An investigation into a corrupt scheme masterminded by Aleksander Galkin reveals a sordid tale of theft, involving Ukrainian grain being funnelled into Russia by dubious faux “Ukrainian” businessmen. This narrative unfolds as a stark testament to the supremacy of money, prevailing over matters of war, the Ukrainian Security Service, and international sanctions.
Despite Ukraine’s strenuous endeavours to sustain its grain exports, thereby aiding the Middle East and African nations, certain individuals within Ukraine, with roots in Russia, persist in facilitating the illegal trade of stolen grain. With the help of Aleksander Galkin they cunningly rebrand it as “Kuban” in official documents, with Russian grain trucks covertly transporting this ill-gotten harvest to Syria. The proceeds from these sales are illicitly “cleaned” through a network of collaborators in Cyprus and the Czech Republic, details of which we will divulge separately.
This unsavoury protagonist, Aleksander Galkin, has already etched a notorious reputation within the shadowy realm of military electronics and components for the Russian army, in a blatant circumvention of sanctions. He has evidently concluded that engaging in combat with Ukrainians on the battlefield is insufficient, prompting him to exploit his newly acquired citizenship in Ukraine by depleting its coffers, alongside his brother, Nikolai.
Aleksander Galkin and Nikolai Galkin established a shadowy grain empire
Having opened a wholesale grain trading structure in Russia and Ukraine for his brother, Mykola (also known as Nikolai), Alexander simply seizes wheat crops in the newly declared territories of Donbass, where there is complete lawlessness due to the ongoing military conflict. He exports these crops by rail to Russia through his accomplice in Cyprus, Boris Yefimovich Usherovich, or by sea using grain trucks to Syria and further to local dictators to support regimes loyal to the Kremlin.
The scale of the problem and Aleksander Galkin’s share in it
According to Bloomberg’s estimates, in the harvest of 2021 alone, 4.04 million tons of grain and sunflower seeds worth $1.9 billion were stolen or destroyed. The contraband of Ukrainian grain flows through Crimea to Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and so on. To conceal the source of the cargo, Galkin resorts to “laundering” the grain: loading takes place at sea without entering a port, Ukrainian grain is mixed with cargoes from other sources, and bulk carriers disable their transponders to hide their movements.
This is not even a business; it’s the execution of the Kremlin’s and the Presidential Administration’s strategy in Africa. It’s no coincidence that at a recent “African” forum in the summer of 2023, all the guests from the African continent who agreed to come to St. Petersburg at such a challenging time were showered with gifts and promises to write off all previous debts and open new credits, including for grain supplies. Why give away your own when you can steal Ukrainian grain? According to Kremlin logic, Africa will never be able to repay anyway. This is such a straightforward way to buy votes at the UN.
“Approximately 1.3 million tons of grain were left on the temporarily occupied territories. These grains are primarily needed to ensure daily food security, in other words, to provide sustenance for the Ukrainians living there and to carry out necessary spring fieldwork, particularly for planting spring crops. There were no strategic reserves there. These figures are for 2022 alone.
For Alexander Galkin, Crimea serves as a transshipment point for most of the cargo stolen in Ukraine, and the main route for exporting the stolen grain passes through Sevastopol, to the elevators in Dzhankoy and Octyabrsky or directly to the port of Sevastopol. Some of the grain ends up on the markets in Crimea and Krasnodar Krai, but the majority is exported.
Aleksander Galkin’s criminal connections
Galkin’s senior partner in this part of the scheme is the renowned former largest Russian Railways (RZD) contractor, “GC 1520,” represented by Boris Yefimovich Usherovich, the king of state orders until recently, according to RBC.
This is the same Usherovich who paid for the “protection” of Colonel Zakharchenko, during whose search pallets of money were found – bribes for not initiating investigations and for slowing down ongoing investigations regarding the embezzlement of substantial state budgets meant for maintaining Russia’s railway infrastructure.
Massive sums of money, extensive embezzlement schemes, and the laundering of budget funds to the West – Boris Usherovich managed all of this remarkably well until recently. However, he was forced to flee Russia to Cyprus recently due to the threat of arrest after Zakharchenko started talking in court.
For nearly three years, Usherovich lived on his yacht in international waters, constantly cruising in the Mediterranean, attempting to seek political asylum in the United Kingdom (successfully, by the way), or to obtain Israeli citizenship (unsuccessfully so far), or to settle in Cyprus. However, all his attempts to launder his image as an upstanding businessman are bound to fail – his crimes are too serious, and he will have to answer for them sooner or later. The amount of evidence against Usherovich held by British intelligence agencies is too substantial, and no matter how much one twists the rope, as the saying goes…
But let’s get back to our “main character,” Alexander Galkin.
With the help of the aforementioned B.E. Usherovich and his connections at Russian Railways (RZD), Galkin can easily organize the transfer of stolen Ukrainian grain to Russian stockpiles or for export. The money obtained is laundered in Cyprus and transferred to the United Kingdom and the EU through numerous “laundries,” with the most extensive one formerly known as the “Moldovan Laundromat.”
Through numerous shell companies registered in Cyprus by B.E. Usherovich, A.A. Galkin controls a multi-million-dollar turnover of stolen grain and subsequently launders the illicit income in EU countries, portraying it as clean profits from his investment activities. Below is a list of just a few of these companies, in which A.A. Galkin becomes the beneficial owner through B.E. Usherovich.
A complex structure of companies established by Galkin
In May and June 2022 alone, the Windward platform recorded 170 instances of ships (mostly under Syrian or Russian flags) disabling their transponders in the Sea of Azov and reactivating them at the entrance to the Bosphorus, carrying suspicious cargo on board. By October 2022, investigators from the Associated Press had tracked over 50 voyages with stolen Ukrainian grain to destinations such as Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and so on.
