Hidden passport and FSB ties: How Spectrum Assets circumvented NBU and Cabinet bans

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At the beginning of the year, the Deposit Guarantee Fund auctioned off assets of two liquidated Russian banks and one bankrupt Ukrainian bank – commercial real estate and rights to claim debts totaling 3 billion hryvnias.

However, there is a catch. Russians won this auction.

“Schemes” found that the company that won the bidding is directly owned by a Russian citizen. She hid her Russian citizenship from Ukrainian regulatory authorities, providing information only about her American citizenship.

This contradicts a whole series of bans imposed by the authorities after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Thus, the Cabinet of Ministers prohibits Russian citizens and their companies from collecting debts from Ukrainians, the National Bank – from managing financial institutions, and the regulations for holding state auctions – from participating in them.

Moreover, this business of the Russian citizen is managed by a Belarusian citizen whom the Security Service of Ukraine suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence.

Auction for Russians

The lot of the auction of the Deposit Guarantee Fund discussed in this article consists of assets of three liquidated banks that had not been sold previously.

Mostly – 90% – the pool consists of assets of the Russian “Sberbank” (renamed “MR Bank”). A small share of the assets in the pool also belongs to the Russian “Prominvestbank” and the Ukrainian “Megabank”.

“Sberbank” (“MR Bank”) and “Prominvestbank” were liquidated by the Ukrainian authorities on February 25, 2022, the day after the start of the full-scale invasion, because these financial institutions belonged to the Russian Federation. Three months later, these Russian banks and their property in Ukraine were officially nationalized. In particular, 17 billion hryvnias from the accounts of “Prominvestbank” and “MR Bank” were transferred to the state budget. Later, real estate and debt obligations of these banks were put up for sale at various auctions.

As for the third bank – the Ukrainian “Megabank” – its operations were also suspended in February 2022, but for a different reason. The National Bank declared it insolvent, and in June it was liquidated because the bank had issued loans to related parties and failed to carry out recapitalization. Now its property is being sold off. Before liquidation, the main owner of the Ukrainian “Megabank” was Viktor Subotin, the long-time head of the state-owned Kharkiv plant “Turboatom”.

In February 2024, this combined lot of assets of “Megabank”, “Prominvestbank”, and “MR Bank” (formerly “Sberbank”) went under the hammer for 124 million hryvnias.

What exactly did the buyer receive after paying this amount to the Deposit Guarantee Fund?

These are mainly rights to claim debts on old loans totaling 2.8 billion hryvnias.

The largest one – worth 2.3 billion hryvnias – is the debt on a loan that back in 2011 “MR Bank” provided to the football club “Chornomorets” of Odesa businessman Leonid Klimov. Later, the affiliated joint-stock company “Malynovskyi Market” became the guarantor for this loan.

In addition, the pool of assets sold by the Fund also included real estate directly. In particular, in Sumy and Odesa.

In Odesa, for example, it is the “Malynovskyi” shopping center on the territory of the market of the same name. In the spring of 2022, at the request of the Fund, these eight thousand square meters of retail space were valued at 228 million hryvnias.

Among the assets in Sumy are shops, a dental office, a pharmacy, and other commercial real estate worth over 18 million hryvnias.

All these assets – rights to claim billions in debts and commercial real estate – were acquired at the auction by the little-known Ukrainian company “Spectrum Assets”.

Who does it belong to?

“Spectrum Assets”

The company “Spectrum Assets” was founded in Kyiv in the fall of 2019.

The first thing journalists noticed was the location of the company.

It is registered on Klovsky Descent in the center of the capital, in an office that belongs to Russian citizen Oksana Terekhova. She is the former wife of former MP Andriy Derkach, whom the Security Service of Ukraine suspects of treason and against whom the United States imposed sanctions for facilitating Russia’s interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Derkach fled to Russia in 2022. Recently, he joined the committee on security of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation. The fact that his ex-wife Terekhova now also lives in Russia is evidenced by data on her domestic flights between Russian cities obtained by journalists. Even after Derkach’s divorce from Terekhova, during searches law enforcement officers found his documents and personal belongings in her Kyiv apartment.

