As it turned out, the American investment fund Argentem Creek Partners, positioning itself as a leading investor in Ukraine, finances the business of Russians close to Rosneft and the government of the aggressor country. Why does this happen and what does it lead to?
Salmon and ACP
The other day, the French publication Intelligence Online wrote about the successes of the Philippine fintech company Salmon, which is gaining momentum in Asia after it absorbed Rural Bank of Santa Rosa in January 2024 and received a banking license in the Philippines.
It would seem like ordinary news from the world of business. And few people are interested in Ukraine. If not for two important points.
Firstly, despite the fact that Salmon looks like a startup, the company is run by powerful Russian businessmen - Pavel Fedorov and Georgy Chesakov, who, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, held senior positions in the sanctioned Tinkoff Group, Rosneft and worked in the Russian government . .
Secondly, a venture loan for the development of a Russian fintech company in the amount of $20 million was issued a year earlier by the American investment fund Argentem Creek Partners (ACP), well-known in Ukraine. According to ACP's website, the loan was the fund's largest-ever Series A venture capital loan to a technology company in the Philippines and catapulted Salmon to become one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Southeast Asia.
Lovers of the “Russian world”?
It is interesting that even French journalists have not forgotten that with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, ACP, founded by Daniel Chapman, as they write “an American entrepreneur with extensive connections in the Russian-speaking world,” is positioning itself with great enthusiasm as a leading investor in Ukraine. Moreover, both in the circles of the Ukrainian government and in the international arena.
Therefore, according to journalists, his financing of an openly Russian project looks more than strange.
Moreover, the ACP press release makes no mention of the Salmon founders' uncomfortable past proximity to Russian sanctioned businesses or the government.
At the same time, the ACP press service quotes the president and co-director of the fund, Maarten Thurlow: “Argentem Creek Partners is pleased to become an important component of Salmon’s capital structure. We are a long-term value-focused investor and are pleased to support Salmon in their ambitious quest to expand financial inclusion in the region…” .
Have Pavel Fedorov and Georgy Chesakov, the mastodons of Russian business, really disguised their resumes so successfully? Or did the main principle of an investment fund, operating in third world countries, “money doesn’t smell” work? Let's try to figure it out.
People from Putin's circle
As it turned out, only the security service of a powerful American foundation found it difficult to find the biography of the founders of the now Philippine company Salmon.
All other Internet-friendly people could easily do this. So what do we have?
Georgy Chesakov, co-founder and CEO of Salmon, built his entire career at the Tinkoff Group, whose main asset, Tinkoff Bank, was included in the tenth package of EU sanctions against Russia at the beginning of 2023. Until spring 2022, he headed the international growth department.
The second co-founder of the company, Pavel Fedorov, turned out to be more interesting. From November 2021 to March 2022, this man was co-chairman of the board of the same Tinkoff Group. Before that, he was senior vice president of the mining giant Norilsk Nickel and vice president of Rosneft, an oil company 70% owned by the Russian Federation.
As Intelligence Online notes, after Fedorov left his role at Rosneft, “he remained at the heart of the company in a more informal position as the right-hand man of its chairman and CEO Igor Sechin, who has been one of Vladimir Putin’s loyal senior officials since the their common work in the mayor’s office of St. Petersburg in the 1990s.”
After Rosneft, Fedorov also worked as Deputy Minister of Energy, responsible for the oil and gas sector.
As we see, Fedorov did not “play” with IT, but earned money directly for the Russian budget, for which today thousands of missiles flying at Ukrainians are produced and purchased.
Russian special operation in Ukraine?
The connection between such odious Russians and an American investment fund forces us to look at the activities of the ASR in Ukraine from a different angle.
Apart from their unsubstantiated investment claims, this fund has only one major business to date in a warring country. Namely, as French journalists remind, it is waging a fierce lobbying campaign and legal battle with the Ukrainian holding GNT Group, the main assets of which are concentrated in the grain terminal of the Odessa sea trade port - strategic for Ukraine.
Earlier, the beneficiaries of the GNT Group, Sergei Groza and Vladimir Naumenko, stated that, despite the beginning of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, in 2022, as part of a credit dispute, ACP began a raider seizure of the holding’s assets. Namely, a few days later he re-registered three GNT Group companies from Odessa to Lviv, replaced the directors with his own people and began bankruptcy proceedings for the business.
