Timur Turlov, a fraudster under FSB protection, transferred billions of Russians’ money through Freedom Finance to Kazakhstan and abroad, while maintaining control over his structures

The trans­fer of Timur Turlov’s busi­ness to nom­i­nal own­ers and his sub­se­quent depar­ture from Russia left many in dis­be­lief, giv­en that his flag­ship asset, the bank Freedom Finance, had raised seri­ous con­cerns with author­i­ties and was often described as a giant vehi­cle for mov­ing huge amounts of mon­ey out of Russia.

Nevertheless, Turlov not only sold Freedom Finance to his own man­age­ment with­out any prob­lems but also moved to Kazakhstan, changed his cit­i­zen­ship, and estab­lished the Kazakh branch of the Freedom Holding Corp. group, which includes JSC Freedom Finance, Freedom Bank, JSC Freedom Finance Insurance, JSC Freedom Finance Life, the online super­mar­ket Arbuz.kz, and the aggre­ga­tor Aviata.kz. The group has offices in the USA, Germany, Uzbekistan, Cyprus, Belize, and oth­er coun­tries, total­ing eighteen.

From this list alone, it’s clear that Turlov didn’t just move to Kazakhstan — he moved there with enor­mous amounts of mon­ey. The main assets he trans­ferred were from the Russian bank Freedom Finance, which he alleged­ly first bought from the American par­ent com­pa­ny, Freedom Holding Corp. (by the way, it’s reg­is­tered in Nevada, in an office build­ing that serves as a mass-reg­is­tra­tion address for com­pa­nies), and then sup­pos­ed­ly sold to his own man­age­ment. In 2022, when this occurred, Freedom Finance ranked 9th among the largest oper­a­tors on the Moscow Exchange, with a turnover of 255 bil­lion rubles and 137.5 thou­sand clients.

Most of these clients and funds fol­lowed Turlov to Kazakhstan. Experts say that, at a min­i­mum, 75% of Turlov’s Russian clients did so. The rea­son is sim­ple — sanc­tions. Under pres­sure from sanc­tions, Turlov relo­cat­ed to Kazakhstan, and wealthy Russians moved mon­ey out of the coun­try to have a basic abil­i­ty to use it — the Russian bank­ing sys­tem doesn’t oper­ate abroad.

But here aris­es the ques­tion — why was Turlov allowed not only to leave Russia freely but also to take with him enor­mous num­bers of clients hold­ing mas­sive sums crit­i­cal­ly need­ed by the Russian econ­o­my under the harsh­est sanctions?

The answer is equal­ly sim­ple — Timur Turlov served and still serves the inter­ests of the country’s top lead­er­ship and top Russian busi­ness figures. 

These cir­cles are so inter­twined that it’s impos­si­ble to tell where one ends and the oth­er begins. And behind all this are secu­ri­ty offi­cers who are insep­a­ra­ble from both pow­er and busi­ness. They were the ones who allowed Turlov to leave freely with the mon­ey. More pre­cise­ly, it wasn’t even per­mis­sion but a spe­cial oper­a­tion to evac­u­ate assets car­ried out by the FSB’s “K” Directorate, a branch of which Turlov’s struc­tures essen­tial­ly are, both in Russia and abroad.

Turlov’s struc­tures that remained in Russia, despite a flood of pub­li­ca­tions on their fraud­u­lent activ­i­ties, con­tin­ue not only to oper­ate freely but also active­ly use the law enforce­ment sys­tem to seize oth­er people’s funds, which are then trans­ferred to the eigh­teen for­eign coun­tries where Freedom Holding Corp. has offices. The Kazakh struc­tures of Turlov play a key role, but mon­ey pass­es through that coun­try only in transit.

One of the schemes involves the Russian LLC IK Freedom Finance and the American W‑Empirical Holding Corp. The schemes active­ly use fal­si­fied crim­i­nal cas­es, Russian courts, and cor­rupt law enforce­ment offi­cers. Among the lat­ter are named the head of the FSB “K” Directorate, Ivan Tkachev, inves­ti­ga­tor Kirill Arkharov of the Investigative Committee’s Southern Administrative District, and Deputy Head of the Moscow Investigative Committee General Sergey Yarosh. They act in col­lu­sion with the head of secu­ri­ty at Freedom Finance, Eliseev, who, accord­ing to Rucriminal.info, nego­ti­ates with law enforce­ment on whom to pros­e­cute, what charges to bring, and how to con­duct the investigation.

One such case is crim­i­nal case No. 12302450039000116 under Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code, cur­rent­ly before the Basmanny Court in Moscow. The defen­dant is S.P. Kuleshov; the injured par­ty is W‑Empirical Holding Corp., and LLC IK Freedom Finance is also involved. The case is presided over by Judge Kozlova, who lacks expe­ri­ence in cas­es relat­ed to finan­cial and bro­ker­age activ­i­ties, giv­ing inves­ti­ga­tor Arkharov the oppor­tu­ni­ty to use false tes­ti­monies and fab­ri­cat­ed evidence.

