Bulgarian Trace and Greek Scientist in Smuggling Network with Supplies of Military Technology to FSB

On May 9, 59-year-old Greek scientist and businessman Nikolaos Bogonikolos was arrested in Paris. В САЩ той е обвинен за това, че е helped Russian structures circumvent sanctions – for example, with the purchase of NATO tactical antennas supposedly for yachts in the Netherlands, as well as lasers and transistors. Among the Russian customers of the chain ” Sernia“, with which he collaborated, turned out to be long-time suppliers to the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), who own a villa on the Côte d’Azur in France and have Maltese citizenship. By comparing the data in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (EDRLE), customs operations and state purchases, The Insider established the entire structure of the Sernia smuggling network, including the FSB and SVR military units that purchased this equipment.

How Sernia circumvents sanctions

On December 5, 2022, a grand jury in New York indicted 5 Russians and two Americans of Russian origin with conspiracy to defraud the United States, financial fraud, money laundering, violations of export control rules and smuggling. According to the indictment, the Russians pumped millions of dollars through their structures, supplying military and dual-use items to Russia. Това са Евгений Гринин, Алексей Иполитов, Борис Лившиц, Светлана Скворцова, Вадим Коношчьонок, Алексей Брайман от Ню Хемпшир и Вадим Ермоленко от Ню Джърси.

The defendants ordered the products from American companies, knowingly providing false information about the end user, and then repackaged the goods, sent them to transshipment points in Estonia, Finland, Germany and Hong Kong, from where the goods were delivered to Russia. Payments for the smuggling go through a network of shell companies around the world. According to the indictment, the clients of the network called “Sernia” are Rostec, Rosatom, Rusnano, the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI), the Ministry of Defense, the SVR, the FSB and its structures, including the Department of Military Counterintelligence and the Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence.

The companies from Sernia act as suppliers of high-tech equipment under state orders. The total volume of government orders for the core of “Sernia” amounts to 5.2 billion euros. rubles, and that of peripheral companies – 1.2 billion. Rubles.

Here’s how the scheme works: Ippolitov receives orders from Russian customers, passes them on to the employees of the Sertal State Insurance Company Grinin and Skvortsova. They developed the financing and transportation routes, and ordered former Brooklyn resident Boris Livshitz to order the products from American companies. Livshitz sometimes pretends to be the non-existent David Vecký. In New York, he runs “lining” companies and bank accounts that he uses for deliveries. Americans Bryman and Yermolenko prepared false transport documentation and invoices, repackaged (often directly at Bryman’s home) and diverted production to transshipment points. And the driver, Konoshönok, personally transported the contraband across the Estonian border.

The Orthodox Smuggler

The indictment states that in October 2017, Sertal’s director of production proposed Nikolaos Bogonikolos as a partner because he “supports Orthodoxy, including as a basis for friendship with Russia.”

Bogonikolos is a mathematician by education, in 2005 he defended his dissertation in economics at the Kharkiv State University of Economics. In his resume on LinkedIn, he points out that his companies operate in Greece, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Ukraine, Russia and Bulgaria. Не без гордост съобщава, че сумарният бюджет на проектите му надвишава 1 млрд. долара.

Bogonikolos Aratos Group of Companies” works closely with NATO. In 2021, Aratos Systems became a finalist in the NATO Innovation Challenge competition for applications of space technologies in security and defense. Another company, Forceapp BV, is based in the Netherlands and operates in the field of defense. Its website states that the firm “implements leading technologies to provide solutions in defense and homeland security,” and its main area of expertise is space for defense, blockchain for defense, anti-drone systems, development and development. research in the defence and security sectors.

Bogonikolos is listed as a “strategic advisor” at Forceapp, it is emphasized that he has a long experience as an “adviser to the European Commission, the EP and governments around the world”. Whether he was really an adviser to the European Commission is not known, but he has previously led research carried out for the European Parliament.

Bogonikolos landed in Moscow on December 28, 2017, the same day he was invited to visit the Sernia laboratory. In correspondence in which he mentions “delicate equipment,” it is clear that he realized that he would have to violate American law.

