In Russia, "everything is collapsing," power is "in the hands of an asshole." A recording of a conversation attributed to billionaire Roman Trotsenko appeared on the internet
Sistema project: A new recording emerges of Russia's billionaires complaining about Putin and the state of affairs inside Russia
April 25, 2023, 20:39 Moscow time
Sistema is (a Nastoyashchee Vremya and Radio Svoboda investigative project)
Sistema (an investigative project of Present Time and Radio Liberty) received by mail a link to a publicly available audio recording of a conversation allegedly by billionaire Roman Trotsenko. His interlocutor was not indicated in the letter, but, judging by the conversation, it could be businessman Nikolai Matushevsky.
Trotsenko is the former president of the United Shipbuilding Corporation and an ex-adviser to the president of Rosneft Igor Sechin, one of the businessmen close to Vladimir Putin. Matushevsky, a longtime friend of Trotsenko and founder of the Moscow design factory Flacon, has publicly sympathized with the opposition, and for example, posted videos of the 2021 Moscow protests on Instagram.
The letter to Sistema was sent from an email address containing the name Oleg in the title but was not linked to any social networks. The author of the letter provided Trotsenko's real telephone number as indirect evidence of the authenticity of the recording. He did not respond to editorial questions.
Trotsenko confirmed to Sistema that he knows Matushevsky, but did not communicate with him "for a year and a half, probably." Roman's voice from the audio recording does not look like Trotsenko's voice, his acquaintance believes and suggests that the recording could have been fabricated by competitors: "He is a big businessman, somewhere he interferes with someone."
After the Sistema journalist contacted Matushevsky, he said that he did not know what he was talking about and asked for a link to the recording. After about 40 minutes (the length of the recording itself), Matushevsky said that "this conversation did not take place." He added that he last spoke with Trotsenko in 2022 and certainly never discussed politics. “I think this is a fake or someone’s stupid joke using AI [artificial intelligence],” Matuszewski added.
Can it be argued that the conversation is genuine?
In favor of the fact that the record may be genuine, several facts speak at once. Firstly, during the conversation, Matushevsky claims that he is in Bali, which is confirmed by photos from his instagram. Secondly, the phone number from which Roman allegedly called corresponds to Trotsenko's number at the disposal of the editors. Thirdly, the details in the conversation are consistent with information about businessmen. So, Roman calls himself "Roman Viktorovich" and says that in ten years he will be 62 years old. In addition, Nikolai repeatedly talks about Flacon projects, which he owned until 2021.
However, the authenticity of this audio recording has not been officially confirmed by anyone, and it would be possible with relative certainty that the voices of men belong to Trotsenko and Matushevsky only as a result of a professional audio examination.
A 40-minute phone conversation between the two men appeared on YouTube on April 17. At the time of publication, it has a little over 100 views.
"Making money and holding power"
The dialogue between, presumably, Trotsenko and Matushevsky took place in early January 2023. In the first part of the conversation, two men - they call each other Kolya and Roma - are discussing holidays in Bali. Kolya tells Roma that there are many investors and opportunities on the island. “Recently, it’s been really hard for me in Russia, I understood that something was wrong, it’s not good to do it there,” Kolya complains, and the person whose voice the authors of the leak attribute to Trotsenko agrees. After Kolya talks in detail about his new project - "Airbnb for Business". "That's right, you don't have to remember what happened in Russia. It doesn't exist anymore and won't happen again," Roma approves the idea and notes that in Indonesia "everything will grow tenfold in ten years, and in Russia, it will fall twice ".
Then the friends have a long discussion about moving and children, infrastructure in Bali, and personal matters, but in the end, the conversation turns to a discussion of the war and the situation in Russia.
“Unfortunately, Russia, which we love so sincerely, ended up in the clutches of some assholes, [damn]. Who profess, [damn], some strange compositions, [damn], of the 19th century. , this will end in hell, [damn]. People will kill each other on the streets of Moscow,” Roma says wearily, while Kolya agrees with him and tries to turn the conversation to healthy eating and vegetarianism. But the conversation quickly turns to politics. Kolya says that he recently watched a video clip of New Year's greetings from the presidents, "starting with Yeltsin [...] to the last, when this moron is not against the background of the Christmas tree, as always, but the military."
"How can a country live and develop where the only ideology is earning money and holding power by one group of people?" Roman asks his interlocutor. “There is no concept of ‘next’. They will die [damn] at some point in time and leave nothing behind. It will just be a scorched desert,” continues the man with a voice attributed to Trotsenko. Nikolai only sighs, and Roma continues to complain - not all Russians realized what was happening. “Then this simple [garbage] will reach everyone, everyone. And it turns out that it’s already too late. People won’t be able to withdraw money, they won’t be able to leave, their children are called to the war… [Horror], in short,” he finishes the thought.
Then the connection disappears for a while, and the friends begin to discuss the presidential elections coming up in 2024. "2023 is the last year. Who got together, transferred the money, organized something ... Fate, in 2022, unfolded everything and showed how it could be, but gave 2023, [damn], to figure everything out," - warns Roman Kolya and advises him to immediately apply for citizenship. "This will be your best investment. Look for lawyers right now," insists Roma. “Everything is collapsing in Russia, [damn it]. Fate has given you a year to pull out all your loved ones, pull out money, and everything you need. But he refused, and now it can't be done for any money.
