Who is the Russian who paid Nick Muzin to lobby for Lulzim Basha?

According to a recent investigation by the BBC, Lulzim Basha has benefited from secret money from Ruia, even from companies that have been used by Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin. Fully 500 thousand dollars were received by Basha through the mediation of Biniatta Trade LP, a company based in Edinburgh, which had hired the veteran Republican activist, Nick Muzin, as Basha's lobbyist.

Although Biniatta Trade was an enigma: no one from the company worked at its official address in Edinburgh, which was also home to hundreds of other shell firms; and the firm was controlled through the first two companies registered in Belize, one of the world's leading secrecy havens.

According to Finance Uncovered , now an investigation by the FU, the BBC and the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation into the use of UK partnerships by questionable figures in the former Soviet Union may reveal the man behind the Biniatta Trade.

He is a 40-year-old Russian helicopter sales director named Maxim Trofimets , born in Moscow, where he still lives and works.

Documents from the Pandora Papers leak reveal a series of confidential agreements through which the two Belizean partners of Biniatta Trade effectively transferred management and ownership rights over the Scottish firm to Trofimets.

According to his LinkedIn profile – which does not mention Biniatta Trade – Trofimets has been sales director at Russian helicopter company Exclases Holding since 2018.

Until it was disrupted by the war in Ukraine, Exclasses sold helicopters for civilian use made by the Italian aerospace and defense group Leonardo, formerly the Anglo-Italian group AugustaËestland, to Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union.

In addition to selling to the offshore oil and gas industry, law enforcement agencies and what it describes as "VVIPs and VIPs", Exclases has also sold Leonardo helicopters to at least one Russian government agency, which has not been named. to carry out what the Italian firm called "special security missions".

Although the leaked documents record Trofimets as the "beneficial owner" of the Scottish firm, it is not at all clear whether he used it to secretly pursue his personal interests, or whether his actions were influenced by someone else. Journalists found no connection between Trofimets and Albania and no clear reason why he could finance the activities of foreign agents in Basha.

Finance Uncovered attempted to contact Trofimets via email, WhatsApp and LinkedIn but received no response. Basha and Muzin also did not respond to requests for comment.

Matryoshka doll plan

When press attention began to fall on the Biniatta Trade in late 2017, the UK had recently begun asking obscure Scottish firms, fronted by nominees, to name their ultimate owners. From August 2017, all limited partnerships in Scotland were required to declare these "persons of significant control" (PSCs), as they were called in regulatory jargon. But Biniatta Trade had made no such statement.

In UK law, if a firm has many investors, but none with a quarter of the voting rights (or equivalent control), then the business can continue without ever reporting a KVV. And in September 2017, an employee of Alpha Consulting signed documents Biniatta Trade sent to Companies House stating that all PSC statements - of which there were none - were up to date.

But documents unearthed by the Pandora Papers suggest there was someone with significant control over the Biniatta Trade. In fact, on three occasions, the same Alpha Consulting employee signed private agreements giving Trofimets authorization for Biniatta Trade's affairs.

These agreements gave Trofimets the authority "to transact, manage, carry on and do all and any business affairs" for Biniatta Trade.

Other leaked files also describe Trofimets as the "beneficial owner" of Biniatta Trade.

In UK law, it is an offense for a director or representative not to bear the name of a person who owns or has significant control over a UK registered firm. It carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison and a fine.

Despite these modest digs, other files from the Pandora Papers suggest that Trofimets had connections in rarer circles. In 2016, in connection with another offshore company he was setting up, a bank in Liechtenstein wrote him a reference letter.