Real Agents Part 002 A Story About Ramzan Kadyrov

Translated into English using Google Translate

The head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is one of the main anti-heroes of Russian aggres­sion in Ukraine. It was he who first announced the dis­patch of 12,000 Chechens to a neigh­bor­ing coun­try, promis­ing vic­to­ry “in the com­ing days”, and then admit­ted the inef­fi­cien­cy of the Russian army, offer­ing a crazy way out — to kill and destroy with­out look­ing back. But for him­self, the Chechen leader loves to build, and, as the Agency found out, in this mat­ter he does not even shun for­eign assis­tants and their mon­ey. At the same time, Kadyrov pub­licly does not for­get to stig­ma­tize “for­eign agents” who receive mon­ey from abroad.

How did Kadyrov’s res­i­dence turn into an island?Who brought Van Damme to Chechnya?How much does fur­ni­ture cost in the Grozny Palace?How was the man­sion of Kadyrov’s wife classified?

Exactly 10 years ago, in February 2012, the cit­i­zens of Russia learned about the palace of unprece­dent­ed, as it seemed then, lux­u­ry. The builders hand­ed over the new res­i­dence of Kadyrov in the very cen­ter of Grozny — huge, with columns, one large and four small domes. The build­ing was made impreg­nable in the medieval under­stand­ing of for­ti­fi­ca­tion sci­ence — a bypass chan­nel was spe­cial­ly dug from the Sunzha River, and the area around the res­i­dence turned into an island. Since then, few have man­aged to get there, and even more so to film this place on video.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9db8')Residence of the head of Chechnya in Grozny. Photo: Slava Stepanov/gelio.livejournal.com

Only thanks to the offi­cial web­site of pub­lic pro­cure­ment then it became clear the scale of the lux­u­ry sur­round­ing the palace, and at the same time the cost of its maintenance.

Territory in ⅔ of the Kremlin with 36 hectares of lawns, 2260 trees of dif­fer­ent species, 8 hectares of flower beds with 16 thou­sand rose bush­es, as well as 64 thou­sand square meters. m of premis­es with 13 thou­sand sq.m. car­pets and 4 thou­sand sq.m. tapes­tries on five floors.

The author­i­ties of Chechnya were ready to pay 84 mil­lion rubles from the bud­get for main­tain­ing this beau­ty, remov­ing garbage and buy­ing indi­vid­ual plants. or almost $2.7 mil­lion at the exchange rate of that time. The cost and source of financ­ing for the con­struc­tion of the palace itself could only be assumed by jour­nal­ists — it was believed that 10 bil­lion rubles were spent on it, and it was built with state mon­ey. There was every rea­son for such an assump­tion — in those years, the repub­lic annu­al­ly received 60 bil­lion rubles from the fed­er­al bud­get. sub­si­dies, and in recent years this amount has increased six times.

However, this mon­ey was not enough for Kadyrov’s requests. The “Agency” obtained doc­u­ments that par­tial­ly shed light on who is build­ing the palaces of the head of Chechnya.

foreign friend

There is a whole gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple in the North Caucasus who were born far from their native land. During the Stalinist depor­ta­tion of peo­ples, which cost the Chechens at least 100 thou­sand lives, most of the peo­ple were sent to Kazakhstan. Among the depor­tees were Kadyrov’s ances­tors — his father Akhmat-Khadzhi was born in Karaganda. Ramzan Akhmatovich belongs to a new gen­er­a­tion — he grew up already in Chechnya, but he retained ties with the Kazakhs.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9dea')Ramzan Kadyrov con­grat­u­lates Kenes Rakishev in Telegram. Telegram source Ramzan Kadyrov

“We have been true friends and broth­ers for many years. And our friend­ship has noth­ing to do with posi­tions and finan­cial sit­u­a­tion, “- with these words, Kadyrov con­grat­u­lat­ed the cit­i­zen of Kazakhstan, the oli­garch Kenes Rakishev, on his birth­day. This per­son often per­forms del­i­cate assign­ments — in the media, he received the unof­fi­cial title of “purse” of for­mer President Nursultan Nazarbayev, and at the same time he was already seen in busi­ness rela­tions with the Chechens. Therefore, the phrase about the lack of con­nec­tion between friend­ship and finan­cial sit­u­a­tion looks deliberate.