Registered in the office of Derkach’s ex-wife, the company “Spectrum Assets” operates in Ukraine as a financial institution, holding the appropriate license. Among the services provided by the company are factoring and lending.

In the register of legal entities of Ukraine, the founder of “Spectrum Assets” is listed as the American company Spectrum UA Credit LLC, and its ultimate beneficial owner is U.S. citizen Marina Yevseyeva.

However, as the media found out, Yevseyeva has another citizenship – of the Russian Federation.

An American with a Russian passport

As journalists discovered, Marina Yevseyeva was born in Kazakhstan but lived in Russia for a long time. She obtained Russian citizenship in March 2004 in Yekaterinburg when she was 24 years old. Yevseyeva’s Russian passport is still valid – this is data from the official Russian state portal “Gosuslugi”.

On the official website of the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation, using data from Marina Yevseyeva’s Russian passport, the media also established her individual taxpayer identification number in Russia, which is also valid at the time of publication of this material.

Ukrainian registers state that Marina Yevseyeva is registered in California, USA, where she apparently resides.

At the same time, as the media found out, she regularly visits Russia even after the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine. This is evidenced by data on Yevseyeva’s crossings of the Russian border, which journalists obtained and analyzed.

Thus, in particular in 2022, Yevseyeva flew to the Russian Federation three times and stayed there from one to several weeks in April, July, and November. In 2023, the media also recorded at least three such visits.

For example, Yevseyeva flew from Istanbul to Sochi for eight days in March 2023. That same month, her company “Spectrum Assets” for the first time since the full-scale invasion took part in a Ukrainian state auction, where it tried to acquire assets of the liquidated Russian “Sberbank”. It did not succeed then, unlike the next, already successful attempt in February 2024.

The last time, according to media data, Yevseyeva came to Russia from Dubai in June 2023. In all cases, she crossed the Russian border using a Russian foreign passport obtained in 2017.

Unlike Russia, Yevseyeva does not travel to Ukraine, despite owning a business in Kyiv through her American company. According to border crossing data available to journalists, the last time she was in Ukraine was in 2018.

At the beginning of the full-scale war, the Ukrainian authorities introduced a number of restrictions for Russian citizens to prevent their influence on the country’s financial market. They are prohibited from collecting debts from Ukrainians, managing financial institutions, or participating in state tenders.

So how did “Spectrum Assets” – a company owned by one Russian citizen and located in the office premises of another Russian citizen – manage not only to participate in an auction where Ukraine was selling assets of nationalized Russian banks, but also to win it?

The big secret

Since March 2022, participation in state tenders by companies connected with Russia has been directly prohibited by the regulations for conducting such auctions, approved by the Deposit Guarantee Fund.

However, as the media established, Marina Yevseyeva hid her Russian citizenship from Ukrainian regulatory authorities.

According to the auction rules, a participant must submit a letter to Prozorro Sale, the platform conducting the tenders, confirming that they have no connection to the Russian Federation.

Such a letter was also submitted by “Spectrum Assets” before the February 2024 auction.

In this letter, director of “Spectrum Assets” Nelya Voyevchik “guarantees and confirms” that the company is not connected with the aggressor state. In particular, it states that “Spectrum Assets” is not a legal entity whose ultimate beneficial owner is a citizen of the Russian Federation.

However, the media discovered that this does not correspond to reality, since the company’s owner Marina Yevseyeva holds valid Russian citizenship and regularly visits Russia using her Russian foreign passport.

When asked by journalists why she hid information about the Russian citizenship of the owner of “Spectrum Assets” from Ukrainian regulatory authorities, the company’s director Nelya Voyevchik replied:

“I know nothing about this at all. I have a document that she permanently resides in America, a U.S. citizen’s passport. Nothing more was provided by my ultimate beneficial owner.”

