Vladimir Smirnov (businessman)

Vladimir Alexeyevich Smirnov (in Russian: Владимир Алексеевич Смирнов, b. 1957 in Pskov) is a prominent Russian businessman, former Director General of the Petersburg Fuel Company (1997–1998), former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Petersburg Fuel Company (1999–2001). In 2002–2007 he was the Director General of Tekhsnabexport (TENEX) which carries out export of goods and services produced by Russian nuclear enterprises.

Education

He graduated in 1980 from the Leningrad Institute of Aviation Instrument Production, where he majored in electromechanical engineering. Later he gained a PhD in Technical Sciences (1986) and in Economics (2000).[1]

Smirnov is also the author of ten inventions and 45 scientific papers. In 1988, he became the youngest Senior Researcher at the Leningrad Institute of Aviation Instrument Production. In 1988 he was awarded the State Science and Technology Prize for Young Researchers. The prize was donated to the Peace Foundation.

Early career

In 1990 he established one of Saint Petersburg's first joint ventures (with German partners), the real estate development company Inform-Future,[2] which built the city's first office centre for foreign companies.

St. Petersburg Immobilien und Beteiligungs AG or SPAG is a real estate company registered in Germany under Vladimir Putin's control in 1992 and suspected by German police of facilitating Saint Petersburg mobsters, Colombian drug lords, and transcontinental money laundering.[3][4] Kumarin-Barsukov, of the Tambov Russian mafia was a partner in Znamenskaya, a subsidiary of SPAG.[5][6] Vladimir Smirmov was the general director of Znamenskaya and Kumarin-Barsukov was his deputy.[6] Through his 200 shares or 20% control, Vladimir Smirmov was Putin's voting proxy in SPAG.[7][8][9] Jalol Khaidarov (Russian: Джалол Хайдаров) stated that the final destination of the funds was to the "Operator Trade Center" in Liechtenstein but also said that the Bank of New York was a participant.[7] In the early 2000s, the company's co-founder Rudolf Ritter was arrested in Liechtenstein for laundering cocaine cash for the Cali cartel.[5][10] Robert Walner was the chief prosecutor in Liechtenstein's capital Vaduz.[5][lower-alpha 1]

Not long after Vladimir Putin returned from his KGB service in Dresden, East Germany he had built a dacha in Solovyovka, located on the eastern shore of Lake Komsomolskoye on the Karelian Isthmus in Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, near St. Petersburg. The dacha had burned down in 1996. Putin had a new one built identical to the original and was joined by a group of seven friends, who built dachas beside his. Vladimir Smirnov was one of the members of the group which in the fall of 1996 formally registered their fraternity as co-operative society, calling it Ozero (Lake) and turning it into a gated community.[18]

Smirnov was also the Chief Executive Officer of the Petersburg Fuel Company between 1997 and 1998 and the company's Chairman of the Board of Directors between 1999 and 2000.

Since 2008 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of Natsionalny Kosmicheski Bank, one of the top 200 banks out of 1000 operating in Russia.

Tenex

Between 2002 and 2007 Vladimir Smirnov was General Director of Tekhsnabexport (Tenex)[19] which carries out the export of goods and services produced by Russian nuclear enterprises. Tenex represents 35-50% of the nuclear world market. During this period, Tenex also signed long term contracts until 2020 on the system of guaranteed supplies of low-enriched uranium for almost all of the world's nuclear power plants.[20]

In 2003, the highly enriched Uranium program "megatons to megawatts" in cooperation with the United States, was run by Tenex, while Smirnov was the General Director.[21] The program enabled Russia to earn USD 3.5 billion since its inception in 1994.[22]

In 2005, Smirnov was appointed as an external advisor to the head of the Federal Atomic Agency, Rosatom.[23] At this time, he presided over the grand opening of the Tenex Subsidiary Office in Tokyo.[24][25] According to Smirnov, the cooperation between Japan and Russia is a milestone for the world's atomic energy future.[26]

Since 2003, JSC Techsnabexport (Tenex), has been the general sponsor of the annual Russian contest of scientific and educational projects “Power of the Future.” The contest, organized by the Nuclear Academy, aims to improve the efficiency of education and to upgrade the intellectual potential in the nuclear industry.

In addition, a sponsorship program for nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and environment protection activities of Russian and foreign social organizations was established at Tenex between 2002 and 2007, upon the initiative of Vladimir Smirnov. Tenex notably sponsored the Peace Concert which took place in Zug, Switzerland, on 13 October 2002, with the participation of the ensemble led by V. Spivakov. The event was attended by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, ex-President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev and Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, distinguished European Community leaders and peace movement leaders from various countries.