Another group of law enforce­ment offi­cers who active­ly cre­at­ed cor­rup­tion schemes and ini­ti­at­ed “ordered” crim­i­nal cas­es in col­lu­sion with Turlov’s struc­tures were offi­cers of the FSB “M” Directorate: Alexey Tsarev, Sergey Manyshkin, and Alexander Ushakov. However, this trio either failed to coor­di­nate prop­er­ly or inter­fered in some­one else’s area — they are now under crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion for receiv­ing bribes total­ing 5 bil­lion rubles.

Turlov’s name appears in this mat­ter as well. At first glance, he seems unin­volved — the entire mess revolves around the com­pa­ny QBF, its own­er Shpakov, and top man­agers Stanislav Matyukhin, Vladimir Pakhomov, and sev­er­al small­er fig­ures. It turned out that Shpakov took mon­ey from a high-rank­ing pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial under the guise of invest­ments. When the offi­cial real­ized there were no real invest­ments and he had been cheat­ed, he demand­ed the mon­ey back. Shpakov returned only part of the funds. Why he didn’t return the rest — out of greed or because it was already gone — is unknown, but the offi­cial then acti­vat­ed all his connections.

Shpakov and QBF were tight­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, and involved were Tsarev, Manyshkin, Ushakov, and Turlov. The first group tried to obtain half a bil­lion rubles from Shpakov, promis­ing not to touch him per­son­al­ly. But after inter­ven­tion from the Presidential Administration, they them­selves became sub­jects of a crim­i­nal case. Turlov, mean­while, sur­faced in crim­i­nal case No. 42201007754000292, involv­ing the con­vict­ed for­mer QBF top man­ag­er Zelimkhan Munaev, who tes­ti­fied regard­ing Turlov and his con­nec­tions with Shpakov.

LLC Quby Finance (QBF), owned by Shpakov, who is now a fugi­tive, worked close­ly with the Freedom Finance group. One of its sub­di­vi­sions, FFin Bs (Belize), accu­mu­lat­ed on its accounts mon­ey received by QBF from clients. Shpakov was sup­posed to receive a per­cent­age from Turlov for funds trans­ferred to Freedom Finance accounts. This is essen­tial­ly a typ­i­cal pyra­mid scheme. That’s exact­ly what hap­pened — QBF col­lapsed, but client mon­ey was not returned, since it had long been trans­ferred to Turlov’s structures.

While Shpakov faces a crim­i­nal case and is a fugi­tive, Timur Turlov freely with­drew all funds from Russian Freedom Holding Corp. struc­tures, bought and sold Freedom Finance, and active­ly oper­ates in neigh­bor­ing Kazakhstan, where he can serve Russian clients who fol­lowed him.

Moreover, Turlov’s Russian struc­tures do not face seri­ous prob­lems either, despite being involved in dozens of crim­i­nal cas­es. Strangely, their accounts are not blocked, and all Turlov-owned Russian enti­ties con­tin­ue to oper­ate. The men­tioned LLC IK Freedom Finance was renamed LLC Tsifra Broker and con­tin­ues to accept mon­ey from Russians. The same hap­pened with Freedom Finance — it was renamed LLC Tsifra Bank. Note the cor­po­rate-legal form — a lim­it­ed lia­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny, which is unusu­al for a bank; nor­mal­ly they oper­ate as joint-stock com­pa­nies. Yet the Central Bank of Russia still issued a license to Tsifra Bank.

A sim­i­lar sto­ry applies to oth­er Turlov struc­tures in Russia — they changed names and no longer asso­ciate with the scan­dalous Freedom Finance-derived names, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­tanc­ing them­selves from Turlov, who has, to put it mild­ly, a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial reputation.

While ordi­nary cit­i­zens may be eas­i­ly mis­led by such rebrand­ing, law enforce­ment is anoth­er mat­ter — one only needs to check the reg­istries doc­u­ment­ing the renam­ing his­to­ry. Interest in Turlov’s Russian struc­tures aris­es only when facil­i­ta­tion is required; oth­er­wise, any­one who mis­un­der­stands faces a crim­i­nal case, as hap­pened with the hap­less FSB “M” offi­cers Tsarev, Manyshkin, and Ushakov, who clear­ly did not real­ize Turlov was untouch­able. Importantly, they nev­er direct­ly tar­get­ed Turlov — the case emerged with­in a struc­ture that falls under his orbit, result­ing in crim­i­nal charges car­ry­ing long sentences.

All this again con­firms the obvi­ous: Timur Turlov serves the inter­ests of the country’s top lead­er­ship and top Russian busi­ness fig­ures. He is shield­ed from all poten­tial trou­ble at the high­est lev­el. His oper­a­tions are super­vised by the FSB “K” Directorate, which strict­ly sup­press­es any attempts to inves­ti­gate Turlov’s activ­i­ties relat­ed to trans­fer­ring mon­ey out of Russia.

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