Roman Trotsenko was born on 12 September 1970 in Moscow to a family of medical workers.
In 1992 he graduated from the economics faculty of the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Moscow State University named after Lomonosov with a major in economics of Japan. In 2001 he graduated from Law School of the same university.
In 1987—1988 he underwent training in Yele in the USA, and Coimbra University in Portugal.
From January 1987 to January 1989 he was the financial director of Kazakh republic TV network Aziya TV (1989—1991).
From January 1989 to January 1992 he chaired the board of trustees at the Al Baraka Kazakhstan bank.
From January 1992 to December 1993 he served as the CEO at Intermediabirzha.
In 1992-94 he headed Financy i audit company.
From January 1994 to July 1994 he was the CEO at Stroylizing.
From July 1994 to March 1996 he chaired the board of trustees at Platinum-bank.
In 1996-1998 he was the chairman of the board of trustees at CJSC Promyshlennoe Razvilie.
In 1996 Trotsenko headed the board of directors at Passazhirsky port.
In 1997 he headed the board of directors at Yuzhny rechnoy port LTD.
In 1999 after Ph.D. studies he joins the Ministry of Transport as adviser to the Minister.
From 2000 to 2002 Trotsenko served as the CEO at Moscow inland navigation division.
In 2007 Roman Trotsenko established AEON Corporation.
In October 2009 he was appointed president of OSK (United shippbuilding Corporation)
On 1 July 2012 he left OSK.
Since 2012 he has been the advisor to Rosneft head Igor Sechin and supervisor of shelf projects of the company.
Source: Wikipeadia; Kommersant issued 5 August 1999
As of February 2013 Roman Trotsenko's fortune amounts to $1.2 billion.
Source: CEO, February 2013
Roman Trotsenko is married, with two sons. His wife, Sofia Trotsenko, was born on 6 November 1979. She is the managing director of Winzavod Centre of Modern Art.
Source: Snob, Sofia Trotsenko's project participant page
"Aleksandr Bastrykin, Chairman of the Investigative Committee, took personal control over the St. Petersburg investigation in a case of embezzlement of 38 million rubles allocated to Northern Shipyard, part of United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK). In the near future the investigators plan to bring charges against Dmitry Gromyko and Aleksey Mordovichev, the leaders of Sameta - tax and legal advice, where part of the funds allocated for the shipyard ended up. Mordovich and Gromyko are long-term business partners of OSK ex-president, Roman Trotsenko, who recently became primary suspect in the Investigative Committee investigation and who habitually refers to himself as the right-hand of Igor Sechin [http://expert.ru/south / 2014/12/volgo-donu-grozit-neftyanoj-zatyik /].
It was Trotsenko’s name in the case file that made Russian chief investigator Aleksandr Bastrykin take the case under his personal control. His subordinate, head of the Main Investigative Directorate at the Investigative Committee in St. Petersburg, Aleksandr Klaus promised that soon there would be more details in the investigation [http://www.compromat.ru/page_34427.htm]: Mordovich and Gromyko have quite some facts to disclose. For over ten years they have been working with Federal Tax Service and arbitration courts to ensure they make decisions in the best interests of Trotsenko. Along the way, the founders of Sameta protected their own vital interests concerning large tax returns.
In addition to troubles with the Investigative committee, Gromyko and Mordovichev are now challenged by the Russian special forces. Turns out, a co-owner of Sameta is a Ukrainian politician Vladimir Vashko - one of the sponsors and organizers of Kyiv Maidan. Another business partner of Roman Trotsenko [http://rospres.com/hearsay/14128] is Vladimir Antonov, a Lithuanian banker who is hiding from law enforcement in London and prefers to give interviews to Ukrayinska Pravda, the internet voice of the self-styled Kiev authorities.
"Given the connections that Gromyko and Mordovich got in arbitration courts, Federal Tax Servise and several other departments, Sameta quickly got itself a number of clients. Among the new clients was Roman Trotsenko, adviser to Igor Sechin, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Roman Trotsenko met leaders of Sameta back in 2000. Russian tax police statements show that the illegal business around tax return was closely associated with the companies of Interros group owned by Vladimir Potanin. In the late 1990s, a former aide to President Boris Yeltsin, Major-General of Military Intelligence Boris Kuzyk together with Interros established New programs and concepts (NPK). As its contribution to the share capital of the company, Interros provided securities of a number of companies, including Northern Shipyard bringing it under full control of NPK. North-Western Shipping Company also ended up under the full control of New programs and concepts. Dmitry Gromyko became a kind of an overseer for the interests of Interros in NPK. Officially, he took one of the posts in the shipping company.