Antennas for armored vehicles in Russia, not for yachts in the Netherlands

In February 2018, Evgeny Grinin from Sernia had to order precision measuring equipment from Minnesota. He received a refusal from the Americans at the initial inquiry. Then Bogonikolos agreed to order the products supposedly for himself, but wanted several items to be added to the list of equipment so that there would be no match with Grinin’s and would not arouse the suspicions of Minnesota.

On another occasion, in conversations with Photon Pro in November 2019, in correspondence in a messenger, Bogonikolos admitted that he would have to falsify the declaration of the end user through a dummy Dutch company, while being aware that the cargo was destined for Sernia and would travel to Russia. In correspondence with employees of the Aratos group of companies on the same day, Bogonikolos admitted that the blank declaration that he would fill out in the name of his company was in fact for an order “from the Russians”.

In 2018-2020, on behalf of the Aratos group, Bogonikolos received 10 NATO tactical antennas designed for armored combat crews in war conditions and corresponding to NATO military standards. In front of the manufacturer in Florida, he indicated that they would go to the Netherlands for the use of yachts. Such antennas need licenses for export to Russia. From the correspondence between Grinin and Bogonikolos, the real buyer is Sernia.

In January 2021, Alexei Ippolitov sent Grinin and other employees at Sernia a list of orders from major Russian scientific and educational structures involved in the development of quantum computers. The products are then needed for a technology with a defensive and dual-use purpose, namely for the development of a military quantum computer in order to create “a prototype of equipment for a quantum cryptographic complex used in the field of information security” and “secure networks for quantum communication to solve civil and military tasks in wartime.”

Bogonikolos was brought in to deliver the necessary lasers from California. “F2, F3, F4 – Kolya,” Grinin wrote in a letter to an employee, bearing in mind that the lasers codenamed F2, F3, F4 will be handled by Bogonikolos. The following month, the Aratos group ordered the three necessary lasers in California. In his contacts with the Californian manufacturing company, Bogonikolos signed deliberately falsified documents that he was the end user of the equipment.

In 2019, through Grinin, Bogonikolos helped MEPhI for the purchase of 30 transistors with highly mobile electrons from an American company in North Carolina, for the export of which a license was required for Russia. The declaration for the end user is drawn up in the name of a company of Bogonikolos, of course. In fact, the delivery was made at the address of the British Majory, from where it departed for Russia.

Also in 2019, Bogonikolos helped Grinin purchase a silent cesium frequency generator from Colorado. For its export to Russia, an appropriate export license is also required. The $143,000 generator is heading to Russia via Majory.

In 2020, Bogonikolos, through the Aratos group, ordered and forwarded to the address of Photon Pro 20 digital-to-analog converters (DAC). The Russian guarantor of the DAC in the network of “Sernia” writes with Ippolitov and Grinin via e-mail urantrade2@gosmail.ru, where military unit 33949 is indicatedrelated to the SVR. The end-user declaration was issued to Bogonikolos’ company in the Netherlands, but through a transshipment point in Hamburg, the DACs left for Russia.

In 2021, Bogonikolos ordered a high-resolution phase and frequency shift generator from Colorado and microwave adjustable slotted filters from Maryland. In the declaration, Bogonikolos’ company emphasizes that the equipment will be used in a laboratory in the Netherlands to develop satellite and radio equipment. In fact, the products were sent via Photon Pro to the All-Russian Research Institute of Physical, Technical and Radiotechnical Measurements.

In August, i.e. after the sanctions imposed on a number of legal entities from the Sernia chain, Bogonikolos ordered a high-power power amplifier made of gallium nitride in a solid state (at a frequency of 6-12 gigahertz) from California. According to the declaration, the Aratos Group is the end-user.

The end of “Sernia”

The driver, Vadim Konoshchonok, was detained in November 2022 in Narva while trying to import 20 crates of American bullets into Russia. And this is after Estonian border guards in October did not allow him to smuggle semiconductors, other components for electronics and thousands of bullets for sniper rifles through Narva. More than 150 kg of ammunition were found in his warehouse in Estonia. In July this year, he was extradited in the United States. Bryman turned himself in to the FBI, Yermolenko was arrested in New Jersey in December last year.

But the long-standing scheme has borne fruit. Participants in the Sernia network Evgenia Bernova and Viktor Grigoryan own villa La Tarrant for nearly 3 million euros. euros in the French Cap d-Antibes. Bernova and Grigoryan acquired it through SCI Griber.

