OFAC introduced sanctions towards the founder, in addition to Elena Chirkinyan and Andrej Bradens, who additionally goes by the surname Carenoks, each of whom work for TGR—Chirkinyan is described as Rossi’s “second in command.” 4 firms tied to Rossi and TGR have additionally been included on sanctions lists: TGR Companions Ltd, TGR Company Concierge, TGR DWC LLC, and Siam Skilled Buying and selling Firm Ltd. The businesses, on their web sites, declare to offer a variety of monetary companies, occasions administration, and related company companies.
“What TGR will do is present an interface to have the ability to take illicitly generated money and put it into the legit banking system, though that is perhaps in jurisdictions of danger for instance,” Lyne from the NCA says. In 2023, the sanctions declare, TGR’s Chirkinyan allegedly helped switch funds out of Russia, from Russian state-media media outfit RT, which has been extensively sanctioned by Western governments, to assist fund a Russian-language media group within the UK.
Nonetheless, the sanctioned TGR firms are doubtless the tip of a dense iceberg, with a number of authorized identities linked to the model title or firm data. Archived variations of the now sanctioned TGR Companions’ web site have in the previous couple of years claimed the enterprise has “accomplice” places of work within the UK, Singapore, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the UAE, Latvia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, and the US. (The latest model of the web site solely contains the UK and UAE addresses.)
TGR Company Concierge, which was additionally sanctioned, was beforehand known as TGR Wealth Options, in line with public firm data. Most of the companies linked to TGR—which additionally contains these not sanctioned by officers—share the identical cellphone numbers, authorized addresses, and related web site designs, a WIRED evaluation exhibits.
Bradens additionally owns at the very least 50 % of Pullman World Options LLC, a Wyoming-based entity, in line with OFAC.
Rossi and Bradens didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. Chirkinyan couldn’t be instantly reached for remark.
The businesses have a restricted public presence. Most of the web sites don’t include many specifics about what the companies do and sometimes embrace boilerplate-style textual content. The TGR Companions web site additionally features a peculiar collection of weblog posts from early 2020, itemizing the costliest wines on the earth, Europe’s greatest digital museums and galleries, and the winners of the 2020 Oscars. “I feel that may be very typical of conventional money-laundering typologies, the place a web site will merely be lifted, a brand new firm can be placed on there, and the pictures and textual content will not essentially correlate to what the corporate purportedly does,” the NCA’s tactical lead for the operation says.
