Dossier Center Investigation: Through diplomatic channels
The son of Nikolai Patrushev coped with sanctions with the help of the family of the Norwegian ambassador
Dossier Center translation of Investigation
Read in Russian: https://dossier.center/diplomat/
The youngest son of the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Andrey, has been mastering projects related to the study of the sea shelf for several years. After the start of the war in Ukraine, he himself and his structures came under sanctions, but Patrushev Jr. managed to cope with the restrictions. As the Dossier Center found out together with the Norwegian publication Stavanger Aftenbladet , the son of a Norwegian diplomat, Gunnar Nordsletten, helped him in this. The Norwegian company provided the ships necessary for the work, and Nordsletten himself, shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, took part in a deal to purchase a drilling company in the interests of Andrey Patrushev.
“The USA, Norway, Denmark, and Canada are pursuing a unified and coordinated policy of preventing Russia from accessing the riches of the shelf. Ideas are being put forward that the Arctic should be approached as the common heritage of humanity, with a view to opening up this region to international oil and gas companies. The military presence of foreign countries in this region is increasing. It is quite obvious that many things do not coincide with the economic, geopolitical, and defense interests of Russia and pose a systemic threat to its national security,” said Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev in 2009.
The former director of the FSB is known for his accusations against other countries. But his speech on the Arctic was dictated not so much by his views on world politics as by his desire to protect his family business. His youngest son, Andrey Patrushev, was supposed to develop the Arctic shelf.
Arctic business
Nikolai Patrushev is Putin’s colleague in the KGB; they both worked in the Leningrad department and knew each other. In 1994–1998, Patrushev was the head of several divisions within the structure of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, which was transformed into the FSB during this period. In 1998, he replaced Putin as head of the main control department of the presidential administration, and the following year he was appointed director of the FSB - and again in Putin’s place. Patrushev held this post until 2008, then moved to the post of Secretary of the Russian Security Council. Patrushev is one of the most influential people in the country. According to The Wall Street Journal, it was he who was behind the murder of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Patrushev has two sons, both graduated from the FSB Academy. The eldest is the former chairman of the board of Rosselkhozbank and the current Minister of Agriculture Dmitry Patrushev. The youngest, Andrey Patrushev, in the early 2000s, was deputy head of the 9th department of the FSB department, responsible for the oil sector. With this position, he was recommended to Rosneft, and in 2006, became an adviser to Igor Sechin. Then he worked in the structure of Zarubezhneft, in 2013 he moved to Gazprom to work on shelf projects, and two years later to Gazprom Neft, where he also specialized in offshore fields. “If you look at the dynamics of investment decisions in global hydrocarbon production..., then 70% were in offshore projects,” he told Kommersant. It is unknown whether Patrushev Jr. resigned from the FSB.
In 2019, he left Gazprom Neft, became a co-owner of the Arkhangelsk seaport, and entered the capital of two IT companies. However, offshore projects remained the basis of his business, and his structures became Gazprom’s main contractors in this area.
Before the war, Patrushev Jr. could afford to directly own shares in the business. Thus, in October 2020, he bought a 37.77% stake in the Marine Arctic Geological Exploration Expedition (MAGE), which is engaged in geological and geophysical work on the shelf, and became the largest co-owner. But on the day the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, February 24, 2022, he came under US sanctions and soon left MAGE capital, saving the organization from being blacklisted. Andrey Patrushev also tried to hide the fact that he was previously a shareholder of the organization. From the data of the tax service, it follows that the son of the Secretary of the Security Council has never received remuneration from MAGE. But the money went to the account of “Alexey Golubev”, who has the same date of birth, INN, and passport number as Andrey Patrushev. “Alexei Golubev” is the pseudonym under which the son of the Secretary of the Security Council is hidden in the Federal Tax Service database. In a similar way, the tax office classified information regarding his father, Nikolai Patrushev.
The shares of the son of the Secretary of the Security Council were passed to the Neva Invest company. The company does not disclose shareholders, but from the bank documents that the Dossier has at its disposal and from the reporting of related legal entities, it follows that the beneficiary is Andrey Dovnarovich. He was born in Minsk, his father worked in the KGB, and in recent years he was the head of the information technology department at Gazprom Neft Shelf - and a subordinate of Andrey Patrushev.
Dovnarovich’s earnings since 2021 have amounted to a total of about 13 million rubles. With this level of income, it is impossible to buy Neva Invest at the market price: dividends from owning shares in the company alone amounted to about 187 million rubles in the first quarter of 2023. Probably Dovnarovich is the nominal owner and is one of the people close to Patrushev Jr. Several companies related to the son of the Security Council Secretary are registered on them.
In 2019, Andrey Patrushev founded the Arctic Initiatives Center. Patrushev Jr. heads the organization, and the leadership includes Rustam Romanenkov and Denis Krylov. They also sit on the boards of directors or hold positions of general directors in companies that were previously directly owned by Andrey Patrushev or were founded by the Arctic Initiatives Center. Among these companies are Polar Star and Aurora Capital, co-owners of Gazprom Shelfproekt. Andrey Dovnarovich is also on the boards of directors of Polar Star and Aurora Capital.