By this time Roman Trotsenko already owned Moscow inland navigation division and actively developed his business. His usual manner was hostile takeovers, including bribery of top managers in the camp of competitors. In NPK Dmitry Gromyko was the bribed top manager who was supposed to help Trotsenko get certain assets of the entity. Gromyko arranged another helper for Trotsenko, his friend Yuri Tufanov who in 1998 to 2007 served as the company’s Deputy General Director.
Their joint efforts led Northern Shipyard which already at that time was financially supported by the state, North-Western Shipping Company and other companies managed by NPK into distress. However, Trotsenko failed to gain control over Northern Shipyard. It was given over to a more influential figure, a banker Sergei Pugachev. Trotsenko got his share as well, in a number of other entities under NPK.
Cooperation with Gromyko worked out all right for Trotsenko, so later he used this businessman and his Sameta for most of his projects. Mordovichev and Gromyko were to solve various local problems such as to negotiate with representatives of the Tax Service for their refusal from tax claims in large amounts; urge arbitration courts to rule in a certain way; bribe people in the camp of competitors, etc. Such tasks required little legal skill. It required connections in the Tax Service and among judges, and to have money to meet their financial needs. And they had it all. Gromyko and Mordovichev were well connected, and Trotsenko had the money.
Today Sameta employs about 50 people. Some of them are lawyers that are being prepared for future introduction to the courts, large state-owned entities, tax authorities, other government entities. For example, in 2013 Yevgeniy Strelnikov, a former employee of Sameta, became a judge in the Moscow Arbitration Court. Just now his colleague and the presiding judge Andrey Grechishkin is considering a multibillion lawsuit [http://inright.ru/articles/real% 20estate/20140418/id_1192 /] for the recovery of funds in favour of the firm owned by Roman Trotsenko. Alan Khadziev, also a former Sameta employee, is now head of a sub department in one of the Ministry of Energy departments.
The other part Sameta staff are former employees of the tax service and other government agencies who already performed some work for Sameta in their previous engagements and got the job here after facing trouble. Among them a lot of people came to Sameta on personal patronage of Trotsenko. For example, a former spokesman for the Ministry of Transport, Aleksandr Filimonov. He came to the Ministry of Transport when Trotsenko was an official in this agency, so when talking to the media he defended rather the interests of Trotsenko than those of the ministry".
Source: http://www.compromat.ru/page_34507.htm
"From what Novoselskiy is saying it appears that he never acted on his own and always implemented what had been decided by the management, including in the case of theft of 38 million rubles. His former boss, ex-president of OSK Roman Trotsenko, already started to prepare for possible issues with law enforcement. His representatives announced that Trotsenko has been seriously injured and needs a surgery and long-term treatment. Most likely he would have to go abroad, where Trotsenko would be unavailable for Russian investigators".
"When in 2009 Trotsenko was appointed president of OSK, his task was to consolidate numerous corporate assets, improve the financial performance of shipyards, provide them with orders. A set of government contracts worth 231 billion rubles was meant to help him out. These funds were to go to the shipyards that would build new military and civilian vessels and get out of the crisis. The fate of the allocated federal budget funds became the subject of separate investigations and new criminal cases will yet be initiated time and again. This is a topic for a whole other article. In this one we are talking about the ways Trotsenko used to improve financial performance of shipyards without providing them with funds.
Most shipyards had huge debts to creditor banks, tax debts in gigantic amounts, debts to suppliers and subcontractors. All of them filed claims to arbitration courts so that shipyards were about to officially go bankrupt.
Trotsenko made a decision to transfer most of these debts to OSK, to the great relief of both shipyards managers and the banks who nearly ceased to expect to get their money back. What agreements which firms signed with what banks is still out there for the investigators to find out from Novoselskiy. And he knows.
