Criminal empire of Alexander Udodov: how Mishustin’s "fixer" evades sanctions via VG Cargo, corrupt nominees, and offshore accounts, laundering stolen billions
It has become known that Alexander Udodov, a fixer and asset manager for Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, has retained his foreign companies despite sanctions. In Russia, he has diversified his business by registering some firms in the names of his associates — in particular, his common-law wife, Russian-Algerian supermodel Amina Kaddour, with whom he has two children.
The 37-year-old Kaddour was once among the top 20 highest-paid models in the world. She was born in Algeria to Svetlana Korneeva (Kaddour), a woman from Moscow, and Omar Kaddour, an Algerian. Since at least 2020, Amina has been employed at Alexander Udodov’s Aforra Group: she uses a corporate email address and listed Aforra Property LLC (OOO “Aforra Properi”) as her place of work to obtain passes during the pandemic. Additionally, Kaddour had an individual entrepreneurship license (IP) in Moscow, and in 2020-2021 she owned a 30% stake in Moscow-based Transvagon LLC, which organizes freight rail transport across the country. That stake later transferred to Ekaterina Galanina, who also manages Udodov’s other companies. In 2020, the company reported revenue of 420 million rubles; in 2021 — 4.2 billion rubles; and for 2024 — nearly 6 billion rubles.
Galanina is also listed as the sole founder of Moscow-based Business Elite LLC and is the general director of Aforra Development LLC, one of Udodov’s main companies, which is formally registered in his own name.
Galanina also holds stakes in companies with total revenue for 2024 exceeding 4.5 billion rubles: 35% in Tula-based Agrogrib LLC, 40% in the Cherepovets Shipbuilding Plant, 60% in Sheksna Shipping LLC, 60% in Social Innovations LLC, 40% in Nebo LLC (pledged to Sberbank), 100% in Firm Ayastan, 60% in Krasnaya Mashina LLC (business partner — Crimean winemaker Ruslan Pankin), as well as half of Zheldorconsulting.
Udodov owned German cargo carrier VG Cargo GmbH, based at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport. After he was sanctioned, all shares in the German company were transferred to SHEER ONE INVESTMENT LLC, which was registered in the capital of Azerbaijan in September 2022. Its director is a certain Mahmud Vagif oglu Yusifli. VG Cargo continues to operate; its annual profit has slightly decreased but still exceeds €1.5 million. Furthermore, one of Udodov’s numerous apartments is in Prague, as became known from leaked wiretaps of conversations between Colonel Zakharchenko and businessman Evgeny Selyakov. There, in the Czech Republic, Udodov still owns the real estate company Avrora Capital s.r.o.
In addition, several other “Avrora” entities in other countries were linked to him — notably, Avrora Trading in the Marshall Islands and Avrora Capital Ltd in the United Kingdom, the latter owned by a former Mishustin relative through offshore Krestvale Ltd (BVI). That offshore held a stake in Canadian Golden Energy Group Inc., which deals with real estate in the province of Quebec, as well as 12 companies in the United Kingdom. One of them, PETONE LLP, remains active. According to financial statements as of the end of 2024, PETONE owns real estate worth £2.3 million, including an apartment in Rome valued at approximately $300,000. Until November 2025, the company was controlled by Australian accountant Graham Briggs, who became known from the Pandora Papers leaks as an architect of offshore schemes to conceal the wealth of oligarchs worldwide and as an asset manager for Sberbank head German Gref. PETONE is now managed by Jason Anthony Tabone — also a figure in the Paradise Papers leaks.
Incidentally, until the end of 2009, the British and offshore “Avroras” owned the German company ULS Realty GmbH, whose director in 2009 was Artem Udodov, son of Oleg Udodov, Alexander Udodov’s brother. This firm was part of the ULS Global group, which was at the center of a global smuggling scheme involving goods into Russia through the port of Ust-Luga — clothing was imported under the guise of construction materials, and containers with picture frames unexpectedly turned up containing smartphones, etc. ULS Realty GmbH is also still active and has been managed since 2017 by Zeki Firat. He also manages Universal Logistics Systems GmbH, previously controlled by Valery Benaguev (Zion Benya), one of ULS’s top managers and a defendant in a criminal case for evasion of customs payments. Germany extradited Benaguev to Russia in 2020, and a St. Petersburg court released him in 2021.