The couple enjoyed spending time in Europe. Along with this, they had citizenship in Malta, of which Bernova is deprived in connection with the sanctions.

The fate of Bogonikolos after all

On May 23, prosecutor Breon Peace insisted in court that Bogonikolos be arrested. Among the reasons why, from the point of view of the prosecution, the accused should not be released on bail, his contacts with Bulgarian General Valentin Tsankov. Генерал Цанков, някога български military attaché and adviser to NATO, later suspended from office for concealing facts about his work in the communist secret services, was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of espionage for Russia. According to the version of the American prosecution, General Tsankov associated with the Bulgarian company Hemus Technologies, the founder of which is Bogonikolos.

Judging by the insistence on his arrest, the U.S. side has far more relevant information about Bogonikolos than what is currently revealed in the indictment. Thus, the insistence on the arrest emphasizes that Bogonikolos sent an 85-page analytical report on the state of Dutch space policy and defense strategy in space via an encrypted communication channel to one of his Russian counterparties. It is likely that the Americans do not have jurisdiction to accuse Bogonikolos of espionage in favor of Russia, but it seems that the upcoming trial will provide a lot of interesting information. Of course, unless they replace Bogonikolos with someone else.

How the Sernia network works

If we compare the data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, customs operations and government purchases, we can build an idea of the approximate structure of this smuggled octopus. The Sernia network includes three types of companies – foreign exporting companies, Russian importing companies and Russian state-owned contractors (among which, in turn, the “core” of the network and the “periphery” can be seen). All of them are intricately connected through directors, founders, common addresses and telephone numbers.

Foreign companies in Sernia are engaged only for export and import operations (we will call them “sales agents”)

About 20 people were connected with the “sales agents” at different times. The companies supplied to Russia high-tech equipment – optical and electronic, along with lasers, optical communication equipment, high-precision scientific equipment, electronics, microcircuits and equipment for their production for 89.1 million euros. Dollars.

These companies are linked to Russian companies from the Sernia network through former and current joint directors and founders.

The “sales agents” practically owned exclusive partners in Russia, who were engaged only in imports.

Companies from the “core” of Sernia, which have received a significant number of government contracts, are connected with the importers through the common former and current founders and co-owners, with addresses and phone numbers. In the “core” goes part of the imports directly from the “sales agents”. They acted as contractors of state contracts for the supply of complex equipment to Russian state bodies and organizations.

The main customers of Sernia Engineering were as a rule the scientific institutes. Sertal State Insurance Company has performed government contracts exclusively for the Institute of Nanotechnology and Microelectronics at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

But the State Educational Institution “Sernia” worked not only for civilian universities and institutes, but also for the special services – military unit 43753 (Center for Information Protection and Special Liaison at the FSB), as well as for the special links FSUE NPP Gamma (Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Research and Production Enterprise “Gamma”). In addition, Sernia-SPb Insurance Company combined supplies to civilian universities and military unit 45187 of the FSB.

Sertek has signed contracts with the State Regional Center for Standardization, Metrology and Testing in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, with the State Electrotechnical University in St. Petersburg and with other higher educational institutions and scientific organizations, as well as with the builders of rocket engines from the Fakel Experimental Design Bureau.

NGO Sernia carried out orders for the special services – it purchased equipment for the military units of FSB 43753, 95006, 35533 and the Department of Military-Technical Supply of the FSO (Federal Security Service).

Some companies did not enter the network, but used the services of Sernia’s sales agents.

The periphery of Sernia is also made up of Russian companies affiliated through founders, managers, addresses and telephone numbers. Most of them did not import anything, but they could boast of government contracts.

Lan-Project, as can be seen, was not part of the network, but used its services for the supply of vacuum and X-ray equipment. State contracts amount to BGN 1.6 billion. rubles, which includes the supply of special equipment for the FSB.

Sernia Engineering and Sertal were included in the US sanctions lists in March 2022 “The Adventures of Electronics”. Deliveries of American equipment to the FSB began through Sernia back in 2000.

Numerous authorities, sectoral research institutes, design bureaus and factories, including those related to the defense and space spheres, servicing law enforcement agencies, as well as fundamental scientific institutes and higher education institutions have worked with Sernia.

The Insider
Translation: BIRD.BG

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