How the Letual cosmetics chain is connected to the beneficiary of the war against Ukraine

Since the beginning of a full-scale war, the Letual cosmetics chain has not left the media headlines. In Russia she condones discriminatory laws against LGBT people, and in Ukraine she is trying to sell her business.

As the Sistema investigative project found out, the company’s shareholders have long been associated with a Russian billionaire who makes money from government orders of medicines, buys up factories of foreign businesses leaving Russia and sponsors the LDPR party.

In 2024, the largest perfume chain in Russia, Letual, has already been at the center of a scandal twice. First, the chain's management ordered salespeople to paint rainbows on tubes of cream, and then recommended that male consultants refrain from using bright cosmetics. The instructions, which were widely discussed in social networks and the professional community, were associated with the course of the Russian authorities to combat “LGBT propaganda.”

Russian book chains have been engaging in similar self-censorship for several years now. Letual became a pioneer in the beauty market.

“They want to be excellent students,” grins the head of a competing network. “They are blowing the whistle, but this is deliberate self-censorship,” another market participant stands up. Letual does have good reasons to demonstrate loyalty to the Russian authorities: at the end of 2022, the Russian Veterans movement demanded that Letual be audited for “possible financing of the Armed Forces of Ukraine” due to the fact that the company was doing business in Ukraine.

On the eve of March 8, queues of men line up at Letual stores
. It is believed that Letual belongs to its general director Tatyana Volodina. True, participants in the beauty market doubt that a hired manager can be the only beneficiary of a business with revenue of more than $1 billion a year. The Russian register of companies does not shed any light on this issue: the owners of Letual are hiding behind a Cypriot offshore.

The Sistema investigative project studied the scandalous network and found out that it has a lot in common with Viktor Kharitonin, a billionaire close to power from the Forbes list, who is reputed to be the Russian king of pharmaceuticals.

Heiress to the Empire

The first Letual store (from the French L'etoile - “star”) opened in the fall of 1997 opposite the Foreign Ministry skyscraper on Smolenskaya Square. A year later, a boutique of the Arbat Prestige chain appeared in Moscow, which became the main competitor of Letual. The confrontation ended in 2009 after Arbat Prestige went bankrupt due to a high-profile tax case. Letual opened its stores on the site of Arbat Prestige and became the undisputed market leader for many years.

“Letual” is the largest chain of perfumes and cosmetics in Russia. Numbers

The company manages about 1,000 stores in 250 cities and employs more than 14,000 people. Revenue for 2022 amounted to 80.5 billion rubles ($1.2 billion), net profit - 3.6 billion rubles ($52 million). For 2018–2022, Letual paid its shareholders dividends totaling 20.9 billion rubles ($311 million).

The “Letual beauty empire” was created by businessman Maxim Klimov, according to the website of the charitable foundation created in his honor, where he is also called a “brilliant strategist.” “The skeleton and everything that Letual now rests on was formed by Klimov,” confirms the former top manager of the network.

Under Klimov, Letual grew to almost 800 stores, and its revenue exceeded $1 billion. The chain also launched its own line of cosmetics, entered into an advertising contract with French singer Patricia Kaas and agreed to collaborate with British designer John Galliano, despite already operating in some regions Russia has laws banning “LGBT propaganda” (Galliano is openly gay).

Klimov was ill for a long time and died in 2013 at the age of 48. After the death of the founder, the shares of the Alcor and Co. company, which manages Letual, went to his four sons and Tatyana Volodina, who has been continuously managing the chain since November 2011. Subsequently, the shares of Klimov’s children were transferred to Volodina. She also got the offshore Letu Holdings, which controls Alcor and Co., Klimov’s green Jaguar and a house in the south-east of France.

In the French register, Volodina is listed under two names, the second is Klimova. She was the third wife of the founder of Letual, says a former top manager of the network. From documents in French registries it follows that Klimov and Volodina got married in February 2011.

However, Sistema’s interlocutors from the beauty industry doubt that Volodina-Klimova is the only beneficiary of Letual. Their doubts are indirectly reinforced by the way Volodina’s number is written in the application for identifying telephone numbers: “Tatyana Off Owner Letual.” This wording hints that Letual also has unofficial owners. After the death of her husband, Volodina actually had non-public partners.

