The Riga Electric Machine Building Plant suffered the fate of many large industries in the post-Soviet space. In the 1990s, the plant experienced a decline and was corporatized. But he managed to survive, today Rīgas elektromašīnbūves rūpnīca (RER) is a fairly large plant that produces electrical equipment for trains, metro cars and urban public transport.
According to the Latvian commercial register, as of 2021, 36% of RER shares were controlled by the Russian legal entity TransComponent Holding (LLC TransComponent Holding). The Latvian registry data shows the old address of the Moscow company on Bolshaya Lubyanka, but last year it moved to Tver.
Through a chain of legal entities (Violan LLC and Elarium LLC), Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev own 20% each in TransComponent Holding. The remaining shares are shared by their partners, less known to the general public.
Bokarev and Makhmudov are old "friends of the Kremlin". Through their companies UMMC, Kuzbassrazrezugol, Transmashholding and others, they have become one of the largest government contractors in Russia. They are oligarchs and suppliers of the Ministry of Defense. One of their business partners in the Kalashnikov arms concern was Alexei Krivoruchko, now Russia's Deputy Minister of Defense. Bokarev and Makhmudov left the Kalashnikov, but continued to supply diesel engines for Russian warships through their Kolomensky Zavod.
Makhmudov and Bokarev were defendants in several criminal cases as entrepreneurs through whom criminal money was laundered. In the German criminal case of 2007, they appear as holders of the common fund of the Izmaylovskaya organized criminal group, and the materials of the Spanish criminal case of 2008 say that the money of the Tambovsko-Malyshevskaya organized criminal group was also laundered through the UMMC they own.
However, the main share of 46% in the Latvian company RER was held by the Moscow Krona Grup. As The Insider found out, Bokarev and Makhmudov are behind it.
As of 2020, the beneficiaries of Krona Group JSC through Cypriot offshore companies were Russian Igor Lozovoy and Lithuanian citizen Sergeyus (or Sergius with a different spelling) Grechukas. However, then 80% of Krona Group JSC was acquired by TransComponent Holding. After that, he consolidated ownership of RER. As The Insider found out, Bokarev and Makhmudov “bought” the company from themselves: for years they controlled it through their nominal values.
62-year-old Lozovoy is a hired employee of the structures of Bokarev and Makhmudov. At least in 2012-2015. he worked as a deputy general director at the Mosmetrostroy company, at that time owned by the oligarchs. In the late 90s, according to the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lozovoy was involved in a criminal case of illegal actions in bankruptcy in Khakassia, evaded arrest and was put on the wanted list.
Grechukas is the former head of the representative office of Transmashholding Bokarev and Makhmudov in Lithuania. Over the years, the holding of criminal oligarchs, closely associated with the Russian Ministry of Defense, supplied locomotive-hauled passenger cars, freight cars, rail buses, locomotive diesels, shunting diesel locomotives and passenger diesel locomotives to Lithuania.
The affiliation of Krona Group JSC with Bokarev and Makhmudov is also evidenced by a phone number that matches the number of the MPK company. MPK LLC, which owns suburban rail carriers, is controlled by the oligarchs themselves.
The Russian Krona Group is the exclusive distributor of the Latvian RER. And, in turn, acts as a contractor for the Central Suburban Passenger Company (CPPK) Bokarev and Makhmudov. And the "Transmashholding" of the oligarchs is listed among the partners of RER on the official website of the company.
Moreover, the general director of the Latvian RER, Stanislav Vodolazsky, simultaneously acts as the general director of Krona Group and an employee of the Bokarev and Makhmudov CPPK. In any case, according to The Insider, in 2020 he received a digital pass for moving around Moscow during quarantine restrictions from the CPPK. By the way, Vodolazsky is also a defendant in the old criminal case. In 2015, he was suspected of misconduct in bankruptcy and non-payment of salaries to employees of the Simbirsk Machine Tool Plant he heads.
Bokarev and Makhmudov's business ties covered all the Baltic countries. In addition to Lithuania and Latvia, through the CPPK they have long been partners with one of the richest women in Estonia – Tatyana Liksutova, ex-wife of Moscow Vice Mayor Maxim Liksutov.
The Insider noticed that in 2021 Tatyana Liksutova was a partner of Bokarev and Makhmudov in Fredlake Holdings. In the Cyprus offshore, a 22% share was recorded on Liksutova (the list of beneficiaries is disclosed in the audit report of MPK LLC, at that time the Russian subsidiary of Fredlake Holdings). At the same time, Bokarev and Makhmudov earned hundreds of billions of rubles from contracts with the Moscow metro, i.e. under the supervision of the official Liksutov.
The Latvian RER also has a subsidiary, LATVO, which is engaged in the wholesale trade of machinery and equipment. Its capital is 5.5 million euros. The head RER has even more: 8.1 million euros, and the annual turnover in 2021 almost reached 33 million euros.
The Latvian company, controlled by Russian oligarchs, operates throughout Europe. For example, in May, RER introduced a new electric motor for trolleybuses and electric buses in the Czech Republic. Plus, RER receives funding from the European Union. The company , through the Latvian Investment and Development Agency and the Ministry of Economy, uses the money allocated by the EU entrepreneurship support funds. For example, now the European Regional Development Fund is sponsoring the project "Intelligent thermal control of an integrated electric vehicle traction drive with onboard motors, power electronics converters, power supplies and thermal circuits." At the expense of European taxpayers, Russian oligarchs have been allocated 527,000 euros.
Despite the calls of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and Alexei Navalny personally , the European Union has not yet imposed sanctions on Bokarev and Makhmudov. So far, they appear only in the sanctions lists of the UK.