However, Neva Invest also has a more direct connection with Patrushev. The company donated 25.5 million rubles to his Arctic Initiatives center. Formally, this is a non-profit organization that is engaged in the development of the Arctic and which has no beneficiaries. In fact, this is the main structure in Andrey Patrushev’s business, through which he owns shares in various companies.
Saving a business from sanctions is not enough, because it is impossible to carry out work on the shelf without the use of special equipment, including ships. In this, Patrushev Jr. was helped by the family of the Norwegian ambassador Oyvind Nordsletten.
Diplomat's son
Oyvind Nordsletten was the Norwegian Ambassador to Ukraine and Belarus in 1992–1996, Ambassador to Russia in 2000–2008, and Consul General in Murmansk in 2011–2013. His son Gunnar Nordsletten does business in Russia and has lived in Moscow for 20 years. His father-in-law’s connections helped him start his own business: in 2011, Nordsletten married Anastasia Levinzon, whose father is the former deputy governor of the Yamalo-Nenets District Joseph Levinzon.
He worked as an oilman for a long time, stood at the origins of NOVATEK, and was a member of the company’s board of directors. He is also a close friend of the holding’s co-owner Leonid Mikhelson. Mikhelson always denied that Levinzon was one of the owners of NOVATEK, and said that their friendship did not in any way affect the activities of the organization. But it was Levinzon who, in 2003, authorized the transfer to NOVATEK of shares in the company that owned the license for the South Tambey gas field, which soon began to be developed as part of the Yamal LNG project. By the mid-2010s, NOVATEK became the majority shareholder of the project, attracted international investors, including from China, and Vladimir Putin and his entourage received more than $1.1 billion through the resale of project shares.
Nordsletten Jr. also began working with NOVATEK. In 2012, the Sevnor company appeared in Cyprus. By the beginning of the 2020s, it owned legal entities in Russia, eight ships, and served the fields of a gas holding company. Formally, the owners of Sevnor are hidden: among the owners is Argali Holdings, registered in the British Virgin Islands. But in January 2023, Sevnor requested permission to enter a Norwegian port for one of the ships and provided the authorities with documents about the ultimate beneficiaries. The papers stated that Argali Holdings belongs to Gunnar Nordsletten.
After the start of the war, Sevnor divided the business, parted ways with Russian divisions, and changed its name to Marvik Shipping, but did not completely break ties with the country. The company now has five ships that support oil and gas fields in Russia. As follows from the reporting of Marvik Shipping and the data of the Russian register of ships, at least two of them are associated with Patrushev’s “Marine Arctic Geological Exploration Expedition”:
The transport and towing ship Almaz was transferred to the management of MAGE under a bareboat charter agreement dated 2018, the agreement was in force at least as of the end of December 2023.
The vessel for offshore work, Sayan Knyaz, was leased from MAGE in 2022.
Another vessel to support work on the shelf, Kazanin Explorer, also likely carried out voyages for the “Sea Expedition”. It was re-equipped together with MAGE. As follows from the Russian register of ships, in August 2023, Kazanin Explorer was moored at a special floating berth of MAGE in Murmansk, the ship has permission to load and unload from the Northern Lights floating drilling rig, operated by Gazprom Shelfproekt Patrushev.
Since February 2023, the Sea Expedition has been under US sanctions. Nordsletten, responding to a request from Stavanger Aftenbladet, noted that after the outbreak of war in Europe there was a ban on the entry of ships flying the Russian flag, and Russia imposed an embargo on the export of ships. “The European authorities have therefore given temporary permission for the vessels to operate in Russia until a solution is found,” Nordsletten said. According to him, his Marvik Shipping sold all the ships in November-December 2023. He did not provide documents confirming this. There is no evidence in the Russian ship registry that the owner of the ships or the party to the charter agreement has changed.
The interests of Patrushev and Nordsletten intersected in another business. In January 2022, the Aurora company acquired 10 percent of the Cyprus offshore IGS, the parent structure of the Investgeoservice group. The transaction amount is a little more than 400 million rubles, and Aurora also has the right to purchase another 25.4 percent of the shares. IGS owns more than 30 drilling rigs and is a major contractor for NOVATEK. Formally, the owner of Aurora is Roman Ivanov. But Stavanger Aftenbladet discovered a document in the Cyprus Confidential leak in which Ivanov confirms that he acts as a nominal owner, and the real beneficiary is Gunnar Nordsletten.
The son of a Norwegian diplomat told Stavanger Aftenbladet that his relationship with IGS ended between December 2021 and February 2022. At the same time, Nordsletten denies that Roman Ivanov and, accordingly, the Aurora company acted in his interests (this is refuted by the Cyprus Confidential leak). Aurora is still listed in the Cyprus registry as a co-owner of IGS. Market interlocutors connect the company with Andrei Patrushev.
About the son of the head of the Security Council, Nordsletten only said that his Marvik Shipping signed a contract with the Sea Expedition in 2018 and at the same time checked the organization’s shareholders. “The person you are referring to was not listed as a shareholder at that time. We have not received any other information from now on,” said the son of a Norwegian diplomat. He ignored the remaining questions about his relationship with Patrushev.
By: Ilya Rozhdestvensky