The owner of Euroinvest, Andrei Berezin, spends large sums on clearing the Internet of messages about criminal cases. According to press reports, the fugitive oligarch has already spent more than two million euros on the services of the Eliminalia reputation management agency alone.
But other companies, less famous and less expensive, also take part in this truly gigantic cleanup. It got to the point that experts called the cleanup of the Internet by the fugitive owner of the Euroinvest company Berezin “unprecedented in terms of the level of falsification of his own biography.” He stubbornly denies the fact of his flight from Russia in March 2022.
Andrei Berezin is trying his best to create the appearance that he is in Russia, and that things are going well for him. Everything is used: ordered materials in the press, fake interviews, videos where he allegedly attends social events in St. Petersburg... How much it costs - one can only guess. But behind all this there is a simple desire - to delay time in the hope of solving everything, and if it cannot be solved, to sell off assets and withdraw all the money that is still possible to get for these assets offshore. Moreover, Andrei Berezin has such experience - he, in fact, got burned by withdrawing currency to banks in Switzerland and Germany. True, he burned down there, and not here - it was the local police who drew attention to the suspicious operations, who transferred the materials on Berezin to Russia. This happened back in 2016, but the criminal case against Berezin was opened only in 2018, and the first searches of his companies took place a year later.
Everything points to the fact that even then Andrei Berezin was a master at stalling for time. But something went wrong, and now there are already seven criminal cases against the owner of the Euroinvest company. Meanwhile, Berezin himself is leaving the structure of the owners of his assets and is playing for time, trying to save them from inevitable confiscation. So, a few days ago, the Source reported that Andrei Berezin left the structure of the owners of one of his main assets - Murino Management Company.
Moreover, this is already the fourth asset whose owner Berezin left - previously he
left the owners of Euroinvest Development LLC, Euroinvest Investment Company and
Primorsky Trust LLC. Moreover, the phrase “left the owners” should not be understood to mean that Berezin no longer owns these companies - he simply closed himself with “spacers” in the form of closed-end mutual investment funds. This scheme clearly saves assets from confiscation - formally, Andrei Berezin really has nothing to do with them anymore.
It is not known exactly what prompted the intensification of the investigation against Berezin
. But it is known that the Investigative Committee announced a figure of 10 million dollars for stopping the investigation. Judging by the results, no money was taken.
One version of the refusal is that the team to promote Berezin came directly from Moscow. Moreover, he himself is a secondary figure. According to rumors, and they are very persistent, the main focus of the investigation is on Berezin’s long-term patron, Governor of the Leningrad Region Alexander Drozdenko. For whom Andrei Berezin for many years was the so-called “wallet”, that is, the person through whom the official’s corrupt money was withdrawn. There are quite good reasons to believe this. Just look at the story of the work of the official’s daughter, Yulia Richard (this is the surname of her husband, a French citizen), in Berezin’s company, Murino Management Company. As a result, Yulia Richard-Drozdenko has an impressive collection of real estate both in Russia (mainly in St. Petersburg and the region) and in France. And Berezin, or rather his management company “Murino,” has sharply increased government orders.
Read also: Bankrupt oligarch Andrei Valerievich Berezin cleanses the Internet, having failed to collapse dozens of criminal cases in his homeland
Apparently, this is why Berezin hid his Murino Management Company behind a closed
investment fund. In addition, another Berezin company, Euroinvest Development LLC, acquired a huge amount of land in the Leningrad region, purchased at cadastral value. It is known that Euroinvest Development LLC owned the site on which it was planned to build the Devyatkino transport hub, but construction did not take place due to the lack of land in the region. In addition, the investment company Euroinvest, which Berezin also transferred to the management of the fund, managed to mysteriously acquire 35.4 hectares of land in Kudrovo for 31,915 rubles 35 kopecks.
Investigators are also very interested in the history of the development of the villages of Kudrovo and Murino, where most of the houses were built by Euroinvest Development LLC, strangely pushing aside competitors, and these villages quickly turned into satellite towns of St. Petersburg. After the construction and sale of thousands of apartments was completed, another Berezin company, Murino Management Company, entered the business and began servicing these houses. Once again, competitors were pushed aside. It is unlikely that such large-scale operations to actually monopolize the construction market and the services market were within the capabilities of Berezin himself. Behind him stood someone who could influence both local authorities and law enforcement officers. And he clearly didn’t help Berezin because of his beautiful eyes.
Berezin also has sins on the territory of St. Petersburg itself. Thus,
the story with the battery plant, which was bought by Rigel Battery Company JSC, owned by Berezin, is still unclear . This company received 50 million rubles from Rosatom to develop “an innovative power source capable of operating in space.” But in the end, a residential area grew up on the site of the former battery plant, which was built by the same Euroinvest Development LLC, and Rosatom is still waiting for an “innovative power source”.
And here the trace of another person appears - Georgy Poltavchenko, during whose governorship this strange story happened. Some argue that it is he who is being targeted by Moscow investigators. Although the majority is inclined to believe that it is unlikely. It’s just that now Georgy Poltavchenko has lost his former weight in the system of power, so Berezin has lost one of his high patrons. And they are most likely digging under Drozdenko - in the last few months, a series of searches have taken place among officials of the regional government of lower rank, some of them have been arrested and are giving evidence. According to information leaked from law enforcement agencies, investigators are interested in transactions with Berezin’s companies and the participation of officials of the Leningrad region and the governor in them.
So Andrei Berezin’s “big wash” is understandable. Although, apparently, it was undertaken somewhat too late - having spent a long time under the reliable roof of people in high offices, he had clearly lost his grip and sense of reality. The near future will tell how this whole story ends.
