping, in murdering people. And how many shootings are happening now? And how many contract killings? And in which years were Grandpa Hasan, Yaponchik, Timokha — the thieves-in-law — killed? What, were they all killed in the 90s? They’ve been killed now. With security, with surveillance, in the center of Moscow — Shabtai Kalmanovich."

Leonid Roitman

"The old thieves would call the contemporary Solntsevskaya members ’cops’ and ’flukes’ for their collaboration with the authorities," says Leonid Roitman. According to him, his "senior" Alik Magadan (Oleg Asmakov) paid for protection in cash to Nikolai Kovalev until his murder in 1999. Kovalev is a former head of the FSB, now a State Duma deputy, where he heads the commission responsible for controlling deputies’ income. Roitman is convinced that these schemes have been preserved through Patrushev, "who then already goes upward."

Roitman also claims that the Solntsevskaya group and the FSB work very well together: "Our hitmen went for training to Skotch at the FSB. In special sports towns where they were trained in hand-to-hand combat, where they learned how to dismember a person, burn a person, how to bury them properly. These are the kind of deputies in ’United Russia.’ Interestingly, similar to Mikhas, Deputy Andrey Skoch (in the main photo to this text, he stands to Mikhas’s left) does not intend to accept the status of a member of an organized crime group, actively working internationally to clean up his image. In France, he turned to Bernard Squarcini, former head of intelligence of DGSI, who attempted to remove the United Russia member from security service files as being associated with organized crime. Squarcini is under investigation since 2016 for ’influence peddling’ and leaking national defense secrets.

’Our hitmen went for training to Skoch at the FSB. In special sports towns, where they trained in hand-to-hand combat, how to dismember a person, how to bury them properly.’

In the "Civil Guard" report, Arnold Tamm’s role in the Solntsevskaya group is described as follows: "According to Western intelligence services, TAMM was known as a military leader of Solntsevskaya, responsible for real estate business in Western Europe, instrumental and offshore companies, money laundering, arms and drug trafficking. Additionally, it is assumed that he was responsible for the criminal group’s activities in Russia, the Baltic countries, Germany, China, and Sweden." However, there are no details of these operations in the declassified 2018 Civil Guard report.

This is how Leonid Roitman describes Tamm’s role in the Solntsevskaya group while talking to The Insider:

"Arnold Tamm was exactly the person responsible for the kitty and dealing with business. He really was Sergey Mikhailov’s right-hand man, and I think he is the third in the Solntsevskaya organized crime group after Viktor Averin. Viktor Averin is second, Arnold Tamm is third. There is also Andrey Skoch and Lev Kvetnoy — they are a separate group, which was formerly tasked only with engagements in eliminations. The kitty funds were spent on prisons, on contract killings, and on bribing the same FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Investigative Committee."

This is how Roitman describes the accounting settlements:

"Every year we necessarily went to (see Mogilevich). With Kyiv-Donbas a Ukrainian enterprise controlled by the Sun group — The Insider> We had such an agreement: they pay us 150,000 dollars a month for petty expenses to support ourselves — maintain protection, cars, etc. It was 450,000 per quarter. Every quarter we divided 150,000 among the three groups: between us, between Mikhase, Avera, Arnold Tamm and Mogilevich, and Andrei Skotch. And at the end of each year, a full batch from Kyiv-Donbas was brought to Mogilevich."

Roitman showed The Insider the monthly accounting "statements" for 2002 where he himself is shown as "Lenya, partner № 24".

Close to Mikhas is also considered Shakro the Young — Zahariy Kalashov. During Kalashov’s arrest in Dubai at the request of Spain in 2005, he was in the same car with Mikhailov. After serving a sentence in Spain following a guilty verdict in the case of creating a criminal community, Shakro was at liberty in Russia for some time, but was recently arrested and convicted in an extortion case. According to wiretaps made by the FSB’s investigative department, senior officials of the Investigative Committee promised for money to help release Shakro’s close associates, who were arrested after the shootout on Rochdelskaya Street in 2015. One of the defendants in the Tambov case in Madrid, Yuri Salikov, told The Insider correspondent: “Shakro will be released anyway because he is needed.” But for now, Shakro remains behind bars.

According to Roytman, Shakro “had protection not only in the Investigative Committee. In the FSB, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs as well.” “Protection is organized for bribes. For cash bribes, for gifts of houses. For gifts of yachts. Mistresses are supplied to both the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky specifically deals with this. He supplied prostitutes, models, to Skorokhodov, and Skorokhodov supplied them further. This is also gathering compromising material.”

Not only from Roytman’s words, but also from the testimonies of the defendants themselves, it follows that they have something to say about the Kremlin. For example, Dozhev stated in his final word (quoted from the protocol):

“The real mafia in Russia is those who rule the world. This, in particular, is Igor Sechin, who is a person who appropriated “AFK “Sistema” through “Bashneft”, MTS, and he does all this through offshore companies. Also part of the mafia are the Rotenberg brothers, who control the company “Platon”. 75% of “Platon” belongs to offshore companies, through which the Rotenbergs transfer money to Europe. Tamm was one of the owners of AFK “Sistema”. However, he did not agree with the Rotenberg brothers, and then Gref, through his son Arkady, stopped refinancing loans, artificial debts were created in the company, and for little money, through offshore companies, it ended up with Sechin.”

The story with Sechin and Sberbank could indeed have taken place. In August 2017, the Bashkiria Arbitration Court ruled to recover 136 billion rubles from AFK “Sistema” in favor of “Rosneft”. At the same time, part of “Sistema’s” assets were arrested at the request of “Rosneft”. On July 17, AFK “Sistema” announced a technical default. The company emphasized that the reason for the default was “failure to comply with certain conditions on a number of credit obligations.”

As for Sergey Dozhev, he promises to name “many more names” during interrogation, but asks for a respite. The date of the hearings in the case has not yet been set.

Anastasiya Kyrilenko, published in The Insider