How Swiss-linked networks helped Russia bypass sanctions: Gilvarg’s MidUral sells chromium for the arms industry through Oleg Tsyura’s Phoenix Resources

A new wave of revelations shows how Ukraine’s state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) became a profit machine for insiders during 2020–2021, despite public claims of anti-corruption reforms. At the center of the scheme, investigators say, stood a network linking Pavel Prisyazhnyuk, UMCC officials, and foreign intermediaries — including companies tied to Swiss-based businessman Oleg Tsyura — that routed millions through offshore channels and even into Crimea.

The world’s largest producer of chromium metal, Russian Sergey Gilvarg’s MidUral Group, which supplies products to the Russian military-industrial complex through a number of controlled plants, is circumventing international sanctions with the help of Ukrainian-born Swiss businessman Oleg Tsyura.

This is stated in the second part of the investigation by Aleksandr Lemenov, Chairman of the Board of the independent anti-corruption organization StateWatch. 

The expert reminded that Ukraine is investigating a number of high-profile cases related to the activities of Dmitriy Sennichenko, former Head of the State Property Fund, which Lemenov described in detail in a previous investigation. It referred to Oleg Tsyura’s common business interests with Sergey Bayrak, a suspect in the Sennichenko case.

In the current case, Lemenov is investigating common business interests of Tsyura and Sergey Gilvarg, MidUral‘s majority co-owner.

According to him, Phoenix Resources AG, a company controlled by Oleg Tsyura, is a trusted trader of Gilvarg, who exports ferrochrome produced by the Russian corporation MidUral to other countries. 

Lemenov emphasized that Gilvarg played an important role in the semi-state system of mining raw materials deposits in early 2000, during Putin’s first term, and soon became one of the Russian president’s “sponsors.” 

“To understand the role of Gilvarg as one of Putin’s many wallets, it is enough to recall the more than murky history of ousting the Italian company Luigi Stoppani from the Russian Chrome 1915 company. Let me remind you that Stoppani’s family controlled 50% of the company, and before the sale to the Russians, another 50% belonged to Kermas Ltd, which was under the influence of Croatian businessman Danko Končar,” the expert said.

MidUral Industrial LTD. He referred to a publication in the Russian newspaper Kommersant, which stated that in early 2006 Danko Končar sold the company to Sergey Gilvarg for about $2 million. Subsequently, the new Russian shareholders, using their connections in the government and law enforcement agencies, ousted the Italians from Russian Chrome 1915, arguing that “strategically important companies belonging to the military-industrial complex should be owned either by Russian residents controlled by the Kremlin or directly by the Russian state.”  

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As a result, the company was transformed into MidUral, which is now controlled by Sergey Gilvarg through the Cyprus offshore company MidUral Industrial LTD.

The expert notes that the key asset of MidUral Group is the world’s largest producer of metal chromium, Klyuchevsky Ferroalloy Plant. The company produces about 6,000 tons of chromium per year, which is used by the Russian military-industrial complex (proved by a screenshot of the Klyuchevsky Ferroalloy Plant report).  

In his publication, Lemenov quotes Sergey Chemezov, Head of the Russian state corporation Rostec, who said that the products of ferroalloy plants are strategically important for the production of Russian weapons

Lemenov recalls that 10 years ago, Russian authorities decided that companies supplying strategically important components and materials for the military-industrial complex should remain private to make it more difficult for Western countries to impose sanctions.

“The procedure is simple: the Russian state should not own 50%+ of the shares or stakes in the companies. It is a similar story with the companies controlled by MidUral Group, which should have prevented the imposition of sanctions on the companies that were part of this business group, as well as on Sergey Gilvarg himself,” writes Lemenov.

According to the expert, this “scheme” of circumventing sanctions stopped working after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as sanctions were imposed on both state-owned Russian companies and private ones.

“However, even in this case, Russians found a way out of the situation. Oleg Tsyura, who was involved in the sales of Gilvarg’s businesses until 2021, was at the same time the head of the Swiss company Interchrome AG. Prior to Tsyura, German citizen Johann Eckert was the director. And strangely enough, it was Eckert who later headed a German company with a very familiar name, RusChrome Gmbh,” notes the investigator.

He emphasizes that after the outbreak of the Great War due to the introduction of the EU’s 4th sanctions package, which banned imports of Russian steel and pipes, Oleg Tsyura and Sergey Gilvarg liquidated the German RusChrome Gmbh without waiting for sanctions restrictions on ferroalloys. And in March 2022, Oleg Tsyura and Johann Eckert became members of the supervisory board of the Swiss company Phoenix Resources AG. This company began to play the role of a key trader for MidUral Group in the ferroalloy products export.

At the same time, Phoenix Resources AG supplies raw materials to the world market through third countries that do not support the sanctions imposed against Russia. In particular, we are talking about “workarounds” through export-import operations with Mexico and India.

“Legally, it looks quite decent – direct delivery to India.  However, in reality, the raw materials go straight to Estonia and then to the EU and other countries. This is evidenced by information on the operations of the Estonian trading company MBR Metals OU. The latter company is owned by Denys Treshchalov, an Estonian citizen,” says the investigation.

Aleksandr Lemenov recalled that until 2022, this company supplied the lion’s share of products from Russia, but in 2023-2024, for obvious reasons, it switched to importing ferroalloys from India, although this market was completely closed to them before the war. 

The Estonian MBR Metals OU also supplies raw materials to the United States.

The investigator emphasized that Russian ferroalloys were supplied to Ukraine by the Estonian MBR Metals until 2022, thus circumventing trade restrictions on direct supplies of such products that were introduced after 2014.

He also pointed out that due to the control of all strategically important companies that supply raw materials to the Russian military-industrial complex and abroad, companies controlled by Sergey Gilvarg (in particular, the Klyuchevsky Ferroalloy Plant) publicly support the so-called “special military operation” of the Russian Federation. 

Summing up, Aleksandr Lemenov notes that neither Sergey Gilvarg nor Oleg Tsyura are under Western sanctions, which gives them the opportunity to supply raw materials in the interests of the Russian military-industrial complex at the end of the third year of the full-scale war against Ukraine.

“Perhaps Europeans are in no hurry to give up valuable Russian fossil fuels, while Ukrainians suffer daily from massive attacks by drones, cruise and ballistic missiles. Moreover, by purchasing the same chrome products through third jurisdictions, Western democracies finance these bombings by throwing money directly into the Russian budget,” says Lemenov.

In his opinion, it would be logical for the Ukrainian side to initiate sanctions against the above-mentioned businessmen and their companies. That is why it is so important to reveal their real role in avoiding Western sanctions against Russia.