“Who are you, I told them, I am a Russian patriot, I love my homeland,” Roma retells his reaction to the proposal of the Cypriot authorities. “We love our homeland, it’s just that there are people who don’t love it, and we can’t do anything with them,” Kolya sighs again. A friend tries to reassure him that in 10-15 years, both of them will be needed by the homeland. The two men agree that Nikolai needs to get a new citizenship and withdraw money, and relatives from the country.
An award from Putin and work for Sechin. Who is Roman Trotsenko
Roman Trotsenko is one of the richest Russian businessmen. In 2023, Forbes estimated his fortune at $3.8 billion. Nikolai Matushevsky is known as the creator of a number of creative spaces, including the Moscow Flacon design factory. The idea of this project was proposed to Matushevsky by Trotsenko, whom he called "a school friend." Trotsenko also has a cultural project - together with his wife Sophia, he develops the Moscow art cluster "Winzavod". But Trotsenko's main focus is still business.
Trotsenko's business career can be considered typical for modern Russia, the Vedomosti newspaper wrote: he started trading computers in the 1990s, spent a short time as a banker, and then started buying up Moscow real estate, river ports, and regional airports. This business brought Trotsenko a fortune and brought him into contact with Vladimir Putin's inner circle - his aide Igor Levitin and the powerful head of Rosneft Igor Sechin, who has been working with Putin since 1991. From 2012 to 2015, Trotsenko headed Rosneft Overseas, a Swiss subsidiary of Rosneft, and also worked as an adviser to Sechin and called himself his student.
Trotsenko is building a deep-water port as part of a mega-project overseen by Putin personally to develop the Northern Sea Route. In February 2023, a month after the alleged conversation between Trotsenko and Matushevsky, Putin participated in the opening of a terminal in Novosibirsk Tolmachevo, which belongs to Trotsenko, and two days later he awarded the businessman the Order of Friendship for "labor success."
Before the start of a full-scale war with Ukraine, Trotsenko regularly participated in Putin's meetings with big business. But on February 24, 2022, when Putin gathered businessmen in the Kremlin hours after the attack on Ukraine, Trotsenko was not among them. Subsequently, many participants in that meeting fell under Western sanctions. The billionaire was also not seen at the last annual congress of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) in March 2023, where Putin spoke. Prior to this, the bureau of the board of the RSPP, which was nicknamed the "trade union of oligarchs," left a number of large businessmen. Trotsenko was also a member of the bureau of the board of the RSPP and headed its competition development committee. Now the chairman of the committee, according to the website of RSPP, is the founder of the Evraz metallurgical group Alexander Abramov, who fell under sanctions of Great Britain and New Zealand in 2022. Trotsenko said that, as before, he is a member of the bureau of the board of the RSPP, but now he heads the RSPP Coordinating Council for the Development of the Arctic and Northern Territories.
What does this conversation have in common with the recording of Prigozhin and Akhmedov?
This conversation is not the first audio recording of a conversation between representatives of the Russian business elite leaked to the Internet. It has much in common with a recording of a conversation published in March 2023, allegedly between music producer Iosif Prigozhin and ex-senator Farkhad Akhmedov.
In both entries, the interlocutors criticize the current government and the war in Ukraine. In both cases, the voices of the interlocutors are separated into different channels: the voice attributed to Trotsenko sounds in the left audio channel, presumably Matushevsky - in the right one. Both conversations are posted on YouTube from a new account, in each of which the name Oleg appears (Oleksandr Oleq - in the case of "Prigozhin and Akhmedov," and Oleg Obv 23 - in the case of "Trotsenko with Matushevsky"). Both videos allegedly recorded a conversation between businessmen included in the top 100 Russian billionaires on the Forbes list (Trotsenko - 38th place, Akhmedov - 99th). At the same time, apparently, Trotsenko's possible interlocutor Matushevsky was not identified by the authors of the video and was simply called "Kolya." This may mean that it was Trotsenko's conversation that was tapped and recorded.
It is also worth paying attention to the description of the video with the conversation between Prigozhin and Akhmedov. The title and description are in Ukrainian, but both have a lot of errors and appear to have been translated using Google Translate or a similar program. In the case of the alleged entry by Trotsenko, the title is in Russian and there is no description.
In the case of Iosif Prigozhin’s conversation, the video was distributed using social media networks, but this time a link to YouTube was sent to Sistema by mail.
Iosif Prigozhin first recorded a video where he called the recording fake, then in an interview with Fontanka he said that he did not remember such a conversation, and "neural networks today allow you to do any miracles." He also stated that "this recording is a symbiosis of spoken phrases and those that were generated, they were never spoken." Farhad Akhmedov did not comment on the record.
https://www.currenttime.tv/a/systema-audio-trotsenko/32378931.html
Note: Iosif Prigozin ended up confirming that some parts of his recording were authentic and Russia’s FSB intelligence agency confirmed the authenticity of the recording to Istories.
So is this recording real? We will know soon enough!