Old acquaintances

At the beginning of 2016, Letual acquired two new shareholders - Vladimir Semenda and Alexey Kokarev. Among the players in the perfume market with whom Sistema spoke, Volodina’s partners are considered “dark horses.” There is practically no information about them in open sources; the media mentions them with the prefix “some”.

Despite the relatively small shares in the business (about 1 percent), Semenda and Kokarev play a significant role in it, says a former top manager of Letual. According to him, partners help Volodina in financial matters. “They were [connected with Letual] even before Volodina,” said one of the network’s competitors. From the leaked databases it follows that Kokarev is the former vice president of corporate finance at Alfa Bank, who served and provided loans to Letual under Klimov. Volodina also continued to collaborate with Alpha.

Semenda has also known Letual for a long time. In the early 2000s, he worked in the Moscow office of the Gibraltar company Lerway, which then owned the Letual trademark. Around the same time, Semenda and Klimov received income from the Profit House brokerage company. This seemingly insignificant fact explains why Volodina needed Semenda. In the early 2000s, Profit House was widely known as a conductor of Roman Abramovich’s interests, and the company’s co-owner was businessman and future billionaire Viktor Kharitonin, who is called “Abramovich’s student” and “the pharmaceutical king of Russia.”

Assistant to Golikova and Zhirinovsky. Who is Viktor Kharitonin

In the early 2000s, billionaire Viktor Kharitonin, in partnership with Roman Abramovich, bought several Russian pharmaceutical plants. Subsequently, they joined the Pharmstandard holding, from which Kharitonin made a fortune. In 2023, Forbes estimated this fortune at $5 billion and placed Kharitonin on the 28th line of the list of the richest Russians.

Pharmstandard occupies a leading position in government procurement of medicines. The holding companies produced most of the Sputnik V vaccines, and Arbidol, which was produced by Pharmstandard, was advertised by Vladimir Putin.

Kharitonin himself is associated with Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, who oversees medicine, and her husband, former Minister of Industry Viktor Khristenko. Kharitonin also did business with family members of Khristenko’s successor as head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov and head of Rostec Sergei Chemezov

Pharmstandard was one of the largest sponsors of the LDPR.

Kharitonin and Klimov agreed on the basis of “Profit House” and became partners. In 2003, they invested in the O3 pharmacy chain, but the project stalled and was sold three years later. As Sistema found out, the partners were united not only by pharmacies. A company associated with Kharitonin provided loans to the Russian structure Lerway, and Klimov was Kharitonin’s partner in Pharmstandard. In 2007, firms close to Letual and Semenda received 50 percent of the management company Caravella. The remaining 50 percent controlled the structures of Kharitonin’s partners. “Caravella” managed the real estate of the “Reconstruction and Development” fund, which was owned by Kharitonin. These were mainly premises that had previously been occupied by O3 pharmacies. “Letual” stores opened in some of them.

Kharitonin is part of the major league of Russian business (pictured with Alfa Group founder Mikhail Fridman at a reception in the Kremlin)

In 2009, there was an embarrassment with “Karavella” - the authorities suspected it of withdrawing assets and revoked the license to manage funds. “Karavella” was liquidated, and the real estate from Kharitonin’s fund was transferred to the management of the “Kalita” business house, which is associated with the billionaire’s business. Some of its premises are still rented by Letual for its stores - for example, 500 sq.m. near the Mayakovskaya metro station in the center of Moscow and 190 sq.m. near the Opera and Ballet Theater in Samara. It is possible that it was Semenda who helped Volodina establish contact with her husband’s long-time partners. As it turned out, their joint interests go beyond the perfume business.

Offshore secrets

In the spring of 2017, a loud political scandal broke out in Malta. A small European country, where many wealthy Russians have acquired citizenship, announced early parliamentary elections after the prime minister was accused of corruption. The materials were published by independent journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Six months later, she died from a car explosion, and her informant, Russian woman Maria Efimova, fled the country and was put on the wanted list.

How did the political crisis in Malta end?