But there were still debts of enterprises to the tax authorities and suppliers of raw materials, goods and services. Trotsenko found a way out of this situation as well. Almost his entire business career he resorted to hostile takeovers. In this field Trotsenko, according to investigators, established good relationships with at least five teams of takeover experts to address delicate problems with courts, law enforcement agencies and the Federal Tax Service. The problems were mostly solved one way, through bribery.
According to eyewitness, since 2010 Trotsenko actively communicated with the members of these teams and gave them orders to solve all the problems of athis or that shipyard in OSK. "Spend as much as you need, everything will be reimbursed," Trotsenko would allegedly say to them. It is clear that representatives of these teams were not in the court room during official proceedings or in the Federal Tax Service during proceedings concerning tax dodging. Nevertheless, arbitration courts ruled in favour of the shipyards, and tax authorities lifted their claims. You can tell this cost some money".
"Pushy suppliers could be dealt with more radically. The teams used threats and paid for initiation of criminal cases. When the work was done, representatives of the teams went to Trotsenko to get their pay. He told them to contact the shipyards that would sign contracts (often retroactively) for legal and other services for exactly the amount the team wanted for their work done to solve problems. All legal technicalities were to be settled by Ilya Novoselskiy, the right hand of Trotsenko in OSK.
By 34 Ilya Novoselskiy worked most of his life in various construction companies and met Trotsenko when he became interested in this kind of business. In particular, in 2009 Novoselskiy was deputy general director for legal affairs in Standard Development LLC. The main owner of this enterprise is the family of Kaliningrad Governor Nikolai Tsukanov, an old friend of Roman Trotsenko.
According to some sources, Trotsenko has a share in Standard Development. When he became president of OSK, he soon invited Ilya Novoselskiy to take the position of head of the legal department. Novoselskiy represented OSK in the boards of directors of more than 20 shipyards and everyone knew that everything that Novoselskiy says is instructions directly from Trotsenko and therefore must be implemented at once. Novoselskiy also was engaged in working on all state contracts with the shipyards. Among other things, he was engaged in registration of contracts with the so-called problem-solvers. Trotsenko valued his right hand a lot and constantly indulged in bonuses from one to three million rubles a month".
"It is worth noting that Trotsenko already had quite a story about bonus payments that almost turned into a criminal case against him . Shortly before his dismissal from OSK in July 2012 Trotsenko offered a job in the company to his friend whom he appointed the chief of the personnel department. The president immediately gave a 3 million rubles bonus to the new staff member, a sort of a sign-on bonus. The new head of the department left in a few months and of course kept the bonus. The new OSK leadership at first was thinking about reporting the failed employee to the police. However, in December 2013 they filed a lawsuit to Moscow Arbitration Court against Trotsenko, seeking to recover the 3 million rubles.
If we go back to the story about Northern Shipyard, by the end of 2011 the Shipyard was on the verge of bankruptcy. By this time, in addition to numerous debts to banks and suppliers the shipyard got another claim from the tax authorities that required additional payments to the budget of almost 1 billion rubles. Help came from OSK president and his longtime friend Dmitry Gromyko, who had actively helped Trotsenko absorb Russian ports and shipping companies. Gromyko at one time served in the leadership of the North-Western Shipping Company".
"Dmitry owned the law firm Sameta which employs many former employees of the Federal Tax Service. Sameta was one of the teams of the so-called problem solvers for Trotsenko that used informal methods to eliminate the debts of enterprises in OSK before tax authorities and subcontractors. Around the same time as the abovementioned events at Northern Shipyard Gromyko entered the Public Council of the Federal Tax Service as deputy chairman of the Public Organization Historical and Legal Club. It is not surprising that the tax authorities could not refuse their Public Council member to help out with the1 billion rubles claims against Northern Shipyard. Informal price of the settlement is clear from the 38 million rubles contract for legal services signed between the CEO of Northern Shipyard Aleksey Ushakov and Sameta.
"Now it was time for Roman Trotsenko to get nervous. His representatives have already announced that Trotsenko got badly injured in a landing accident of his private jet. Allegedly, he needs a surgery and a long course of treatment. By the way, to make the announcement look more convincing, Trotsenko talks to his visitors while lying down, claiming that extreme pain would not let him sit and stand. In addition, a vast spectrum of informal methods is now aimed at closing OSK criminal case and keeping the media away from voicing anything about biggest corruption scandal in the military-industrial complex of Russia.
