Not many women in St. Petersburg’s criminal history are regarded with any measure of respect.
A successful marriage
When speaking about men’s achievements, people often say “look for the woman.” In the case of Elena Skorodumova, however, one should look for the men. It was through them that she achieved her current status. By her own account in a scandalous 2011 interview with the newspaper Nasha Versiya na Neve, student Elena Skorodumova began her “close” acquaintance with St. Petersburg’s criminal circles through a confrontation with the notorious city “overseer” Konstantin Yakovlev, known as Kostya Mogila.
How an ordinary young woman managed to “cross paths” with such a powerful crime boss is a question that can now only be addressed to the heavens — Yakovlev is no longer alive. According to Skorodumova herself, she and her first husband, the quick-witted mathematician Sergey Skorodumov, were making good money in the mid-1990s by supplying cheap food products from Finland and profiting handsomely from the shortages of that era.
Alexander Timoshenko (Timokha), Konstantin Yakovlev (Kostya Mogila), Iosif Osipov (Marych Pitersky)
According to Pomidorikha’s version, the official cause of the conflict was that “criminals tried to take us under control.” However, there is another version — threats from Konstantin Yakovlev. As we have already mentioned, Sergey Skorodumov was a talented mathematician with one weakness: he was passionately fond of playing preferans. According to a now half-forgotten legend, the bold mathematician dared to beat one of Kostya Mogila’s associates at cards, and such upstarts are not tolerated in that environment.
Whether this is true or not is impossible to determine today. Nevertheless, Madam Skorodumova insists on her version: Konstantin Yakovlev threatened her and her husband’s business, and allegedly at his request law enforcement agencies harassed their family, attempting to initiate a criminal case. By the way, the businesswoman also considers her husband’s death in a car accident in 1994 to be the work of the St. Petersburg “overseer.”
Background
According to Elena herself, she inherited her unique nickname — Pomidorikha — from her first husband, Sergey Skorodumov, who was deeply passionate about preferans and, whenever he became nervous during a game, would turn red “like a tomato.”
Elena’s next partner was none other than Andrey Khloev, nicknamed “Besprizornik,” allegedly a close relative of the notorious Vladimir Barsukov-Kumarin. For many years thereafter, their names were mentioned together in the press. Her relationship with Khloev was extremely turbulent. There is a widespread belief that the murder of the well-known lawyer Ruslan Kolyak — an associate of the same Kostya Mogila — occurred precisely because of Elena Skorodumova. More precisely, because of certain threats made against her, which the explosive Khloev refused to tolerate, and the tenth attempt on Kolyak’s life became the last.
Former MP Mikhail Glushchenko (left), Vladimir Barsukov-Kumarin, and Ruslan Kolyak
She is also said to have introduced Khloev to a circle of friendly contacts within law enforcement agencies and connected him with one of the founders of the National Foundation for the Support of Law Enforcement Officers, retired FSB colonel Valery Sokolov. According to other sources, Andrey Khloev maintained friendly relations with Sokolov’s son Aleksey, who currently works at Lubyanka. She is also credited with introducing Khloev to a certain General Poddubsky, who allegedly helped arrange “convenient channels” at border customs checkpoints.
Of course, there is no officially confirmed information about this. However, there are facts showing that operatives of the Tambov criminal group ruled St. Petersburg’s smuggling routes for a long time without interference. It is no secret that many businessmen involved in the dangerous business of laundering “black” money dreamed of making the acquaintance of “Besprizornik.” Moreover, by the mid-2000s, Andrey Khloev had become the most influential figure in the complex and risky smuggling business.
Новости по теме: From 1990s markets to billion-dollar schemes: Elena von Messing’s path from “Pomidorikha” to a key figure in currency fraud
Aslan Usoyan (Ded Hasan), Konstantin Yakovlev (Kostya Mogila), and Gafur Rakhimov
The golden woman
In the mid-2000s, Khloev’s name repeatedly surfaced in various scandals with a criminal undertone, and in most cases the name of his common-law wife appeared alongside it. In 2009, she became widely known due to a criminal case involving $1.4 billion allegedly laundered through businesses in Bulgaria. Among shadow operators, Pomidorikha was considered the “queen” of underground financial channels used for money laundering. Bulgarian authorities came to the same conclusion and launched criminal proceedings against her as the head of the company Optima Ca. and her partner, Dmitry Abramkin, director of Forwarding Transport Service.
