The Russian company "AlfaStrakhovanie", which is co-owned by the sanctioned Russian oligarch Mykhailo Fridman through the "Alfa Group" consortium, provides services for the insurance of official vehicles to units of the Russian Guard fighting against Ukraine as part of the occupying forces.
Friedmanʼs insurance company also insured the cars of a military unit under Putinʼs Directorate of Special Programs. This was found out by the journalists of the "Skhemy" program (Radio Liberty).
According to the investigation, the Russian Guard is one of the largest customers of the services of the AlfaStrakhovanie company, which paid Fridmanʼs company about 280 million rubles (130 million hryvnias) over the past 5 years. Cooperation continued even after Russiaʼs full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
For example, in 2022, the company insured the fleet of Russian National Guard units in the Kaluga, Voronezh, Bryansk and Tula regions. Several of their insured KAMAZ trucks with military insignia were spotted in the pictures of the convoys of the Russian Guards returning from Ukraine to Russia in 2022.
In particular, AlfaStrakhovanie provided services to military unit No. 5598 of the Rosgvardiya, which is the 26th Bars special forces unit, whose fighters, according to Ukrainian intelligence, took part in the war against Ukrainians in March 2022.
"AlfaStrakhovanie" also insured the transport of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the city of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Journalists recorded his cars on video from occupied Mariupol.
The Skhemyʼs investigation also found that the protection of "AlfaStrakhovanie" also extends to the official transport of military personnel who are responsible for Putinʼs personal security.
The "AlfaStrakhovanie" hotline informed journalists that the company does not consider insurance cases of road accidents that occurred in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and suggested that the situation may change after January 1, 2024.
Fridman himself assures that since February 2022 he has resigned from the management bodies of all Russian and foreign companies in which he is a shareholder.
"At the moment, I have no right to participate in the work of these companies in any way. You should address your questions directly to the management of the companies," the oligarch emphasized.
The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, in turn, noted that these data could be the basis for the confiscation of assets belonging to an oligarch in Ukraine.
"We had a lot of information about Fridmanʼs assets. In this case, it is really interesting, because it is possible to trace the connection with aggression... We will contact the law enforcement officers so that they can confirm this information procedurally, and so that we can present it to the court," said Minister Denys Malyuska.
- AlfaStrakhovanie is one of the largest private Russian insurance groups. The company is part of the financial and industrial consortium "Alfa-group". The owner of the Russian "AlfaStrakhovanie" through the Cyprus offshore company is the Luxembourg company ABH Holdings SA, the shareholder of which is Mykhailo Fridman and his business partner Andriy Kosogov.
- In Ukraine, Fridman owns the companies "Kyivstar", Alfa-bank (now Sens-bank), as well as mineral water producers "Morshinska" and "Myrhorodska". Friedman became one of the first Russian oligarchs to be put on the EU sanctions list at the end of February 2022 for close ties with the Putin administration.