Bidders with experience

Judging by data from the analytical system biprozzoro, the company of Russian and U.S. citizen Yevseyeva “Spectrum Assets” has participated in and won similar Ukrainian state auctions before.

Thus, “Spectrum Assets” has already purchased, for example, loan portfolios of bankrupt Ukrainian banks: “Nadra Bank” – for 24 million hryvnias in March 2020 and “Fidobank” – for 52 million hryvnias in September of the same year.

However, the February 2024 auction – where the company won – differs from previous ones not only because it was the most expensive and the first time assets of Russian banks were acquired, but also because by the time it was held, a direct ban on Russians participating in tenders was already in effect.

Journalists asked Prozorro Sale whether they had checked participants in these tenders for connections with the aggressor country. They replied that the platform conducting the tenders has no such authority.

In turn, the Deposit Guarantee Fund, in response to a request from Radio Liberty, reported that during verification they relied on data from the public register of legal entities, which indicated that Marina Yevseyeva is a citizen of the United States.

“Also, the buyer confirms in the purchase and sale agreements concluded based on the results of the asset sale auction that they are not connected with the aggressor country,” the Fund added.

Manager with FSB connections?

Yevseyeva does not manage her businesses alone. As journalists found out, the manager of her American company Spectrum UA Credit LLC is Mikhail Trubchik. This status gives him the right to manage her Ukrainian subsidiary “Spectrum Assets” as well.

Trubchik was born in Belarus and still retains citizenship of that country, while also holding a US passport, where he resides and runs his business.

As the media found out, in July 2020, the Security Service of Ukraine banned Mikhail Trubchik from entering Ukraine for three years, suspecting him of being a representative of a “deeply covert network of Russian Federation intelligence services that use US citizens’ cover documents in their intelligence activities.”

According to the SSU, Trubchik “forms a logistics network” and is involved in plans to legalize Russian intelligence funds in Ukraine through the hotel business and enterprises in sports and transportation.

“These actions will lead to discrediting the law enforcement system and the current state authorities, destabilizing the socio-political situation in the country and negatively affecting Ukraine’s authority on the international arena,” — this is how the SSU justified the ban on Trubchik’s entry into Ukraine in June 2021 during a hearing at the Kyiv District Administrative Court, where Trubchik later successfully challenged the ban.

The media have obtained a document in which Marina Yevseyeva, as managing board member, appointed Trubchik as manager of Spectrum UA Credit LLC, authorizing him to manage not only this American company but also to make decisions regarding its Ukrainian subsidiary “Spectrum Assets.” This occurred on February 7, 2023, during the full-scale war.

Using this power of attorney from Yevseyeva, Trubchik has already approved a new charter and changed the types of activities of the Ukrainian company “Spectrum Assets.”

In the company’s charter dated August 2024, published on the Spectrum Assets website, it is Mikhail Trubchik’s signature that appears as manager of the Ukrainian firm on behalf of the American founding company.

Thus, it turns out that Trubchik — whom the SSU in 2020 considered a representative of Russian intelligence services — is authorized by a Russian citizen to manage her business, and through an American company he manages a Ukrainian company that, during the war, is buying up assets of Russian banks in Ukraine.

Journalists contacted the SSU and asked whether the agency still considers Mikhail Trubchik linked to Russian intelligence services and how it assesses the fact that he, together with a Russian citizen, manages a financial company that is purchasing Ukrainian assets. The SSU only stated that it has the right to ban foreigners from entering if it sees legal grounds for doing so, but emphasized that “these matters are not subject to disclosure,” citing the prohibition on disseminating information about its counterintelligence activities.

In September 2021, three months after the District Administrative Court overturned the entry ban, Trubchik visited Ukraine and spent nine days there, according to data on his crossings of the Ukrainian border held by the media. The next time Trubchik came to Ukraine was in 2024 — twice: in August and November.

On his social media pages, Belarusian and US citizen Trubchik, who manages the business of Russian and US citizen Marina Yevseyeva, actively declares support for Ukraine and shares photos from events in the US dedicated to this topic.