How Rakishev is connected with Chechnya

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9df7')Kenes Rakishev. A source: Facebook

Kenes Rakishev is one of the rich­est peo­ple in his coun­try with an esti­mat­ed for­tune of $950 mil­lion. Rakishev earned the title of “Nazarbayev’s wal­let” thanks to busi­ness and invest­ments in the inter­ests of the fam­i­ly of the for­mer pres­i­dent of Kazakhstan. But the entre­pre­neur also helped Kadyrov a lot and mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial — for exam­ple, accord­ing to the “Project”, the Chechens par­tic­i­pat­ed in Rakishev’s pur­chase of an oil port on the North Sea, as a result, the asset end­ed up in the hands of denom­i­na­tions asso­ci­at­ed with the head of Chechnya. Officially, Rakishev also did not hide his help to Kadyrov — for exam­ple, he spon­sored the Grozny Terek.

Rakishev’s e‑mail was sent to the Agency’s mail address, cov­er­ing the peri­od of the late 2000s — ear­ly 2010s.

From it it turns out that the oli­garch devot­ed a lot of time to Chechnya. It was prob­a­bly he who orga­nized the pub­lic events that Kadyrov used for his PR. In October 2011, the famous actor Jean-Claude van Damme flew in to cel­e­brate the day of the city of Grozny — the trip made a strong impres­sion on him, and he even pub­licly called Kadyrov a “friend.”

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9e02')Jean-Claude van Damme and Ramzan Kadyrov. Source: Instagram

In fact, it was a com­mer­cial vis­it — it was per­son­al­ly han­dled by Rakishev, who com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the actor through the spe­cial agency Doors to Hollywood, which takes celebri­ties to var­i­ous events for mon­ey. It is not known how much Van Damme was paid, but then the agents warned the Kazakh busi­ness­man that Cristiano Ronaldo’s arrival in Grozny could cost up to a mil­lion euros, and Terek’s train­ing with Barcelona could cost 1.5 mil­lion euros.

Photo: Kenes Rakishev dis­cuss­es the arrival of for­eign stars in Chechnya. Source Kenes Rakishev Post

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But the most inter­est­ing part of the cor­re­spon­dence refers to the peri­od of the con­struc­tion of the palace in Grozny.

Cabinets of one million euros

The res­i­dence began to be built after the inau­gu­ra­tion of Kadyrov in 2007 — the exact date was nev­er report­ed, espe­cial­ly since, due to the secre­cy of the object, jour­nal­ists have repeat­ed­ly con­fused the Grozny Palace with anoth­er man­sion of the head of the region — in Tsentaroi.

Only in 2010–2011. the frame­work of the new facil­i­ty was noticed by blog­gers, they also drew atten­tion to the new chan­nel of the Sunzha, due to the lay­ing of which an emer­gency would occur lat­er — as a result of engi­neer­ing work, nine near­by streets would be flooded.

While the pub­lic was con­fused in Kadyrov’s palaces, Rakishev, accord­ing to the cor­re­spon­dence we stud­ied, was pre­oc­cu­pied with a domes­tic ques­tion — how to arrange inte­ri­ors for Kadyrov. This case was very difficult.

In the alleged cor­re­spon­dence of the Kazakh oli­garch, we find a con­tract between two for­eign com­pa­nies — the Slovenian OMNIA ARHING d.o.o, which, as it turns out, built the palace (more on it below) and the Italian fur­ni­ture com­pa­ny OAK Industria Arredamenti S.p.A. For 500,000 euros, the Italians under­took to draw up an inte­ri­or design project for the main floor — the “pres­i­den­tial” one, with an area of 3,100 square meters. m. with rooms for the head of the region, guests and a meet­ing room.