It is clear that when the whole situation goes south, the injury will provide for Roman Trotsenko to go abroad for treatment for an infinite period of time. According to a source in law enforcement agency, if in the course of investigation the surgery would not take place, Trotsenko will face serious questions in the next 2-3 months. This is how long it will take to verify the information received from Novoselskiy. It is possible that by this time there will be more criminal cases chocking the legal advice agreements for OSK shipyards run by Roman Trotsenko".
"Trotsenko is under cross fire and is in trouble not only with the representatives of law enforcement agencies, but also with the problem solvers he had used to settle issues on his behalf. His resignation in 2012 was unexpected so some of the problem solvers did not have time to sign contracts with the shipyards, whereas the work was already done, the money spent for bribes. It is clear that they demanded their costs paid back not from OSK, but from Trotsenko who they initially agreed to do the work with. The total debt is estimated at approximately near the amount that Northern Shipyard paid to Sameta. At first Trotsenko claimed force majeure and promised to fix this soon. When the visitors were particularly annoying, he paid them some 2-3 million rubles. However, he has not yet paid up, preferring to avoid further contact with them".
Source: "Izvestia", 26 March2014
"United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK) has sent to the Prosecutor General files on audit of spending the 14.2 billion rubles allocated in 2009-2012 by order of the Prime Minister of Russia for financial recovery of Amur Shipbuilding Plant (ASZ). According to the audit, the then leadership of the corporation headed by Roman Trotsenko used the money inappropriately: paid out some OSK loans, transferred to deposit accounts, signed agreements disadvantageous for ASZ. Reviewers also drew the attention of prosecutors to the fact that despite the order of the Prime Minister to provide help in 2011, Trotsenko initiated bankruptcy of the shipyard, which prevents ASZ even further from fully carrying out its obligations in the state defense order.
The audit mentioned earlier is that by OSK financial control department of the implementation of economic recovery plans at ASZ for the period from 2009 to 2013. Back in 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin instructed the leadership of OSK to devise a financial recovery plan for ASZ. The budget allocated 14.2 billion rubles to save the entity. However, as the audit showed, the then management of the corporation ignored the order of the Prime Minister.
"From 1 January 2009 to 1 July 2013 not a single decision relating to the restructuring was made during ASZ General Meetings of Shareholders and the Board of Directors. ASZ never saw an approved financial recovery plan. Recovery plan has not been devised", says the audit.
During this period, four of the six ASZ board members were representatives of OSK. One of them was company’s president Roman Trotsenko, who also headed Far Eastern Center of Shipbuilding and Ship Repair (FECSR). Another was head of the legal department, Ilya Novoselskiy, who is now under investigation. The third was head of department for managing state order, Anatoly Shlemov. And the fourth one was head of the civil shipbuilding department Dmitry Sapov. Most key decisions by the board were made by this group of people.
During the audit it was found out that the funds allocated to support Amur shipyard were squandered.
"In the audited period OSK received 14.2 billion rubles from the federal budget for financial recovery of ASZ. The money never reached the distressed company and was used by OSK to repay a loan from Sberbank under non-revolving credit line started 17 December 2009", says the report of the Department of financial Control. This agreement was signed by Roman Trotsenko.
In 2009, by Vladimir Putin's order it was decided to provide ASZ with about 2 billion rubles. But, according to the auditors, the shipyard never got the money. "Funds provided as grant assistance from the federal budget in the amount of 1.9 billion rubles for the completion of the order number 518 by the order of OSK President Roman Trotsenko fully transformed into payables receivable from ASZ to OSK”, says the audit.
“The situation was no better with funds of Ministry of Defense, which were transferred to ASZ within contract obligations for the state defense order. This is about 7.6 billion rubles,” says a source at OSK to an Izvestia reporter.