As Bulgarian law enforcement reasonably suspected, the offshore company Optima Ca. served as the key link in a criminal money-outflow scheme. As a result, the “queen of shadow finance” spent six months in pretrial detention.
Skorodumova herself explained her legal battles with the Bulgarian authorities as the result of machinations by their business partner Georgi Georgiev. According to her, he withdrew €1.16 million from the company’s account and, when asked to return the money, instead created serious problems for them. The case reached Bulgaria’s Supreme Court, after which Besprizornik’s companion successfully left the inhospitable country. Lawyers hired by Elena fought fiercely, and for good reason: according to some reports, the vanished money was part of the Tambov organized crime group’s common fund, urgently transferred to the West after Russian authorities began actively targeting Vladimir Barsukov-Kumarin.
Background
In the following years, Elena Skorodumova, also known as Elizabeth Elena von Messing, repeatedly appeared in operational reports. Law enforcement agencies had grounds to suspect her of laundering Tambov group money in Finland. Later, in 2014, the Main Investigative Directorate accused her of complicity in illegal banking activities committed by an organized group for particularly large-scale profit (Article 172, Part 2, clauses “a” and “b” of the Russian Criminal Code).
According to investigators, over a three-year period she and her associates withdrew 45.6 billion rubles from St. Petersburg’s legal financial circulation, earning more than 1.2 billion rubles in the process.
It should be noted that most individuals from her circle, once drawn into the orbit of her financial schemes, eventually ended up in the dock. She herself, however, never faced criminal punishment. As previously reported, part of the funds withdrawn by Messing between 2006 and 2008 passed in transit through branches of an illegal bank operating in Bulgaria and Estonia, with the money originating from the St. Petersburg-based VEFC Bank. After law enforcement agencies began working with the bank as part of the “Messing case,” the bank collapsed, and its owner Aleksandr Gitelson was convicted.
Notably, Skorodumova was assisted in this operation by her longtime associate Abramkin, Mozgovoy, a former chief specialist of the currency exchange and cash operations department at VEFC Bank, and Sidorov, an active operative of the Department for Tax Crimes of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.
Background
According to investigators, a network of shell companies registered to homeless individuals was used to cash out the money. A total of 40 such companies were identified in the criminal case, some of which were set up by the above-mentioned police officer Sidorov himself.
However, this major case did not put an end to Ms. von Messing’s financial career. Elena Nikolaevna (or, as she now calls herself, Elena) successfully avoided criminal liability after the leadership of the St. Petersburg Investigative Committee suddenly “viewed the case materials from a different angle.” First, her case was separated into a standalone proceeding, and then it effectively withered away. The Investigative Committee concluded that there was a “lack of specific evidence” against Elizabeth Elena von Messing — and, as a result, determined her non-involvement in the withdrawal of more than 45 billion rubles from legal circulation.
And once again — billions
Since then, the businesswoman’s name had surfaced in criminal reports only in stories of love, jealousy, and the tyranny of Andrey Khloev. The Italian-style passions of “Besprizornik,” with his numerous affairs, had little in common with the new life of Messing-Skorodumova. Some insiders, however, claim that even the battle-hardened “Besprizornik” barely escaped marriage to the energetic Elena Nikolaevna.
News of her turbulent life resurfaced quite recently — in 2017. First came a story about extortion: criminal “authorities” with a clear Tambov flavor, known as “Abram” and “Fuks,” allegedly demanded 50 million from her. Media reports claimed that von Messing had since acquired connections within the FSB and that certain officers had rendered her assistance. However, in the same month when the named “authorities” were detained, Elena herself was also arrested — though only for an overstayed visa, as a Finnish citizen.
Then, in May of the same year, FSB officers paid a visit to her office on Nevsky Prospekt, and once again the issue was the outflow of money. This time, according to the Investigative Committee, around one billion euros were transferred abroad between 2014 and August 2016. As part of the case, following searches, the Smolninsky District Court arrested 26-year-old Aleksandr Bulatov, whom investigators consider a loyal associate of von Messing.
Whether the hand of the investigation will reach the 50-year-old St. Petersburg “madam” this time remains to be seen. According to sources at Criminal Russia, von Messing today has access not only to the homes of “thieves-in-law,” but even to the offices of certain members of the Federation Council — which means the outcome of the case could go either way.
