WRITTEN BY ROMAN ANIN, NOVAYA GAZETA; OLESYA SHMAGUN, OCCRP; AND JELENA VASIC, KRIK

On April 24, 1985, the career of a promising young Russian official should have come to a screeching halt.

On that day, 36-year-old Oleg Belaventsev, the third secretary for science and technology in the Soviet embassy in London, was kicked out of England along with five other diplomats.

The actual language used by the government of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was that he was engaged in “unacceptable activities” that “threaten national security.

In the waning days of the Soviet Union, such a high-profile scandal usually meant the end of a career, but not for Belaventsev. His star just kept rising.

For the last 20 years, Belaventsev has held important posts in the Russian government — from the deputy director of the main Russian arms trading agency to his current job as the special envoy of Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin in Crimea.

His appointment in March 2014 as Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Crimean Federal District, essentially the Kremlin’s top man in Crimea, reintroduced him to the Western world, which moved quickly to add him to European Union (EU) and US sanction lists of persons responsible for the Ukrainian crisis.

Reporters for Novaya Gazeta and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) spent months investigating the new envoy’s other career — his international businesses built on Russia’s humanitarian programs all over the world, from Nicaragua to North Korea.

Belaventsev could be the poster boy for the phrase, “Doing well by doing good.”

His private companies, founded while he was heading the state agency responsible for humanitarian efforts, have won contracts to implement numerous Russian humanitarian projects abroad in recent years.

A legal expert says that at the very least, such a close connection appears to be a conflict of interest. Belaventsev and his partners have denied any wrongdoing in their written responses to OCCRP.

Belaventsev’s companies also prospered inside of Russia. He established a joint business to produce firefighting vehicles with Rosenbauer, a major fire-truck manufacturer and one of the biggest companies in Austria. This venture was previously connected to a controversial Russian businessman who US officials have said is associated with organized crime.

According to OCCRP’s calculations, this company, along with others owned by Belaventsev, received hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts from different government agencies where he worked.

His companies have also picked up business from the war in southeast Ukraine: the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations is buying food from Belaventsev’s companies for humanitarian convoys which go to the rebel-held area of Donbas along the eastern border with Russia.

Shady international cooperation

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Belaventsev became the deputy head of the main Russian arms trader, Rosvooruzhenie. At that time he held the rank of vice-admiral of the Russian Navy.

In 2001, Belaventsev moved into a new arena, taking the helm at Emercom, the Agency for Support and Coordination of Russian Participation in International Humanitarian Operations at the Ministry for Emergency Situations. He held that post for the next 11 years. Emercom is not well known in the public domain even in Russia, because its operations are usually presented as projects of the Ministry for Emergency Situations. Nevertheless Emercom is one of Russia’s most important organizations because it manages all Russian humanitarian programs abroad.

Since Belaventsev was appointed head of the agency, his career has closely tracked that of Sergey Shoigu, who was Minister of Emergency Situations from 1991-2012 and is now Minister of Defense.

For more than a decade, Belaventsev served under Shoigu at the Ministry of Emergency Situations as director of Emercom, which was created in 1996 to respond to natural disasters in Russia and abroad, and provide humanitarian assistance and demining services. Emercom has also been in charge of humanitarian convoys forDonbas since the start of the war in Ukraine.

In 2012, Shoigu for a short period became the governor of the Moscow region, and Belaventsev moved with him tolead the General Affairs Department of the Moscow Region Governor and Moscow Region Government.

Later that year, Shoigu was appointed Minister of Defense, and Belaventsev accompanied him once again to take up the post of general director of Slavyanka, one of the largest companies controlled by the ministry. Three senior officials from Crimea, who requested anonymity, told OCCRP that it was Shoigu who advised Putin to appoint Belaventsev as his envoy to Crimea.

It was during his time at Emercom, however, that Belaventsev laid the groundwork for what would become a lucrative business empire. Most of Emercom’s humanitarian projects abroad are conducted in cooperation with the International Civil Defense Organization (ICDO), created in 1931 by the French surgeon-general George Saint-Paul. The intergovernmental organization develops structures “for ensuring the protection and assistance of populations, and for safeguarding property and the environment in the face of natural and man-made disasters.”

Members of ICDO are mainly countries from the Third World, Africa and Central Asia. The only EU country which belongs to ICDO is Cyprus.

The current Secretary General of ICDO is Vladimir Kuvshinov, who used to work for Emercom under Belaventsev.

Russia is the biggest donor to ICDO, contributing US$ 42.6 million last year for different projects around the globe. Between 2008 and 2012, Russian contributions to ICDO totaled more than US$ 200 million, said the current Minister of Emergency of Russia Vladimir Puchkov.

Much of that money went to Belaventsev’s companies.

Demining operations: Serbia, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Lebanon

On July 4, 2008, when Shoigu was the Minister of Emergency Situations, he signed a memorandum of intent in Geneva with the previous Secretary General of ICDO, Nawaf Al Sleibi.

Shoigu and Al Sleibi agreed that the Government of Russia would provide ICDO with a special contribution of US$ 6 million for demining in Serbia. The same memorandum said that Emercom would be responsible for the project on behalf of the ministry.

In 2008 Russian specialists demined the territory around the Constantine the Great Airport near Nis, Serbia. From 2009 to 2011, a Russian detachment working with the Mine Action Center of the Republic of Serbia (SMAC) demined areas around the Serbian town of Parachin in preparation for the planned South Stream gas pipeline.

The first phase of the Russian demining program ended in 2012, at a cost of US$ 36 million. In 2012 the program was extended until 2022; the new agreement was signed by Belaventsev as the head of Emercom and Petar Mihajlovic as the director of SMAC.

According to an official response of SMAC to OCCRP’s request, the demining operations are conducted by Emercom’s subsidiary Emercom-Demining, and all costs are paid from Emercom’s budget.

From SMAC’s letter it is clear that Serbian authorities believe that Emercom-Demining is part of Emercom the state agency.

But it is not.

When Emercom-Demining began working in Serbia in 2008, it was already a private company. Emercom-Demining had been a subsidiary of Emercom in the early 2000s, but shares of the company subsequently shifted to private hands.

According to the Russian Statistic Agency Rosstat, shareholders in Emercom-Demining were private individuals up until 2010. Because of a special form of ownership of Emercom-Demining, the names of these shareholders were kept in a closed register and not reported. OCCRP could not identify who owned the company before 2010.

But Rosstat shows that since 2010, when the first part of the demining operation in Serbia was still ongoing, more than 90 percent of the company was owned by Zarubezhtehcomproekt (ZTPP), another Russian entity controlled by five individuals. ZTPP’s register of shareholders from the company’s founding in 2006 identify the ultimate owners of Emercom-Demining.

Among them are: Belaventsev, by that time the head of the state agency Emercom, with 60 percent; Alexander Mordovskiy, who replaced Belaventsev as director at Emercom in 2012, with 10 percent; Tamara Mikhailova, general accountant of Emercom, with 10 percent; and Sergey Ivanov, Belaventsev’s first deputy in Emercom.

 So the money for demining operations in Serbia took a long route from the Russian government to ICDO, and finally ending up in the pockets of Emercom officials. Their names, together with Belaventsev, appear in other governmental agencies and in other private companies which received hundreds of millions of dollars from these agencies.

Read more