According to the auditors, only 1.2 billion rubles of all the allocated funds were used for the purposes intended. Thus, one billion rubles got transferred to banks on deposit accounts and most of the money went to the projects of FECSR led by Trotsenko up until the middle of 2011. The company signed a contract with ASZ for the construction of supply vessels, but transferred to Amur shipyard only 3 million rubles, while the company spent more than 1.2 billion rubles while working on the project. "Work on the supply vessels worth 1.2 billion rubles could be conducted only by advances from the Defense Ministry", concluded the auditors. According to their calculations, "no less than 4.1 billion rubles of the state defense order payment was diverted from initial purposes and spent on things not related to its implementation."
All this brought ASZ on the edge. "OSK management selected restructuring plan that only increased payables due, despite the 14.2 billion rubles allocated by the government, by 3.6 billion rubles," noted the auditors.
According to the auditors, when Trotsenko was around, ASZ accounting showed that the company started to make a profit and the balance sheet total soared. However, it turned out that the progress existed only on paper. "An increase in the value of assets is largely artificial and due to the revaluation of fixed assets for the purpose of an additional share issue with a positive net asset value", OSK financial control specialists note.
Despite the direct order of Vladimir Putin to assist the shipyard, in October 2011 OSK president Roman Trotsenko initiated bankruptcy procedures. He sent a letter to the general director of SPMBM Malachite (part of OSK) in which he ordered to apply to the Arbitration Court of Khabarovsk Krai with a claim of insolvency (bankruptcy) of ASZ. The reason for this was a 16.5 million rubles debt of ASZ to Malachite which the parties had negotiated about and worked out a solution long ago. Malachite followed the order from senior management and the court brought temporary management to ASZ.
Trotsenko rejects all accusations from OSK.
“All decisions relating to spending funds allocated to ASZ were made based on orders from the Russian government and were registered by means of the decision of the Board,” explained Roman Trotsenko to Izvestia. “The last financial tranches were planned for 2013-2014, so the procedure of shipyard’s reorganization would have been completed only by the end of this year.”
ASZ representatives failed to promptly respond to questions of Izvestia.
Amur shipyard was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense and is currently building two corvettes 20380 (by the names of Sovershennyi and Gromkiy) and also is repairing and modernizing 877Varshavyanka diesel-electric submarine. The total price of these contracts is 30 billion rubles. Several weeks ago Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu voiced deep criticism about the way works are organized at ASZ and concerning the repairs of existing ships and delay in construction of new ones.
Source: http://www.compromat.ru/page_34427.htm
"The documents drawn up by Vlasenko on the decision of Grechishkin are considered crucial in hearing about 2.5 billion rubles that real estate investors paid for apartments in Kutuzovskaya mile residential complex, still under construction. Why Grechishkin made such a strange choice when selecting an expert? It was on the recommendation of the representatives from Avanta belonging to Roman Trotsenko, co-owner in Potok (current name of Mirax Group owned by Sergei Polonsky) and concurrently head of Rosneft Overseas SA.
It is hard to go against his will. At a certain point Grechishkin made a ruling that led to the transition of Yukos assets to Rosneft, and apparently in the habit he again acts in favour of Roman Trotsenko, who is linked to Rosneft. However, this time the withdrawal of money invested into Kutuzovskaya mile through the ruling of judge Grechishkin is not in the interests of state-owned company, but for the personal benefit of its top manage, Roman Trotsenko".
"Then came the crisis of 2008 and Polonsky’s enterprises were unable to invest in the construction of residential quarters, all works stopped. This was when Roman Trotsenko, president of United Shipbuilding Corporation and adviser to the president of Rosneft Igor Sechin, joined Mirax Group as a shareholder. After several years with no funding the developer terminated the co-investment agreement with Avanta and attracted other investors and contractors. For a long time nothing was happening to solve the issue with the defrauded real estate investors, even though the developer originally offered to guarantee apartments for the co-investors. Trotsenko and Polonsky were against such actions. Last fall, after the change of leadership in Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin included the defrauded investors in a supplementary agreement to the investment contract between the city and the developer".
"Last year it also turned out that the fugitive oligarch Sergei Polonsky who is hiding out in Cambodia, completely sold his assets including Federation tower in Moscow-City and Avanta, all to Roman Trotsenko. Trotsenko’s representatives announced that money collected from defrauded investors and invested in construction by Avanta, a total of 2.5 billion rubles, plus interest in the amount of approximately another 1.3 billion must be returned to this LLC. A lawsuit was filed to Moscow Arbitration Court. What a twist! The money once stolen from the defrauded investors is demanded not to use it in the construction of houses but to transfer to the entity that previously had stolen 3.2 billion rubles belonging to real estate investors.