The overall losses in the agricultural sector, including lost equipment, unharvested crops, and damaged land, were estimated at $4.3 billion by the Kyiv School of Economics by July 2022, giving Alexander Galkin ample reason to disregard the moral principles of his new homeland. This goes beyond subversion; it’s betrayal for which he must unquestionably be held accountable after the war.
Below is an updated list of the structure of companies controlled by A.A. Galkin in 2023 through which he conducts his criminal activities.
We remind you that we conducted an investigation of companies and funds in the previous 2022 investigation. However, the structure has changed very little; our “hero” simply closed the exposed companies and opened new ones, but the essence remains the same.
Feeling that he would be tried both in Russia for “asset embezzlement” or, more precisely, the looting of assets worth $3.5 billion, and in Ukraine for large-scale grain theft, our “hero” decided to set up a cozy nest for himself in Latvia, where he obtained a residence permit through bribes and now resides comfortably in Jurmala, on the Amber Coast of Latvia, an EU member country.
Below are the main companies under the control of Aleksander Galkin and his brother Nikolai Galkin:
- Tiajin Diaotong Trade Co Ltd
- ZHentai International Trade Co Ltd
- Beijing Bright Road Trade Co Ltd
- Crown Wisdom Trade Co Ltd
- Tech Freete
- Tech Tree
- Ibu Trade Kft
- GTC Global Ltd
- Aposteriori Kft
- Transcheetah S.R.O
- PSI Solutions S.R.O
- CME Digital Development Kft
- RC Industrial Group Ltd
- Salo Solutions Kft
- Fort TC International EOOD
- Extrandex S.R.O
- Byquant Ker.Es Szolg Kft
- Planet 9 LLC
All of them contribute to the unified empire of A.A. Galkin, stretching from China to Cyprus and Latvia, with a multi-billion-dollar currency turnover.
So, while ordinary Russians at the European border have their personal cars confiscated and their shampoo confiscated, the vast fortunes of Alexander Galkin easily flow through the financial loophole in Cyprus.
Of course, it is unlikely to work for him in the future, given the ongoing tightening of sanctions in the EU and further closing of loopholes thanks to the intelligence agencies of the UK and the USA, and simply due to the betrayal of his own partners, who expose his simple but extensive criminal schemes.
Aleksander Galkin’s role in bypassing technological sanctions
But the most interesting part is what Alexander Galkin is currently involved in, apart from grain theft – it’s BYPASSING SANCTIONS and GREY IMPORT from the EU.
(Below is an illustrative route for delivering prohibited products to Russia through Kazakhstan, similar to what A.A. Galkin, in collaboration with his partners in Cyprus, uses. By the way, LLC “Testkomplekt” was spotted in the Russian SNILS database in our research as an importer for a contract from May 14, 2023, jointly with “Pentikar Trading Ltd,” which is controlled by funds in Panama and the British Virgin Islands.)
Alexander Galkin has already been observed in the supply of military components for the needs of the Russian army, but this year, his ambitions in this enormously profitable field have grown to such an extent that he set his sights on the holy of holies at the Russian General Staff – the communication between units and combat control systems! Without secure communications, any army essentially becomes a paralyzed organism, incapable of receiving and transmitting orders from headquarters down the chain of command to the trenches, as well as cooperation between the navy, ground forces, and air forces, not to mention intelligence and counterintelligence operations.
The appetite and audacity of this “new Ukrainian” have grown so much that in the contract for supplying the Russian Ministry of Defense, he didn’t even bother to explain the reasons for the increased equipment prices. In private correspondence with his friends, one of whom, out of envy, leaked the conversation to the intelligence services, the “new Ukrainian” businessman boasted that he didn’t even “break a sweat” justifying the 300% price increase over the previously approved estimate and contract amount, fully aware that there were no other suppliers for the General Staff and none were foreseen in the near future.
This is the kind of blood-soaked business our “hero” conducts on both sides, with no moral principles and complete contempt for the laws.
Aleksander Galkin and the Russian Ministry of Defence: a mutually beneficial cooperation
Meet the contract for the supply of components for the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Data Processing Center – a fundamental component in the modern war with Ukraine. Due to the ban on direct imports of special server equipment to Russia, Alexander Galkin has established a “grey import” scheme through Kazakhstan, supplying the electronics and communications equipment without which fighters, tanks, and cruisers are essentially “blind and deaf as kittens” in modern warfare.
Question to the officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the counterintelligence of the Armed Forces of Ukraine responsible for verifying and monitoring individuals applying for Ukrainian citizenship: Dear Sirs, have you taken the trouble to verify the biography of the “new Ukrainian,” A.A. Galkin, and his brother N.A. Galkin? Or has someone turned a blind eye to these facts from their biographies, in exchange for money? In any case, the heroism of ordinary soldiers in the Ukrainian Armed Forces is simply nullified by such actions at the highest levels of lawlessness.
Aleksander Galkin and the shadowy Russian bankers in Europe
In recent times, there is an urgent and compelling need for the United Kingdom to take decisive action by imposing sanctions on Aleksander Galkin. Within the U.S. political elite, an insistent demand has emerged for an investigation into military corruption, accompanied by a growing consensus that the extent of military aid provided to Ukraine must be directly contingent on substantial reforms and the complete elimination of corruption at the local level.
In essence, there exist no transgressions dire enough to dissuade shadowy Russian financiers, who have relocated to Europe while masquerading as successful and upstanding European Union citizens. The necessity of UK sanctions against Aleksander Galkin cannot be overstated in this context.