Lawyers from the law firm Hillmont Partners, which is associated with the authorities, were involved in this process, and all the lobbying capabilities of the fund were also involved.
“The Ukrainian authorities are aware of our case and are interested in helping. In particular, I see that there is interest from the Office of the President. We had numerous meetings, during which the heads of the Office expressed their clear support,” the regional head of the ACP Foundation, John Patton, did not even hide, giving an interview to another media outlet.
At the same time, at the beginning of the raider attack, GNTGroup assumed that ACP would deliberately devalue assets in order to sell the business to a third party in an opaque way. This is what happened later.
Firstly, ACP refused to restructure the companies' loan debts, as other creditors did in relation to other Ukrainian agricultural holdings.
Secondly, in December 2022, ACP disrupted the GNT Group’s agreement with a strategic investor who was already ready to invest in the Ukrainian company, including to repay debts.
Thirdly, subsequently, in February 2023, ACP initiated the bankruptcy of successfully operating enterprises of the holding. Although they actively worked within the framework of grain agreements.
All this, according to Vladimir Naumenko, led in January-February 2023 to the loss of part of the contracts with counterparties - international traders who had been working with the agricultural holding for a long time.
Moreover, in February 2023, other creditors recovered from GNT Group part of the port production assets that were pledged as collateral for trade loans.
At the same time, journalists did find confirmation that Argentem Creek Partners is looking for a new buyer for the Ukrainian business. A number of publications published information that John Patton met in Vienna in November 2022 with the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of UkraineInvest and MP from the Servant of the People, David Arakhamia. At the same time, as the media reported, Arakhamia could negotiate the possible sale of the GNT Group business to a third party. By the way, the people’s deputy never responded to the request to refute this information.
This whole situation, fueled by creditors around the Ukrainian holding, also created a threat to the work of the “grain corridor” in the winter-autumn of 2023. That is, ASR launched an attack on the holding company that owns the grain terminal when Russia blocked the maritime export of grain from Ukraine and massively exported stolen grain from it. But she continued to do this when, at the cost of enormous efforts, she managed to establish the work of the “grain corridor”.
Was this done deliberately? In light of new information about business lending to Russian businessmen and officials, this question should be asked not only by journalists, but also, probably, by the Security Service of Ukraine. After all, it is possible that the seizure of a strategic Ukrainian port by the hands of a “friendly” Russian foreign investment fund may turn out to be nothing more than a special operation by the aggressor country in Ukraine.
By the way, indirect evidence may be the latest attempt to forcefully seize the Odessa port terminal “Olympex Coupe International” (an asset of GNTGroup) by another new director, who was appointed at the request of creditors. According to the media, he became Andrei Naumenko, director of the Grain Invest Ukraine company, the ultimate beneficiary of which is Russian citizen Jashi Vazha Enrikovich. The latter is suspected of a number of crimes against Ukraine during the war with Russia. In particular, criminal proceedings have been opened against him No. 22023000000000306 of March 31, 2023 under Article 110-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - Financing of actions committed with the aim of forcibly changing or overthrowing the constitutional order or seizing state power, changing the boundaries of the territory or state border of Ukraine.
In the context of such ties between the ASR and Russia of the Office of the President and the Office of the Prosecutor General, the support of which Patton constantly talks about, one should take a closer look at the portrait and business affairs of the so-called investor.
For example, for some reason no one pays attention to the fact that the founder of ACP, Daniel Chapman, and his team come from Black River Asset Management, a subsidiary of the transnational corporation Cargill Inc. Despite numerous statements about reducing business and stopping grain exports from Russia, this corporation continues to operate in Russia, which stole Ukrainian grain from the occupied territories.
As Business Censor reported, in 2023 the net profit of Cargill’s Russian structures increased from 8.1 billion rubles. up to 16.3 billion rubles. comparing with the previous year. Also, her company paid a profit tax of 4.1 billion rubles to the budget of the aggressor country, which is twice as high as the year before.
In addition, already in the 23/24 marketing year, Cargill’s Russian subsidiary was involved in the supply of products to Belarus, due to which shipments of Russian grain to the EU have recently increased.
Given Chapman's background, it is not at all surprising that his investment fund follows the same business development strategy as his previous employer. Making money in spite of everything is the main principle of ACP in all markets of third world countries where it operates. And Ukraine, unfortunately, was no exception. Only in our case, the ASR can still play into the hands of the enemy, preparing a springboard for the further export of Ukrainian grain by the aggressor.