In particular, on LinkedIn he posted photos from the Ukrainian National Reception “1000 Days of Resistance” in California. On Facebook, one can see his photos from the Rebuild Ukraine Forum in San Francisco, held in June 2024, where the role of the private sector in Ukraine’s reconstruction, cooperation with American companies, and attracting innovative solutions to ensure the country’s resilience were discussed.

In addition to Marina Yevseyeva’s company, Trubchik also manages an American firm belonging to her husband that likewise has interests in Ukraine.

It concerns Allrise Capital Inc, co-owned by Volodymyr Yevseyev. The company is registered in California, USA, and specializes in the acquisition, development, and management of real estate, as well as investments in private equity and venture projects.

The Yevseyev Family Business

As journalists discovered, Volodymyr Yevseyev, like his wife, holds valid Russian Federation citizenship, resides in the United States, and is buying property of bankrupt banks in Ukraine. Among such assets is the stadium of the football club “Chornomorets” in Odesa.

This stadium came under the control of the Deposit Guarantee Fund in 2017, among other assets of “Imexbank” that belonged to Odesa businessman Leonid Klimov. Two years earlier, the regulator had declared the bank insolvent, revoked its license, and initiated liquidation proceedings.

The Deposit Guarantee Fund managed to sell the stadium only in 2020 to the little-known American company Allrise Capital — for 194 million hryvnias, a price six times lower than the starting price.

At that time, Volodymyr Yevseyev also emerged as one of the shareholders of Allrise Capital. However, his Russian passport — whose validity journalists verified — was not mentioned in the news about the sale of “Chornomorets.”

According to the California register of legal entities, as of 2019 Volodymyr Yevseyev was president of Allrise Capital.

The company’s chief operating officer at the time of the purchase of the Odesa stadium was the aforementioned Mikhail Trubchik.

Like Trubchik, Volodymyr Yevseyev participates in events on Ukrainian business topics. For example, in May 2021, the Russian citizen also took part in the International Forum of Ukrainian-American Partnership held in Kyiv.

Ukrainian Assets for Russians During the War?

The sale of assets of bankrupt or liquidated banks in Ukraine to Russians may pose security threats to the country, believes Ruslan Chornyi, editor-in-chief of the “Financial Club” news agency.

“The ban on Russians buying anything here stems from the need to prevent any Russian or Russian intelligence influence on Ukraine’s economic sectors,” Chornyi says.

“If there is a connection (of the manager of the Ukrainian company, — ed.) with the FSB, then this money may be needed to finance their фактически диверсійні operations. And this money must be somewhere here, in the country, to pay these executors with it,” the expert adds.

Chornyi separately notes that by collecting debts from Ukrainian companies acquired at auction, the company of Russian citizen Yevseyev may block their operations.

“If ‘Spectrum Assets’ has claims, it can do whatever it wants — for example, go to court and seize the accounts of that company, thereby halting the work of the company or enterprises that may be of interest to Russia,” Chornyi explains.

As journalists found out, “Spectrum Assets” is already doing this — in particular with assets of “MR Bank” and “Prominvestbank,” which it purchased on February 7 at auction.

In the court register, journalists found rulings in which “Spectrum Assets,” as the legal successor of “MR Bank” and “Prominvestbank,” has already begun proceedings to recover loans from Ukrainian individuals and legal entities worth tens of millions of hryvnias.

But does LLC “Spectrum Assets” even have the right to do this?

The media established that this is prohibited by a whole series of regulatory acts.

In March 2022, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted a resolution on the protection of national interests, which prohibited Russian citizens and persons connected with them from collecting funds from Ukrainians on loans.

The following month, in May, the National Bank additionally banned Russian citizens from managing non-bank financial institutions in Ukraine — such as, for example, “Spectrum Assets.”

According to the logic of the National Bank, the company’s owner and Russian citizen Marina Yevseyeva, who also makes management decisions, should have appointed a trusted person in her place. This person would have to meet the regulator’s requirements regarding an impeccable business reputation and obtain National Bank approval before appointment.

