In addition to the founder, OFAC announced sanctions against Elena Chirkinyan, who also works at TGR, and Andrei Bredens, who also goes by the surname Karenoks. Chirkinyan is said to be Rossi’s “second-in-command.” Four companies associated with Rossi and TGR (TGR Partners, TGR Corporate Concierge, TGR DWC LLC, and Siam Expert Trading Company Limited) are also included in the sanctions list. On their websites, these companies claim to offer a variety of financial services. Event management and similar corporate services.
“What TGR does is provide an interface that allows you to take illegally generated cash and put it into the legitimate banking system, but it could be in a risky jurisdiction, for example. ” said NCA’s Rhine. According to the sanctions, in 2023, TGR’s Chirkinyan transferred funds outside Russia from Russian state news agency RT, which is widely sanctioned by Western governments, for the purpose of funding a Russian-language news organization in the United Kingdom. He is said to have helped transfer funds.
However, the sanctioned TGR companies are likely the tip of a dense iceberg, with multiple legal identities associated with brand names and corporate records. An archived version of the currently licensed TGR Partners website shows that over the past few years the company has opened ‘partner’ offices in the UK, Singapore, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, UAE, Latvia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Bulgaria and the US. I have claimed that there is. . (The latest version of the website only includes UK and UAE addresses.)
TGR Corporate Concierge, which was also sanctioned, was previously called TGR Wealth Solutions, according to public company records. A WIRED review found that many of the companies involved in TGR, some of which are not authorized by the authorities, share the same phone numbers, legal addresses and similar website designs.
Bradens also owns at least 50 percent of Pullman Global Solutions LLC, a Wyoming-based company, according to OFAC.
Rossi and Bradens did not respond to requests for comment. Chirkinyan could not be reached for comment.
Companies have limited public presence. Many websites often contain boilerplate text without much detail about what a company does. The TGR partner website also includes a bizarre series of blog posts from early 2020, listing the world’s most expensive wines, Europe’s best virtual museums and galleries, and 2020 Oscar winners . “I think this is a classic example of traditional money laundering, where a website is simply published and a new company is listed on it, with images and text claiming to be from that company. It doesn’t necessarily correlate with the content,” said the NCA’s tactical director for the operation.