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Agreement between OMNIA ARHING d.o.o and OAK Industria Arredamenti S.p.A. for the project of inte­ri­ors of the pres­i­den­tial floor in the Kadyrov Palace

Half a mil­lion euros for a sketch is, of course, expen­sive, but OAK Industria is one of the seri­ous play­ers in the lux­u­ry inte­ri­ors mar­ket, includ­ing for the Russian nobil­i­ty. The com­pa­ny’s pres­i­dent, Renato Polona, recent­ly claimed that his com­pa­ny had deliv­ered a long table to the Kremlin — the same one that Putin and his French coun­ter­part Emmanuel Macron sat at before the war in Ukraine.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9e34')Meeting between Putin and French President Macron, 2022. Source: kremlin.ru

The amount obvi­ous­ly did not con­fuse the cus­tomers, because soon the Italians sent Rakishev an esti­mate for the arrange­ment and fur­nish­ings of two rooms — the pres­i­den­tial office (110 sq. M.) And the library (220 sq. M.). This is only a tenth of the total footage of the floor, but cus­tomers also need­ed to spend 2.4 mil­lion euros on it. For this mon­ey, the builders had to hang a plas­ter ceil­ing (€200,000), lay mar­ble floors and par­quet select­ed by spe­cial­ists (€595,000), install wood­en doors, plas­ter columns, and car­ry out oth­er instal­la­tion and fin­ish­ing work. The amount also includes fur­ni­ture (€831,000) — cab­i­nets, includ­ing for dis­play­ing weapons, tables — either with mar­ble tops or in leather — arm­chairs uphol­stered in leather, bed­side tables and the wood­en coat of arms of the Chechen Republic with inlay.

Photo: Estimate for the arrange­ment and fur­nish­ings of Kadyrov’s office and library

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Rakishev was going to pay for every­thing. In the sum­mer of 2010, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of OAK Industria were plan­ning a trip to Chechnya to present the project, and before that, Polonya sent an esti­mate to the oli­garch from Kazakhstan with the words: “I would like to receive your con­fir­ma­tion regard­ing the dona­tion of these two premises.”

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Maybe the pre­sen­ta­tion did­n’t go too well. Now Polonya told the Agency that “due to the urgency of the client, we could not meet his require­ments, so we can­celed the con­tract.” But even for a project that prob­a­bly did not suit Kadyrov, the cus­tomer had to pay huge sums of mon­ey — such that the bud­get of poor Chechnya could hard­ly afford. The “for­feit”, appar­ent­ly, was paid by Rakishev — at the end of 2010, the man­agers of OAK Industria Arredamenti S.p.A. sent him a noti­fi­ca­tion that they man­aged to com­plete the work for 350,000 euros (this is a large part of the oblig­a­tions under the con­tract for 500,000 euros). From the address of Rakishev, this let­ter was sent to an unknown per­son with the words: “Brother, I am send­ing you what they sent! If any­thing, tell the boss that I will pay for the project myself.”

“Brother, I am send­ing you what they sent! If any­thing, tell the boss that I will pay for the project myself.”

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As a result, Kadyrov, of course, was not left with­out Italian fur­ni­ture. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny OMNIA ARHING told the Agency that, as a result, oth­er Italian com­pa­nies were engaged in the sup­ply of fur­ni­ture and inte­ri­or design — Cappelletti srl, Jumbo col­lec­tion group, Asnaghi Interiors SpA and OAK s.r.l.

Whether Rakishev paid for these con­tracts, the builders do not say. But in 2011, Kadyrov signed a decree on award­ing a Kazakh busi­ness­man with an order named after his father, Akhmat Kadyrov. True, the con­struc­tion and awards did not end there.

Slovak Chechens

After the palace was hand­ed over, small­er man­sions began to appear around it — for the women of the head of Chechnya. To the north­east of the “island” on the Sunzha River, direct­ly oppo­site the palace, a beau­ti­ful house with a swim­ming pool was erect­ed on a plot with an area of ​​two foot­ball fields — as Project pre­vi­ous­ly said, this is the man­sion of Kadyrov’s sec­ond wife, Fatima Khazuyeva.

To the south­west, imme­di­ate­ly behind the arch lead­ing to the palace, anoth­er build­ing was built — against the back­drop of a giant glass res­i­dence, this light, three-sto­ry house (with a total area of ​​2.3 thou­sand square meters) with a bizarre tow­er and a pond looks very cozy.