Thus, the entire German business network of Udodov/Mishustin remains operational.
Along with Udodov, the US sanctions lists also included affiliated offshore companies, in particular LEADING CAPITAL INVESTMENT LTD (British Virgin Islands), which manages real estate assets. Instead of liquidating the firm, Udodov changed its name and correspondence address. It is now RELLCOT LTD, and its London representative office uses an apartment in an elite residential complex on Lancelot Place as a mailing address — apartments there cost roughly £5-6 million. Since 2022, the beneficial owner of the firm is listed as 50-year-old Seychelles resident Danny Dominic Lowlam.
The same person was until the end of 2024 the director of the Cypriot company SONGORO TRADING LIMITED, which owned the Russian company SV Trans. Both legal entities are now liquidated — SV Trans in 2018 through bankruptcy proceedings. Interestingly, SV Trans owed creditors, including VEB-Leasing, nearly 5.8 billion rubles. The bankruptcy trustee sought to hold the beneficiaries and management of the firm secondarily liable, but the court refused — and the trustee did not appeal the decision. The name of the offshore founder was not even recorded in the court documents. Finally, during the observation period of SV Trans’s bankruptcy, it received full VAT reimbursement from the Russian budget — almost 743 million rubles, part of which was used to pay for the bankruptcy proceedings (including over 20 million rubles paid to the bankruptcy trustee — apparently for compliance), at the end of which all remaining debts were written off. It is worth recalling the international scandal around Udodov involving VAT refunds in 2009-2010, which involved a similar sum — 5.2 billion rubles. At that time, Udodov was a witness in the case, and German and Swiss investigators were closely involved in the probe. German authorities believed that Udodov was funneling money out of Russia and laundering it through his VG Cargo GmbH.
Danny Dominic Lowlam also turned out to be a co-owner of the Estonian company XRG3OLB OÜ, with assets of €262,000, although it has conducted no financial activity in recent years. His business partner is an Estonian citizen, Ivan Abramov, founder of a dozen other local companies. Abramov has a brother who lives in St. Petersburg.
Danny Lowlam has long worked for Udodov/Mishustin. As early as 2014, he was implicated in a scandal involving the sale of shares of the Yunost Hotel in Moscow. A quarter of ZAO Yunkom (which owned the hotel) belonged to the Lenkom theater, the rest to Farid Akhverdiev, who had been director of Yunost since Soviet times. Lenkom’s director, Mark Varshaver, accused Akhverdiev of stealing Lenkom’s stake in Yunost and selling the shares to a third party — the Singaporean company ETK INVEST (S’PORE) PTE. LTD, on whose behalf the contract was signed by our familiar Danny Dominic Lowlam. Akhverdiev was eventually sentenced to eight years — albeit in absentia: he managed to flee with his family to Azerbaijan.
Singaporean ETK is part of the Eurasian Pipeline Consortium, on whose board Alexander Udodov sat. The holding was included in Forbes’ ranking of private Russian companies with a value of 57 billion rubles. At the time, the main beneficiary of ETK was businessman and long-time Udodov partner Alexander Karmanov.
The Singaporean firm transferred the Yunost shares to Russian ETK-Invest. At the same address as this company, on Myasnitskaya Street, 46, several other legal entities of the ETK group are registered: ETK Promo Production, ETK LLC (renamed BB Media in April 2025), and others. The same address houses Udodov’s assets — Pegasus Microcredit Company (100% owned by Udodov), its subsidiary Kuarpost (owner of the QRPOS payment system), and until recently also Aforra-Energy LLC and Arendoff, which Udodov transferred to the company Evrokor in November 2025. The president of Evrokor is Vitaly Gorny, who until 2016 was a founder of ETK LLC. Udodov himself, until April 2022, along with ETK Promo Production, was a co-founder of Solaris Promo Production (also “registered” at Myasnitskaya, 46). Overall, the group’s assets are regularly shuffled among affiliated individuals. Thus, Udodov’s business is very closely intertwined with the ETK Group and the Evrokor Group — to the point of being inseparable.
