A journalistic investigation in Russia reveals how local strawmen took over a huge Swiss corporation that operated in the country until it was forced to stop operations due to the sanctions imposed on Russia following the war in Ukraine.
As part of the sanctions against Russia, many giant corporations and companies decided to exit the Russian market. This is what happened with the giant Swiss corporation Holcim, which specializes in cement and the production of materials for the construction industry. The Russian branches of this corporation include 4 cement factories and 3 quarries. In addition, approximately 1,500 workers were employed in these branches and the revenues for 2021 amounted to 25 billion rubles. Now that the Swiss company has left Russia, the status of the branches remains unclear.
In July, a sponsored article was published in “Forbes Russia” with a guy named Yevgeny Kostyukevich, a businessman from the Pskov region, which is located in northwestern Russia. In the article he was presented as the new owner of Holcim, Russian branches, businesses that reach a value of two billion dollars.
Kostyukevich presented a judgment from the city of Grozny (the capital of Chechnya), according to which he purchased the debts of Holcim in Russia for 11 billion rubles and thus received the ownership. Also, several other companies submitted financial claims to Holcim for a total amount of 2.2 billion rubles. But contrary to Kostikovich’s statements, the company claims that it never had any relationship with the plaintiffs, and that some of them include fictitious characters.
The company’s partners, customers and employees panicked. The global Swiss company published a sweeping denial in which Forbes and Kostyukevich were criticized.
Theater of the Absurd “The Businessman”
After the review, Forbes journalist Sergey Titov decided to independently check who is that unknown billionaire who claims to own the company. He found out that this is a “criminal diagnosed with developmental delay”, behind whom are “malicious people”. According to the investigation, Kostyukevich built a fast business career around illegal logging, and his criminal record contained quite a few theft offenses. Later he got into trouble again – from fights at the police station to covering up a murder. In the investigation, it was mentioned that Kostyukevich finished his school studies already in the 8th grade, was unemployed and was even treated by a psychiatrist with a diagnosis of mental retardation.
Holcim company. Is the Kremlin behind the new owner of the branches in Russia? / Photo: Shutterstock
Contrary to all these, Kostiukevich claimed that he is ready to prove his position in a video call. The journalist Titov coordinated the conversation with him, but when the time came, Kostyukevich claimed that there were malfunctions and disruptions in his internet line. When he was already up, the suspicions increased more.
Titov defines the whole move as the “theatre of the absurd”. From his first words it became clear that Kostyukevich’s character was a deep fake – an “animated” photograph with the help of artificial intelligence. In this virtual meeting, he claimed, a very low-quality image was used – “only the pupils and the corners of the lips moved in the figure, and it seems that the contours of the face were glued to the background.”
“The traces reached the associates of the deputy prime minister”
Lt. Col. Daniel Rakov, who specializes in Russian policy in the Middle East at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, explained on Twitter: “After rejections and claims of a broken internet line, the interviewers were presented with a figure that left no doubt that it was a deepfake video. The deepfake spoke with a Caucasian accent. The interview ended very quickly, leaving new heavy suspicions and the billionaire businessman disappeared.”
It should be noted that Titov gave Kostiukevich an opportunity to prove his claims in the interview. The journalist asked him to move and show the room where he was. Kostyukevich dismissed the idea, arguing that it would reveal secret documents he had in the room. According to him, he is in Mariupol, Ukraine, which was captured by the Russian army, where he is engaged in the recovery of certain “objects”.
Titov asked for a contact through which he could confirm the facts that Kostiukevich stated, but at that moment the conversation ended abruptly. Kostyukevich claimed that the Internet had crashed, and offered to meet in Mokseba in person. According to the reporter, this is the last thing he heard from that character, and now the way of communication with him has ended. “The interview left a depressing impression, which intensified after it became clear that on the Internet you can find photos of Kostyukevich in the same shirt and with the same background that was used for Deep Fake,” the investigation states.
Lt. Col. Daniel Rakov explained in his tweet that “the traces reached the associates of the Russian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the construction sector – Marat Khosnolin, Chechen officials and a number of figures who in the distant past worked with Putin in St. Petersburg. The author of the investigation raises suspicions That Forbes-Russia assisted in its publication to promote the takeover, and refused to publish the investigation, which was finally published by an opposition media outlet.
The investigation was eventually published on the opposition website “Media Project”. According to a Forbes report, during the preparation of the article there were arguments between the journalist Titov and the editor-in-chief, Nikolai Mazurin: “Disagreements emerged regarding the interpretation of the events that led to the appearance of an interview with Kostyukevich on the Forbes website.” Now, Forbes will be ready to publish an article about Kharchenko and Kostyukiewicz, but he refused to publish materials jointly with the opposition website, arguing that “there may be negative legal consequences, as the project is an unwanted organization.”
Will it affect the business management of Israelis?
Experts on Russian affairs explain that the sanctions on the country will indeed weaken the regime in the long run. But as Lt. Col. (Ret.) Rakov describes in his tweets, “In the short term, this leaves a lot of valuable assets in a murky state, in a way that calls for the corrupt associates of the Putin regime to get their hands on these assets.
“This was a very common phenomenon in the 1990s, but in the thirty years that have passed since then, Russia has tried to make itself attractive to international businesses, and therefore the phenomenon has greatly decreased. Russia’s disengagement from the West is also a disengagement from accepted business norms that are quickly being eroded.”
He added in a tweet that “this concerns Israel’s ability to conduct business with Russia in the foreseeable future, and the ability of Jewish businessmen in Russia to protect their assets in an environment that is becoming increasingly criminal and corrupt.”
Dr. Jennifer Shakbator, from the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at Reichmann University, explains in a conversation with Globes that the deep fake is attracting attention, but the general phenomenon is broader. We need someone to be at the front. There is a process of fraud here, of forging documents and forging identities.”
According to her, this phenomenon is much wider than we will ever know. “In my estimation, there will be dozens or hundreds of additional cases like this, because there are many Western companies that have left Russia that the Russian government can take revenge on.
“The problem is that I don’t know how much we will hear about other cases like this, because it appears from the investigation that even Forbes itself cooperated there. It is very difficult to get information about these things in Russia and the journalists are in a serious problem.”