Aleksej Fedoricsev and the waking nightmare of an alleged corporate raid
The Roca Team became French champions for the second year running, watched by AS Monaco Basket owner Aleksej Fedoricsev © AS Monaco Basket
The President of AS Monaco Basket since 2022, Aleksej Fedoricsev, is well known in Monaco in a sporting capacity. In Ukraine, however, he is also famous for having developed TIS, a company that owns grain terminals in Odessa.
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Today, the businessman finds himself at the centre of a twofold news story. While on the sports front the Monegasque club has established itself as a European force, on a personal level, its owner is facing a complex legal battle in Ukraine that extends as far as Italy.
A 10-year-old case
Aleksej Fedoricsev, the owner of AS Monaco Basket, made headlines in the Italian press at the end of July. The Florentine daily La Nazione ran the headline “Who is Russian tycoon Alexey Fedorychev?” while Il Giornale focused on Fedoricsev’s beautiful but confiscated property: “A castle in Tuscany and 41 million euros. Record seizure from oligarch Fedorychev” and even the very reputable daily La Repubblica reported “€41 million in assets seized from Russian businessman in Florence at Kiev’s request.”
They all portrayed him as a Russian oligarch who made his fortune in Ukraine with assets estimated at a billion euros, 41 million of which were seized by the Italian judiciary at the request of the Kiev anti-corruption prosecutor’s office, which suspects him of corruption, fraud and money laundering and asked for his assets to be frozen for the duration of the investigation.
Although there is a new twist to the case in Italy, it dates back to 2014. Investigators have seized his assets in Ukraine on 60 occasions. On each occasion, the Ukrainian Court of Appeal dismissed their claims and ordered their release.
We contacted Mr Fedoricsev, who agreed to meet us, accompanied by his lawyer Maître Zabaldano. Mr Fedoricsev claims to be the victim of a corporate raid. The practice is said to be common in former Eastern Bloc countries, including Ukraine, and the aim is to blackmail certain wealthy individuals by exploiting the criminal justice system. This kind of judicial harassment is allegedly used to extort money by threatening legal action and imprisonment. In concrete terms, Fedoricsev claims to be under pressure from the courts, through several fabricated cases that could lead to him sleeping in prison in the Ukraine, to give away his valuable company for free.
A “criminal business plan”
Mr Fedoricsev told us that in 2017 he received a letter containing “a bona fide criminal business plan” demanding USD 25 million in order to avoid the Ukrainian courts being used to put pressure on him and seize his assets. He paid no attention to it at the time. However, the pressure then intensified, according to Maître Zabaldano. A criminal investigation was opened, accusing Fedoricsev of using former company employees to bribe the former chairman of the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine (SFGCU), one of the main state-owned grain exporters, to the tune of $660,000. According to La Nazione, Fedoricsev is also suspected of “never having paid the SFGCU for grain he obtained, totalling more than 60 million dollars, and of money laundering for having reinvested that money in luxury goods and companies based in tax havens.”
In response, his defence told us that it had filed three complaints in Ukraine in 2018 and another in Monaco on 13 January 2023 against the alleged perpetrators and accomplices of the corporate raid. These complaints led the Ukrainian justice system to wiretap several suspects in the case. Today, the lawyer claims to have transcripts of recordings proving the involvement of the suspects, in which the main suspect admits to his machinations, including “regularly using Mr Fedoricsev’s signature” on fake documents. The main suspect also allegedly admitted to having spent 2.4 million dollars to bribe Ukrainian investigators.
The Italian case
The new development in Italy is believed to be due to the extradition to Ukraine of the former SFGCU chairman from Lithuania, where he was living at the time. According to his defence, the ex-chairman “was forced to give incriminating evidence,” against Fedoricsev when he arrived in prison in the Ukraine. According to the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court’s decision of 16 November 2020, shared with Monaco Tribune by Mr Fedoriscev’s legal team, he had claimed in Lithuania to have been threatened with ill-treatment on his return to Ukraine if he did not agree to accuse Fedoricsev. These new developments are said to have enabled the instigators of the corporate raid to request Italy’s assistance, under the 1959 European Convention, to seize the businessman’s assets in order to continue their blackmailing activities. In doing so, the investigators were able to achieve abroad what the Kiev Court of Appeal had refused to do dozens of times, on legal grounds. “The substance of the case is not Italy’s concern. That is a matter for the Ukrainian investigation. The mutual assistance procedure is a mere formality,” says Maître Zabaldano, to explain the fact that Italy agreed to seize the assets without a thorough examination of the case.
Concerning the corporate raid, the defence also denounced a media campaign aimed at tarnishing Fedoricsev’s reputation, portraying him as a Russian oligarch. On this point, the defence claims that Fedoricsev is neither Russian, nor an oligarch. The businessman was certainly born in the USSR, but after the fall of the Soviet bloc, Fedoricsev never applied for Russian citizenship and instead obtained Hungarian nationality. As for the accusation that he is an oligarch, Fedoricsev claims that he started out with nothing, simply buying a bare plot of land next to the Black Sea in Odessa , containing only peat, before building the grain terminal that made his fortune.
A solid defence to protect himself
In order to mount a solid defence, Mr Zabaldano called on a number of experts to prove his client’s innocence. Among them, Judith Pallot, Professor Emeritus at Oxford University and an expert in criminal justice and prison systems in the ex-communist European countries, has compiled a detailed report explaining “the structural problems of the justice system in Ukraine and those specific to Mr Fedoricsev’s case,” demonstrating all the signs of a corporate raid and an abuse of process.
Today, Maître Zabaldano explains the renewed pressure from Italy by Fedoricsev’s increasingly high media profile since his takeover of the Roca Team. He maintains that his client has never hidden from anything or anyone, as proved by his numerous media appearances. The businessman adds: “I am a very traditional gentleman. I moved here in 92-93 and have never changed my address. Everyone knows me. Over the last 10 years, I’ve made a lot of investments in Monaco. My parents are buried in the Principality and Monaco has become my heartland.”
A number of court proceedings are currently underway in Ukraine, some on the basis of complaints lodged by Mr Fedoricsev.