Notes
  1. According to Felipe Turover Chudínov, who was a senior intelligence officer with the foreign-intelligence directorate of the KGB, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin secretly decreed in the early 1990s that Russia would become an international hub through which narcotics are trafficked including cocaine and heroin from South America and heroin from Central Asia and Southeast Asia.[11][12] Yuri Skuratov supported Turover's statements and began numerous investigations into corruption with high ranking Russian government officials.[13] Alexander Litvinenko provided a detailed narcotics trafficking diagram showing relationships between Russian government officials and Russian mafia and implicating Vladimir Putin and numerous others in obschak including narcotics trafficking money.[14][15][16] Following Operation Troika which targeted the Tambov Gang, Spanish Prosecutor José Grinda concurred and added that to avoid prosecution numerous indicted persons became Deputies in the Russian Duma, especially with Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party and gained parliamentary immunity from prosecution.[17]

References
  1. World Nuclear Archived 2012-03-09 at the Wayback Machine
  2. "Inform Future official website". Archived from the original on 8 May 2003. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  3. Иванидзе, Владимир (Ivanidze, Vladimir) (August 2000). "Неразборчивые связи северной столицы" [The indecipherable connections of the northern capital]. «Совершенно секретно» (Sovsekretno) (in Russian). Archived from the original on 4 October 2007. Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. Belton, Catherine (19 May 2003). "Putin's Name Surfaces in German Probe". The Moscow Times. Archived from the original on 25 May 2018. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  5. Belton, Catherine (7 October 2003). "New Book Poses Question of Putin's Links with Underworld". The St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg, Russia. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  6. Иванидзе, Владимир (Ivanidze, Vladimir); Кириленко, Анастасия (Kirilenko, Anastasia) (7 September 2012). "Кооператив "Озеро" как кузница кадров" [Cooperative "Lake" as a forge of personnel]. Радио Свобода (Radio Svoboda) (in Russian). Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. Кириленко, Анастасия (Kirilenko, Anastasia) (1 October 2015). "Мафия на госзаказе - 2. Что связывает Кремль с измайловской группировкой" [Mafia on state order - 2. What connects the Kremlin with the Izmailovo group]. The Insider. Archived from the original on 4 October 2015. Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. Belton, Catherine (23 June 2020). Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374238711. p. 99, see note 65.
  9. Muller, Sarah-Christian; Dawisha, Karen (2014). "Appendices of Stasi Documents from Validmir Putin, Operation Luch and Matthias Warnig: The Secret KGB-Stasi Relationship" (PDF). Miami University. pp. 92–106. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 October 2014. Retrieved 9 April 2022.
  10. Roth, Jürgen (1 January 2004). Die Gangster aus dem Osten [Gangsters in the East] (in German). Europa Verlag. ISBN 978-3203815268.
  11. Лурье, Олег (Lurie, Oleg) [in Russian] (27 December 1999). "Список Туровера" [Turover List]. Novaya Gazeta (in Russian). Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Alt URL
  12. Lurye, Oleg (27 December 1999). "Turover List". Novaya Gazeta. Retrieved 23 July 2021 – via Russialist.org.
  13. Yablokova, Oksana (29 December 1999). "Skuratov: 'Turover List' Is Real". The Moscow Times. Archived from the original on 23 February 2021. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  14. Кириленко, Анастасия (Kirilenko, Anastasia) (21 January 2016). "Путин и мафия. За что убили Александра Литвиненко" [Putin and the mafia. Why Alexander Litvinenko was killed]. The Insider (in Russian). Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. Кириленко, Анастасия (Kirilenko, Anastasia) (10 September 2018). "Токсичная информация. О чем Литвиненко рассказал бы испанскому правосудию, если бы не был отравлен" [Toxic information. What Litvinenko would have told Spanish justice if he had not been poisoned]. The Insider (in Russian). Retrieved 23 July 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. Litvinenko, Alexander Схема связей преступного мира, нарисованная Литвиненко (Litvinenko's diagram of the connections of the underworld) Archived from the original on 23 January 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  17. José Grinda González. "REGULACIÓN NACIONAL E INTERNACIONAL DEL CRIMEN ORGANIZADO. EXPERIENCIA DE LA FISCALÍA ANTICORRUPCIÓN" (PDF). Fiscales de la Fiscalía contra la Corrupción y la Criminalidad Organizada (in Spanish). p. 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 April 2017. Retrieved 23 July 2021.
  18. How the 1980s Explains Vladimir Putin. The Ozero group. By Fiona Hill & Clifford G. Gaddy, The Atlantic, February 14, 2013
  19. "Tenex official Website". Archived from the original on 2010-05-05. Retrieved 2011-05-03.
  20. "Sixth US enrichment contract for Tenex". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  21. "6,000 Nuclear Warheads Eliminated by USEC and TENEX; Unique Program Stands at the 'Intersection of Global Security, Commerce and The Growing U.S. Partnership with Russia'. - Free Online Library". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  22. "www.nti.org". Archived from the original on 2011-03-02. Retrieved 2011-05-10.
  23. "Tenex". Archived from the original on 2010-05-05. Retrieved 2011-05-03.
  25. "Grand Opening of the TENEX Subsidiary Office in Tokyo". Archived from the original on 19 May 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2016.
  26. "Tenex discussing long-term uranium contracts with Japanese power firms". Retrieved 9 December 2016.
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