The Bivol investigation led to the deprivation of Bulgarian citizenship of the sons of Russian telecommunications tycoon and Yota founder Sergey Adoniev. This was announced by the Ministry of Justice of Bulgaria in response to a journalistic request from the publication regarding the inclusion in the US sanctions list under the Magnitsky Act of the investor from the Russian Federation and his two sons living in London.
Adoniyev himself had his Bulgarian passport revoked back in 2018, when Bivol and The Insider reported that the businessman not only failed to invest in the local economy, but was also under investigation in the United States for smuggling tons of cocaine.
On January 27, 2023, the US Treasury announced sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against a number of Russian citizens, including the founder of the telecommunications companies Yota Phone and Yota Mobile, Sergey Adonyev, as well as his children, Philip Sergeevich Adonyev and Luka Sergeevich Adonyev, residing in the UK.
Journalists drew attention to the difference in the spelling of the names of the father and his sons. The American Ministry of Finance wrote the name of the businessman himself in Cyrillic – "Adoniev", and each of his children was recorded as "Adoniev". This is how this surname is written in Bulgarian. In addition, in a brief description of the American authorities, it appears that in addition to Russian citizenship, family members also have second passports – Adonyev himself has an Israeli one, and his children have Bulgarian ones. Israel is recorded as the current place of residence for Adoniev, and London for his children.
The sanctions list also includes vehicles that the US Treasury Department believes are linked to Adoniyev. We are talking about his private jet Bombardier Global 6000 and two luxury yachts – Addiction and Anatta.
The firm of Adoniev's children in Luxembourg owns a villa in France. In 2022, the sons of Adoniev came to the attention of OCCRP while working on the international project LuxLeaks. Luka and Philip Adoniev are mentioned in an article about the children of oligarchs and politicians who are the beneficiaries of companies and real estate in Luxembourg: Boss Babies: The Children Who Own Hundreds of Luxembourg Corporations.
As OCCRP reported at the time, French authorities failed to reveal the identities of the ultimate beneficiaries of Luxembourg-based Felicity International SA.
It turned out that Felicity was registered by two offshore shell companies, one based in the British Virgin Islands and the other in Panama, but in 2011 they were liquidated.
Only in 2019, when Luxembourg obliged companies to indicate their beneficial owners, Felicity announced that its owners are brothers and their sister with Bulgarian citizenship. At that time, the youngest of the children was only 15 years old. OCCRP identified them as the children of Sergei Adoniev.
As The Insider and Bivol wrote earlier, in 1998 Adoniev was convicted in the United States for misleading the government of Kazakhstan for $4 million by falsely supplying Cuban sugar. In 1999, Adoniev was deported from the US to Russia, where he managed to build a telecommunications empire, receiving investment and support from various figures linked to the Kremlin and state-owned companies.
In 2000, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI also suspected Adoniev of being behind a 1.1 tonne shipment of Colombian cocaine seized at the Russian-Finnish border in 1993. Felicity International was created the same year that Adonyev was deported, before two of the three current owners were born.
According to annual reports, this Luxembourg firm – and, by extension, the Adoniev children – are the owners of a luxury property in France: Villa Violette, worth 25 million euros, a four-story mansion overlooking the sea on Cap d'Ail on the French Riviera. Felicity purchased the property in 2006, when Adoniev's three children were roughly 9, 3 and 2, respectively. In 2015, the firm also purchased a "computer database" for €450,733, which is now listed among the assets of the Adoniyev children.
With the participation of Nikolai Marchenko, Deputy. ch. Bivol editor (Sofia, Bulgaria)