The situation is clearly ridiculous. It would seem that bringing such a matter to court is not just immoral and illegal, but also stupid. It is as if a con artist who got hold of a person’s wallet by means of deception would require the court to recognize his right to own the money in the wallet of the victim on the ground that it was in his hands before his arrest by the police and thus was included in the list of physical evidence at the time of arrest. But jusge Andrey Grechishkin is willing to consider the claim. Apparently, since the time of rulings on Yukos case, he still believes that the decisions in favour of Roman Trotsenko are acts in the public interest and not in the interest of businessman Trotsenko or Rosneft".
"In order to determine the value of Fort Kutuzov (building 2ABV) Roman Trotsenko’s entity suggested Grechishkin called upon an assessment organization in Odintsovo district of Moscow region, NPO Standard. The defendant (developer, FTSSR) suggested to pick a more famous and influential institution working in the field of construction evaluation. But the judge was determined and supported his choice by alleged "high professionalism and competence" of the company’s employees".
"Such absurdities can be found in literally every word of NPO Standard appraisal report. Truly professional experts can’t help laughing at this amateurish text that looks more like a schoolboy essay after a first ever visit to a construction site. But the judge Andrey Grechishkin accepted the appraisal report just fine. All in all, hearings clearly unfold so as to protect the interests of Roman Trotsenko".
"The current owner of Avanta, Roman Trotsenko, is closely linked to Rosneft. At a certain point he served as adviser to the president of the company Igor Sechin. Now he heads a subsidiary, Rosneft Overseas SA. At the same time he has his business including that with Polonsky, the con artist who fled to Cambodia.
Considering all these awkward moments, Andrey Grechishkin should have used his right for recusal, not to be suspected of bias. But since 2004 the judge had no opportunity to help Rosneft. The company did fine without his support. And then an opportunity came to help out one of its top managers.
However, we may assume that this is not the first such service for Roman Trotsenko. For many years, Sameta - tax and legal advice has been engaged in solving various difficult situations for the businessman. First of all, it is services related to ensure the arbitration judges make the right decisions during the hearings.
Serving the interests of Trotsenko, heads of Sameta even became defendants in the investigation of Northern Shipyard carried out by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in St. Petersburg. This shipyard is part of United Shipbuilding Corporation headed until July 2012 by Roman Trotsenko. The investigators discovered that on 14 May 2012 Northern Shipyard management as instructed by the parent structure, OSK, signed a 38 million rubles service agreement with Sameta. The law firm received the money, except that no services were delivered to the entity. At least not officially. Well, you cannot really state a bribe to the judge in your official budget sheets, can you?"
Source: http://inright.ru/articles/real%20estate/20140418/id_1192
"Shortly after the fire the scandalous developer Polonsky escaped from defrauded investors and the investigation to Cambodia, where he became the hero of crime news and jokes for what he did in one of the islands. The tower passed on to Roman Trotsenko, a businessman with a reputation as a master of hostile takeovers, former president of OSK, former adviser to Igor Sechin, and director of a Rosneft subsidiary. Last year he managed to convince Sberbank to cede its right over the loan issued earlier for the completion of the tower to Potok, an entity formerly owned by Sergei Polonsky and then was bought from him by proxy by a company that, according to media reports, belonged to Trotsenko and a prominent lawyer Dobrovinsky".
"Some experts tie the current situation around the tower with the fact that Roman Trotsenko failed to lobby the decision for Rosneft to purchase space in the building for its central office. Rumor has it that the idea was rejected by Igor Sechin since few people would be interested in the building with such a reputation and loan burden from Polonsky. And after there was talk about the possibility of moving the headquarters of Rosneft to the Far East, so all negotiations concerning the tower ended. One of the options considered was the construction by the oil company of its own skyscraper in the beginning of Kutuzovsky Prospekt, 12-14. The space Rosneft is currently located at, Sofiyskaya Embankment, no longer corresponds to the ambitions of the largest Russian company".
Source: http://www.rosbalt.ru/moscow/2014/04/02/1251849.html