The media received from the National Bank a list of financial institutions that completed this procedure and applied to the regulator for approval of the appointment of their new trusted persons. “Spectrum Assets” is not on this list.

In addition, to dispose of assets of liquidated or nationalized banks acquired at auction, a financial institution must hold an appropriate license from the National Bank.

“Spectrum Assets” does have such a license. The National Bank last updated it in March 2024. The fact that the company belongs to Russian citizen Marina Yevseyeva did not become an obstacle. Although, according to the National Bank’s own regulations, Russian Federation citizenship is a sign of an imperfect business reputation — that is, grounds for refusal of a license.

The media asked the National Bank to state whether it had checked Marina Yevseyeva’s Russian citizenship when it renewed her company’s financial license in 2024, and whether Yevseyeva had approached the regulator to appoint a trusted person in her place at “Spectrum Assets.”

The National Bank reported that it had not previously known about Yevseyeva’s Russian citizenship. In response to the journalists’ inquiry, it noted that in the package of documents “Spectrum Assets” had repeatedly submitted to the regulator, it was asserted that the company’s owner is a US citizen not connected with the aggressor country, does not reside in Russia, and does not pay taxes there.

“Taking into account the information received from you, the National Bank sent inquiries to special-purpose state bodies requesting information regarding Yevseyeva Marina’s citizenship / tax residency of the Russian Federation,” — the National Bank’s response to the editorial request states.

It also noted that if information about Yevseyeva’s Russian citizenship is officially confirmed, the bank will have grounds to revoke the license of “Spectrum Assets.”

The Deposit Guarantee Fund reported that if it turns out the buyer of assets concealed ties with the Russian Federation, they will have to pay a fine of 100% of the lot price and return the assets received at the auction.

Journalists called Marina Yevseyeva with questions about why she had not informed the state regulator that she holds Russian Federation citizenship, and for what purpose she had visited Russian territory at least six times since the start of the full-scale invasion while simultaneously participating in Ukrainian state auctions.

Hearing the question, Yevseyeva silently hung up. The journalists sent her a written request for comment and a list of questions and received the following reply:

“Spectrum Assets participated in all auctions held in Ukraine in full compliance with Ukrainian legislation, which was repeatedly verified and confirmed by state bodies.

“I am a citizen of the United States of America, as confirmed by my passport, a copy of which has been repeatedly provided to Ukrainian state bodies. I was born in Kazakhstan and have lived in the USA for the last 13 years. I have officially renounced Russian citizenship,” Yevseyeva added in a letter to the editorial office.

However, Yevseyeva did not provide documents confirming her renunciation of Russian citizenship by the time this material was published, despite the editorial office’s request. She also did not explain why her Russian passport and tax identification number, according to official state registers, remain valid as of the publication date.

Yevseyeva also did not answer the media’s questions about the purpose of her regular visits to Russia after the start of the full-scale invasion, which she made using her valid Russian passport.

Journalists also contacted her husband, Volodymyr Yevseyev, owner of Allrise Capital, with questions about why he and his wife are buying assets in Ukraine while holding Russian Federation passports. As of publication, Volodymyr Yevseyev had not responded to the media’s inquiry.

The journalists also contacted Mikhail Trubchik. Initially, he told journalists he was ready to communicate via video call, but later said he would provide written answers.

In correspondence with journalists, Trubchik commented on the SSU suspicions against him as follows: “I have an agreement with the SSU that prohibits me from disclosing any information.”

The media asked the SSU whether these statements correspond to reality and are awaiting a response.

When asked by the media how exactly Trubchik, as manager of “Spectrum Assets,” verifies that the company meets the regulator’s requirements, he replied: “We are convinced that we are 100% compliant with the requirements and that all procedures we have initiated comply with the requirements. Our team in Ukraine bears 100% responsibility and has all voting rights and management rights.”

He also emphasized that he himself and the companies he manages support Ukraine.