Despite the scandal, the party of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, accused of corruption, won early elections. And the prime minister was re-elected and acquitted. Muscat only resigned at the beginning of 2020 amid mass protests over Galizia's murder. The investigation revealed three killers of the journalist, who received large prison sentences. A Maltese businessman, described as an associate of Muscat, was also accused of complicity. A case was opened against Efimova, who is still in hiding, for giving false testimony.

By a strange coincidence, the hunt for Efimova was announced not only by the authorities of Malta, but also of Cyprus. The Russian woman accused them of conspiracy, but the plot could have been more twisted. Efimova was suspected of having connections with Russia, which has repeatedly put its citizens on the wanted list to prevent their extradition to other countries. The Russian trace is also visible in the request from Cyprus, which was withdrawn after Efimova found herself under Greek protection. Behind all these events one can discern a special operation to save a Russian woman from persecution in Malta.

Cyprus’ request was based on accusations of theft of funds from a Cypriot offshore company affiliated with Letual. The applicant for the events of four years ago was the director of an offshore company from the Cyprus consulting firm ABC Grandeservus Limited, which, as Russian tax authorities found out, services a number of companies associated with Viktor Kharitonin.

In particular, the client of ABC Grandeservus was the offshore Sitipo Investments, which received the property of the Tyumen Plant of Medical Equipment and Instruments (TZMOI). Founded in 1962, the manufacturer of disposable syringes was transferred to Pharmstandard in 2005, after which eight hectares of factory land in the center of Tyumen went to Sitipo. Initially, the offshore belonged to structures associated with Kharitonin. And in the mid-2010s, Volodina gained control over Sitipo. 30 percent of Sitipo remained with Kharitonin. In the spring of 2021, the TZMOI lands were put up for sale and six months later a buyer was found. From the deal, which was closed in December 2021, Sitipo earned $4.5 million. Before this, the offshore accounts were transferred to AresBank, controlled by Kharitonin and his partners.

Two months later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Foreign brands, including cosmetics, announced their withdrawal from the Russian market. The chains were faced with a shortage of assortment, but Letual had more serious problems. First, the company was allegedly attacked with fake news about store closures, and then criticized for doing business in Ukraine. Moreover, accusations poured in from both the Ukrainian and Russian sides. Letual decided to urgently get rid of Ukrainian assets and almost instantly found a buyer - French businessman Philippe Benasin, who has been cooperating with the company for a long time. If you believe official reports, the deal began to be finalized in March 2022 and was closed two months later.

The new owner of Ukrainian assets, Letual, condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine and announced that since March 2022 it has been financing the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Nevertheless, the deal raised questions among both Ukrainian government agencies and Ukrainian investigators, who noticed overlaps between the offshore companies of Benasen and Alexey Kokarev, Volodina’s junior partner. Benasen himself categorically rejected accusations that the deal with Letual was fictitious.

There are several more interesting details associated with offshore companies. Before the deal was closed, the Cypriot companies to which Letual’s Ukrainian assets were registered were transferred to the same ABC Grandeservus, which Kharitonin knew well, for service. At the same time, the Cypriot office became the secretary for the offshore companies through which Volodina and her partners own the Letual network. And after the deal, a Greek woman, who previously owned Kharitonin’s offshore, was appointed director of the Cypriot companies that were transferred to Benacena.

The overlap between secretaries and directors is due to the fact that ABC Grandeservus has many different clients, said Alexandros Tsirides, managing director of the law firm Costas Tsirides & Co. According to his information, Kharitonin had nothing to do with the deal to sell Ukrainian assets to Letual. Benasen replied to Sistema that Kharitonin was not mentioned during the discussion of the deal and they were strangers.

Kharitonin can be considered one of the beneficiaries of Russia’s war with Ukraine: the departure of foreign pharmaceutical companies freed up niches for Pharmstandard, and the billionaire himself acquired 11 Russian factories from the German Henkel, which left the Russian market in the spring of 2023. The war between Russia and Ukraine and its economic consequences did not have a significant impact on the profitability of Kharitonin and Volodina’s business, as indicated in the latest available reports of their offshore companies. Letual and Pharmstandard did not respond to requests; Volodina ignored attempts to contact her.