Putin – KCS Group Europe Ltd

Georgia – the second front of the U.S./Russia economic proxy war?

Articles / Corruption, counter-terrorism, DueDiligence, Georgia, money-laundering, Putin, Russia, TBC Bank, USA / 04/2023 05/2023

Revelations of corruption, money laundering and embezzlement from within the banking industry in Georgia does not, in and of itself, cause much surprise: that investigations by the Georgian Prosecutor's Office (coming to a head in 2019 ) resulting in charges of money laundering against several senior directors - Mamuka Khazaradze, the founder, his deputy Badri …

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Georgia: The song remains the same

Articles / Conflict, Cybercrime, Due Diligence, Georgia, money-laundering, NATO, Putin / 04/2023 04/2023

As the fifteen-year anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s first attempt at recreating the Soviet Union approaches, the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the brief conflict that resulted needs to be reassessed: both as a military offensive on its own terms, and as part of a Kremlin grand strategy that has only intensified in the years since. …

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Divide and conquer: The Kremlin’s gambit

Articles / Corruption, Due Diligence, Kremlin, Oligarchs, Putin, Russia, Sanctions, Sergei Shoigu, Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Yuri Kovalchuk / 03/2023 03/2023

Petrov’s Defence, known popularly as the Russian Game, is a chess opening based around symmetry: the second player matching the moves of the first through pawn, knight and so on, in a game that has a reputation for leading to protracted, difficult draws unless a player can seize upon a momentary advantage that may come …

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Modi, Putin and the future of India: Does truth still triumph?

Articles / China, Corruption, Democracy, Due Diligence, India, President Modi, Putin, Russia / 02/2023 02/2023

If great minds think alike, then so too must great dictators. As the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns in December 2021, Russia’s President Putin made Narenda Modi of India the subject of only his second international visit in almost two years, and the first in a subsequent line of appearances in autocracies across Central Asia, …

Modi, Putin and the future of India: Does truth still triumph? Read More »

Creating a Dictator

Articles / Corruption, Democracy, Due Diligence, Kremlin, Putin, Russia, Russian Business / 01/2023 01/2023

The quagmire of a lengthy, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s is credited with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union. History could well be repeating, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretches into an eleventh month and domestic discontent with Putin’s war continues to rise. Could this be the trigger that …

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Russia’s second front

Articles / Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Due Diligence, Mexico, oil and gas, Putin, Russia, Venezuela / 01/2023 01/2023

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to change the world’s balance of power requires not just a strong military, but serious influence over the world’s oil & gas markets, and to be really effective, he needs more than just Saudi Arabia and Iran on side – he needs control directly or indirectly of South America’s oil production as …

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Yandex – The Moral Maze

Articles / Due Diligence, Putin, Russian Business, Technology, Yandex / 01/2023 01/2023

Yandex, ‘The Russian Google’, was hit by sanctions after the EU decided it had played an active role in spreading propaganda at the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Yandex’s founder, Arkady Volozh, managed to avoid personal sanctions by leaving the board and selling his shares. For Russians, Yandex was more than just another tech-giant. …

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Russia and Putin: The end of the road?

Articles / Corruption, Due Diligence, Kremlin, Putin, Russia / 12/2022 12/2022

If you drive south-east out of St. Petersburg, you find yourself on the Trans-Siberian Highway, a network of roads eleven thousand kilometres long that is, depending on your disposition towards Australia, either the longest or second-longest highway on the planet. But even eleven thousand kilometres must come to an end, and the prospect of Vladivostok …

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A nightmare on Sadovnicheskaya Street

Articles / China, Due Diligence, Europe, Putin, Russia:Ukraine conflict / 11/2022 11/2022

Eight months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, if you had sat Putin down at the start of the war and offered him Russia’s position as it is now – struggling to hold on to territorial gains in the eastern third of the country, an international pariah as far as diplomatic and economic niceties go, and …

A nightmare on Sadovnicheskaya Street Read More »

Ukraine: The Great Sham Referenda

Articles / China, Due Diligence, Putin, Russia, Ukraine / 10/2022 11/2022

Russia is staging referenda in four occupied regions of Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaropizhzhia. By ‘proving’ that the majority of citizens wish to be a part of Russia, Putin hopes to legitimise his invasion, as he did in Crimea in 2014. The voting in the so-called republics of Donetsk and Luhansk was announced …

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