A company “Monte biser” from Herceg Novi, linked to Moscow’s chief prosecutor Denis Popov, has received more than 1 million euros in loans from offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and the island of Nevis in the Caribbean sea, according to data obtained by the MANS Investigative Centre within cooperation in the investigation of the assets of Russian oligarchs conducted by the OCCRP and the Guardian (Russian Asset Tracker).
Data from the loan agreement show that the money obtained from offshore companies was used to build a tourist complex near Kolašin. Thus, at the end of May 2013, a loan of half a million U.S. dollars was taken from the company “Calvert International Incorporated”. The company, whose owners are unknown, is registered in the Neva Islands in the Caribbean, but also has a branch based in New York, USA.
According to the data from this agreement, the company “Monte biser” undertook to repay this loan within five months. However, the documentation obtained by MANS shows that this debt was allegedly settled only three years later, in December 2016.
The only owner of the company “Monte biser” since 2010 has been Irina Popova, the then wife of the Moscow’s chief prosecutor, Denis Popov. In December 2018, the company “Keystone ICG LTD”, registered in the British Virgin Islands with a, for now, unknown owner, appears as a co-owner of 35% of the company.
It was from this company that Popova then took an offshore loan, this time in the amount of 500,000 euros, with a repayment deadline until May 2021. Although the deadline for repaying this loan has expired, there is no evidence that it was ever repaid to the mentioned offshore company, while the Cadastre and State Property Administration still has this debt recorded.
Data from the cadastre show that in 2010, the company owned by Popova spent close to 230 thousand euros on the purchase of construction plots in Kolašin, on which a complex of three luxuriously equipped mountain mansions was built, with a total area of 540 m2.
Property of the company “Monte biser” in Kotor and Kolašin
Additional 215,000 euros were invested by Irina Popova’s company for the purchase of land in Morinj, the Municipality of Kotor, where a residential building with 11 apartments at the very seashore was built.
According to the latest available data from the financial report of the company “Monte biser” for 2020, the value of the mentioned real estate amounted to around 3.3 million euros.
Although facilities in Kolašin and Kotor can be found on accommodation rental websites, financial reports show that the company has not had any revenue in years. At the same time, the data show that the company has accumulated long-term liabilities to various creditors in the amount of around 3.4 million euros, and that it ended 2020 with a loss of 125 thousand euros.
We were unable to get a comment from the prosecutor Popov on the origin of the money invested in real estate in Montenegro.
Who is Denis Popov?
Denis Popov, Moscow’s chief prosecutor, was appointed to office in September 2019, by personal decree of Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation. Prior to that appointment, Popov was a prosecutor in the Russian republic of Dagestan.
Popov is the prosecutor who advocated the indictment against Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition politician and a sharp critic of Putin’s policies, who described him as a foreign spy and blocked the account of his anti-corruption organization “FBK” and ordered the confiscation of the property of its members.
Denis Popov
Part of the campaign against Navalny was also the criminal proceedings initiated by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation due to money laundering, which allegedly financed his non-profit organization.
Navalny then published a study that showed that the Popov family owns numerous properties for which there are no clear sources of funding, and in addition to real estate in Montenegro, Navalny revealed that Irina Popova owns an apartment in Spain worth around 650,000 euros, and real estate in the Astrakhan area, in the south of Russia.
In early February last year, Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of Navalny’s anti-corruption organization, recommended that the European Union impose sanctions on 35 Russian individuals linked to the poisoning and detention of Alexei Navalny. One of them is Moscow’s prosecutor Denis Popov.
Russian Asset Tracking Project
Russian Asset Tracking project is a global investigation led by the OCCRP and the Guardian, which has so far involved 25 media from around the world in addition to the MANS Investigative Centre. As part of the previous investigation that is going to continue, the assets of Russian oligarchs and Putin’s supporters have been discovered, in the total amount of nearly 18 billion U.S. dollars.
Dejan Milovac
MANS Investigative Centre
