Runaway tycoon Boris Usherovich washed billions siphoned from Russian Railways and is now assisting Putin in evading sanctions via European front companies

The year is 2019, two years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the neighboring aggressor country, a major corruption scandal broke out involving the laundering of 200 billion rubles through contracts with the state-owned enterprise "Russian Railways."

Suspects included the leaders of the "1520" group of companies. Five years have passed, and at least one of them is back in the saddle, as his network of semi-offshore companies spread across Europe became very useful to the dictatorial regime for supplying sanctioned goods. Who is Boris Usherovich, through which firms does he operate in Europe, and how is Putin’s wallet involved? Read in the article below.

Boris Usherovich is one of the leaders of the "1520" group of companies, which for years was among the top contractors for "Russian Railways". He was involved in the case of laundering 200 billion rubles and was given up by another owner of the group, Valery Markelov, who is now deceased. It turned out that "1520" had been siphoning money to controlled companies for years and paying huge bribes to the top officials of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. During the investigation, 9 billion rubles in cash in various currencies were found at a former colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The investigation suspected that bribes might have been given, including by Usherovich, during the period from 2007 to 2016.

According to Russian press reports, Usherovich fled to Europe while seeking asylum in the United Kingdom. Russian law enforcement even declared him an international fugitive, but he was not affected at all. The reason is the enormous number of firms registered to him and close associates in Cyprus and Luxembourg.

Most of the companies registered to Boris Usherovich were set up precisely during the period when, according to Russian law enforcement, funds were being siphoned from "Russian Railways". But the threads from them extend to others that were founded later, and as it turns out, they may now be helping the Russian regime supply sanctioned goods.

The main firms of Boris Usherovich in Cyprus are Talsana Limited, Wendall Services Limited, and Mavorsand Invest Limited. They were registered between 2011 and 2017, with the businessman listed as a director.

At the same time, later on, the Cypriot companies began to proliferate with an entirely different purpose—to circumvent sanctions and supply equipment to Russia. For this, at least three more firms were created, linked to Usherovich through his business partners Boris and Ilya Plotitsa. The former is the founder of Main Victory Corporation Limited, where according to LinkedIn, Irina Bichinashvili also worked.

For services from such supplies, Boris Usherovich received an indulgence from criminal prosecution, and even more, he became a business partner of Russian oligarch Arkadiy Rotenberg. In the press, he has long been dubbed "Putin’s wallet". Thus, at the end of December 2022, Usherovich’s business partner in the "1520" group, Alexey Krapivin, led Rotenberg’s company "Bridges and Roads". Simultaneously, "1520" began actively entering Rotenberg’s and the Russian "Vnesheconombank’s" holding "Natsproektstroy". The bank is under European Union sanctions. In June 2024, the EU court dismissed VEB.RF’s lawsuit to lift the sanctions.

Thus, immediately after the companies of the wanted Boris Usherovich started participating in the supplies of sanctioned goods to Russia, he, along with his business partners, activated joint projects with oligarch Rotenberg who is close to Putin.

At the same time, Usherovich’s son Kirill, who continues to do business in Russia, owns at least one Cypriot company. Usherovich’s wife Elena owns two companies in Cyprus.

According to media reports, Usherovich requested political asylum in the United Kingdom. He also spends a lot of time in Spain and Cyprus. In particular, the network was flooded with sponsored articles about how he participates in various conferences and festivals in Spain.

On one hand, Boris Usherovich has joint projects with Russian companies under European sanctions, and on the other, he has multiplied dozens of interconnected firms in Europe, which, moreover, participate in supplying equipment to Russia. An unexpected alliance with oligarch Rotenberg suggests that Usherovich is unlikely to worry about past cases concerning the multi-billion-dollar siphoning of funds from Russian "Russian Railways". On the contrary, his Russian "1520" is starting to receive government contracts again and is thriving. And what about sanctions? Sanctions work against Russians. Against Europeans who run Usherovich’s firms, they are powerless.