Ramzan Kadyrov and his associates use three Chechen legal entities — Benofon, Orbita and Izumrud — for money laundering, according to the Project’s investigation. Money is withdrawn from them under the guise of interest-free loans to individuals working as taxi drivers and welders, and cashed out.
In total, according to financial documents obtained by journalists, the companies own assets worth about 150 billion rubles. The Spark-Interfax service, which aggregates data on legal entities, included two of them, Benofon and Orbita, in the top 5 largest companies in Chechnya in terms of annual revenue. “Emerald” is in 27th place.
“Project” explains the principle of their work using the example of “Benophon”, which has only one employee on its staff. In 2023, the company received transfers worth 64 billion rubles from one hundred budget organizations and private companies, many of which are associated with the Kadyrov family.
For example, Benofon received almost 1.5 billion rubles from the Grozny mayor’s office under a contract for the renovation of schools and improvement of the city. The construction company MegaStroyInvest, which is owned by the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, transferred 3.2 billion rubles to them.
Subsequently, 48 billion rubles were transferred under the guise of interest-free loans to 15 men from the Shali district of Chechnya. They were sent amounts from 600 million to 14 billion rubles, which were then cashed in banks. The Project notes that it could not find any other business or source of income for the men that could explain the purpose of the transfers. Among them were a car welder, a taxi driver, and the head of the housing and utilities department in the village of Vedeno. The youngest of them was born in 2004.
In addition to money laundering, the Project investigation also tells about the disappearances of Kadyrov's associates and his connections with the defendants in the cases of the murder of politician Boris Nemtsov and journalist Paul Klebnikov. A separate part of the material is devoted to Kadyrov's unofficial wives, some of whom were the mothers of his children. The Project has identified at least 11 of them. Kadyrov himself called his first wife Medni the mother of all 14 of his children.
Previously, only one of them, Fatima Khazueva, was known. «Proekt» has now linked her to four children of the head of Chechnya. According to the publication's sources, she became pregnant with Kadyrov's first child at the age of 14, when she was still in school. «In the 2000s, Kadyrov took girls, as they say, «out of control.» Kadyrov's people could catch beautiful young Chechen women right on the street, on their way to school,» the journalists recount the words of their interlocutors.