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The man­sion was hand­ed over in 2014 and, first of all, it was clas­si­fied — first it was reg­is­tered to Grozny City LLC, cre­at­ed by the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, and then rewrit­ten to a cer­tain Malik Mamedovich Karimov — this name is indi­cat­ed in Rosreestr. Most like­ly the name was made up, the “Agency” could not find a sin­gle per­son with such a sur­name, name and patronymic in the reg­is­ters of Russian citizens.

The answer to the ques­tion why this was done is very sim­ple. Kadyrov’s first wife, Medni Kadyrova, and her chil­dren live in this mys­te­ri­ous house. And the builder for such an impor­tant man­sion was not cho­sen opendemocracy by chance.

The already men­tioned OMNIA ARHING has sev­er­al sites — Russian and Slovenian. On each of them in the “port­fo­lio” sec­tion you can find inter­est­ing objects in Chechnya. For exam­ple, the Slovenian web­site lists Kadyrov’s residence.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9e6e')Kadyrov’s res­i­dence project on the OMNIA ARHING website

And on the Russian ver­sion of the site, a man­sion built for Medni was discovered.

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An OMNIA ARHING rep­re­sen­ta­tive con­firmed to The Agency that the com­pa­ny was build­ing both man­sions. At the same time, he claims that at least the Ministry of Construction of Chechnya paid for Kadyrov’s residence.

window.tgpQueue.add('tgpli-64a95702d9e80')OMNIA ARHING has at least two legal enti­ties — in Slovenia (OMNIA ARHING d.o.o) and Russia (Omnia LLC). The head of the Slovak struc­ture, Stefan Shchek, was at one time a co-own­er of the GS GROUP reg­is­tered in Gudermes. The con­tacts of this com­pa­ny coin­cide with the con­tacts of the Ice Hockey Federation of the Chechen Republic. One of the founders of this fed­er­a­tion, Matyazh Ferkov, owns Omnia LLC.Perhaps it is con­ve­nient for Chechens to deal with a Slovenian com­pa­ny — dur­ing the con­struc­tion of res­i­dences, the for­mer head of Chechnya, Doku Zavgaev, was the Russian ambas­sador to this coun­try. Ferkov and Zavgaev are famil­iar with each oth­er and even posed for a photo.

But so far, the com­pa­ny has received mon­ey not only in an offi­cial way. By a strange coin­ci­dence, in the same 2014, when Medni’s man­sion appeared, OMNIA ARHING built a brick fac­to­ry in Grozny. The con­tract was con­clud­ed with the Chechen Ministry of Construction, but the mon­ey came from two one-day firms reg­is­tered in Britain. The lead­ers of OMNIA ARHING, like Rakishev before, Kadyrov did not for­get to award — a cer­tifi­cate of honor.

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Kadyrov, who sends his sub­or­di­nates to destroy the lives of Ukrainians, took good care of the com­fort of his own life. In total, with the help of var­i­ous peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions, he built at least five man­sions in Chechnya for his fam­i­ly. Three are locat­ed in Grozny, in addi­tion, the head of the region has res­i­dences in Gudermes and his native Tsentaroy.

These palaces are used by Kadyrov, whose ances­tors suf­fered from the Stalinist ter­ror, not only for peace­ful pur­pos­es, but for work and expen­sive recep­tions. Palaces are also need­ed for tor­ture. Here is what the son of the kid­napped Zarema Musaeva, Ibragim Yangulbaev, told about the Grozny res­i­dence of the head of Chechnya: “I was kid­napped along with my father and broth­er, tak­en to the res­i­dence, they tor­tured me, per­son­al­ly Kadyrov tor­tured me, tor­tured, beat my father, my old­er broth­er, they want­ed me pro­tect them, but they were also beat­en.” In a con­ver­sa­tion with the Agency, Yangulbaev con­firmed that it was Kadyrov’s res­i­dence in the cen­ter of Grozny.

Mikhail Rubin, Mikhail Maglov, Roman Badanin

Original source of arti­cle: proekt.media