GRU Inc hunting for Prigozhin’s oil assets in Syria

While Russia is in the grip of international sanctions, we should not look for big deals in the private sector but rather in the Russian security services. The great carving up of Prigozhin’s empire continues at slashed prices. After taking control of the group’s security activities in several countries, the black gold of Syria where the group has been active since 2015 is in the GRU’s sights. An investigation led and written in collaboration with Radio Svoboda, RFE/RL’s Russian Service.

Oil, arms and security for Wagner in Syria

In 2016, the Russian and Syrian governments agreed on the allocation of a percentage of oil revenues in the Palmyra region in exchange of securing these territories which were at the time under the control of the Islamic State. The beneficiary company has been Evropolis controlled at the time by a Concord group’s front company, the holding company of Evgeny Prigojine, whose shareholder was Valery Chekalov who will be in the fatal crash of the plane in August 2023. The area is strategic both in terms of production and gas flows. Palmyra is the hub where extraction and production and gas/oil processing and power plants further west meet to provide electricity and gas to areas where most of the population lives. According to its contractual commitment with the Syrian company General Petroleum Corp, Evropolis was paid 25% of oil revenues against its security services to repel ISIS. Difficult to quantify, but this could have represented $134 million in gross sales and $90 million in profits just in 2020 according to the Financial Times. But Evropolis was also used to pay the fighters of the Wagner group and to acquire weapons. In the country, the Wagner group had also obtained several oil and gas blocks including offshore block 1 disputed between Lebanon and Syria. For each project, the group set up Syrian subsidiaries of Russian companies: Kapital LLC, Velada LLC and Mercury LLC.

After Prigozhin’s death , the Concord holding company was taken over by his son, Pavel Prigozhin at the end of 2023. According to the Russian commercial register, Evropolis LLC changed hands in October 2023: a new director has been appointed, Dmitry Zelenkovsky, coming from Samotlorneftepromkhim, a company specializing in oil drilling. The shareholder has also changed but his identity is kept secret by the Russian administration.

GRU Inc and African Corps in Syria

Following the Prigozhin mutiny at the end of June 2023, Deputy Defense Minister Yunus Bek Yevkurov demanded that Wagner’s fighters sign a contract to integrate the Russian army and went to Syria to plan for the future. African Corps, the new brand of fighters, run by the GRU Special Actions Service under the command of General Andrei Averyanov, would have regained control of security activities in Syria. This new GRU Service would coordinate all clandestine operations outside of Ukraine including the management of « clear skins » agents, GRU officers posted abroad and semi-clandestine operators.

In October 2023, a company RPOST-M LLC is created in Russia. Its field of activity is transport. With two employees, its shareholder and director is Maxim Yurevich Grekhov. According to the Syria Report, RPOST-M LLC opened a branch in Damascus on January 24, 2024 with the activities of providing security services including the defense of oil installations. This is the same definition of activities that Evropolis had. In June 2023, The Insider published an article about career Russian intelligence officers who worked undercover in Aeroflot offices abroad. One of them, according to The Insider, was an employee of the GRU, head of the Aeroflot representative office in Hong Kong, Maxim Grekhov. As the publication writes, after Aeroflot’s flights to Hong Kong were stopped in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Grekhov was transferred « to reserve. » In fact, he left Hong Kong in the second quarter of 2019, according to the company’s quarterly reports. In December 2023, Aeroflot began flying to Hong Kong again, but by that time a new job had already been found for Grekhov. By examining the tax number of RPOST-M LLC, we find that the Grekhov of Aeroflot is indeed the same Grekhov of RPOST-M LLC. Moreover, his telephone number is associated with his Auchan supermarket customer account and the address Grizodubova Street, 4k2. This residential complex is located opposite the GRU headquarters.

His wife, Olesya Grekhova (maiden name – Shnitko) indicates on her Linkedin profile to be still working for “Aeroflot”. According to online databases, she worked at least until 2012 as an accountant at the Military Academy of the Ministry of Defense (better known as the GRU « conservatory », which trains officers military intelligence, future clandestine agents, military attachés and operators). Grekhova was accommodated in a house located directly on GRU’s land, in the residential complex of the Military Academy at st. Narodnogo Opolcheniya, house 52, building 5. On her Odnoklassniki account there is only one photo, but taken against the backdrop of the view from the window of this apartment.

Maxim Grekhov’s account on the social network VKontakte indicates that he studied at two universities. At the Blagoveshchensk branch of the Moscow Academy of Entrepreneurship, Grekhov studied economics and management; he further graduated from the Far Eastern Higher Combined Arms Command School named after Rokossovsky (DVOCU), located in the same city. The years Grekhov studied at DVOKU are not indicated on his profile, however, he could have been a classmate of Anatoly Chepiga, the Salisbury poisoner and member of the unit commanded by General Andrei Averyanov, in charge of the African Corps. Chepiga and Grekhov were born in the same year, 1979, in the Amur region. Chepiga, the future “Salisbury poisoner”, after graduating from DVOKU in 2001, served in the GRU special forces, and in 2003 he moved to Moscow, where he graduated from the same Military Academy of the Ministry of the defense. Grekhov has the same profile: in the 2000s he served in the army – in the 40th separate marine brigade in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and no later than 2011 he arrived in Moscow. Most likely, the navy guy, like Chepiga, moved to the Russian capital to study at the “conservatory”. In the second half of the 2010s, Grekhov and his family traveled to Hong Kong, where the Russian intelligence officer allegedly worked undercover as head of Aeroflot’s Asian representation office. According to the quarterly reports of Aeroflot PJSC, it can be seen that Grekhov took this position in 2016, replacing Denis Kazarin – The Insider also calls him a GRU agent. Maxim Grekhov’s wife was registered at the Aeroflot representative office in Hong Kong as a “manager”. The Grekhov family remained in Hong Kong until mid-2019, after which they apparently returned to Moscow. In May 2023, Maxim Grekhov was photographed driving his Toyota. A man with a similar face and hairstyle can be seen in a photo taken on May 9, 2018 at Hong Kong Airport, at the Aeroflot counter. The photo was published on the Facebook page of the Russian consulate. The photo, as mentioned in the caption, shows employees of the Aeroflot representative office in Hong Kong who took part in the St. George’s Ribbon event.

On April 23, Deputy Defense Minister of the Russian Federation Timur Ivanov, who is responsible for troop housing, construction and renovation of ministry facilities, was arrested in Moscow on corruption charges.

Timur Ivanov at the Basmanny court in Moscow, April 24, 2024

In Syria, Timur Ivanov has long participated in the construction and development of Russian military bases. Over the past six months or more, as part of Defense Ministry delegations, he visited all African countries where Yevgeny Prigozhin previously had assets.

Timur Ivanov (second from right) during the visit of the Russian Defense Ministry delegation to Mali, December 3, 2023.

The Russian telegram channel Brief, close to the Kremlin, claims that after the death of Prigozhin, Ivanov was actively involved in the fate of the economic assets of the head of the Wagner group and tried to gain control of oil and gas fields in Syria and diamond fields in the Central African Republic, which comes into conflict with the FSB. In November 2023, the VChK-OGPU telegram channel wrote about the same thing. After Ivanov’s arrest, the same channel claimed that Shoigu’s deputy also had a conflict with the GRU, in particular with the deputy head of the special services, Vladimir Alekseev . Radio Svoboda, RFE/RL’s Russian Service and AEOW were unable to verify this information.

Contacted by telephone by Radio Svoboda, RFE/RL’s Russian Service, Grekhov hung up. He did not respond to emails sent by AEOW.