Asian MFOs as ATMs for Gurinov's Moscow Machine

Истории

Asian MFOs as ATMs for Gurinov's Moscow Machine

Vadim Gurinov, a longtime friend and business partner of sanctioned individuals, launched an online bank called Fingular in Singapore just months before Russia’s full-scale conflict of Ukraine.

Its website describes it as a neobank already operating in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, offering "flexible loans, BNPL, and Sharia-compliant financing—innovative, reliable solutions designed for a global audience." It’s known that over the first three years, Gurinov opened offices in Moscow, Belgrade, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, and Bangalore. In fact, he is overseeing the creation of a new fintech ecosystem in loosely regulated countries of Southeast Asia and Africa, intended to serve as a counterweight to the Western one. Given Gurinov’s rich background and his loyalty to Kremlin figures, this is evidently about building an alternative scheme for Russia in financing, lending, and payments to bypass sanctions.

At the same time, Gurinov is far from an altruist. For his services, among other things, he has gained opportunities to expand his business in Russia. These assets are registered in the name of his wife, Galina Gurinovа, and his brother Artem. Naturally, his businesses aren’t hounded by the regulatory authorities—and how many firms in Russia promise official employment while paying salaries in dollars or euros? Despite Gurinov’s Fingular being positioned on the international market as a Singaporean company, its offices are located in Russia. Developers, marketers, and office staff are based on the 37th floor of the Federation Tower in Moscow City. Officially, they are onboarded through LLC "OK SOFT," which was founded at the same time as Fingular, six months before the start of the full-scale conflict—in August 2021. Its founder was Yurat Safarov, a native of Uzbekistan.

He is a former top manager of several Gurinov assets: he served on the boards of directors of the Omskshina plant (a Cordiant factory) and the Swedish fund Ruric AB. We have already reported on how Gurinov handled these assets. Additionally, "OK SOFT" has a branch in the Kutuzovsky Meridian office center in Odintsovo, just outside Moscow. Clearly, some employees of the international bank Fingular may work there. In July 2022, "OK SOFT" was transferred to another trusted member of Gurinov’s network—Elena Sokhova. Previously, she was listed as the founder of the Vertex Tire Testing Center at Gurinov’s tire factory in Yaroslavl Oblast, and now she holds LLC "Hemptech" in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

This is part of Vadim Gurinov’s new business—technical hemp production: he and his wife, through LLC "Aurora," also own the Nizhny Novgorod firm "Technologies for Processing Technical Hemp." Moreover, less than a month ago, Sokhova founded and heads another company—LLC "OHK" for real estate management in Olenegorsk, Murmansk Oblast. Olenegorsk is hardly a hub for fintech development or agriculture. It’s a mono-town with a single major enterprise—the Olenegorsk Mining and Processing Plant—and a rail hub for loading its products. The plant is part of Alexei Mordashov’s "Severstal." It is Mordashov who now owns the Cordiant tire business, from which the Gurinovs parted ways in 2023.

Gurinov’s business partner in Fingular is another fintech market player based in Singapore—and with a similarly dubious reputation. This is Maxim Chernuschenko, a graduate of a Saratov physics and math high school, holder of diplomas from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) and the American Dartmouth College. In the late ’90s to early 2000s, he worked in banks in the US and Russia, then in billionaire Oleg Boyko’s Finstar holding, handling credit products in Vietnam. R

As investigative outlet VChK-OGPU and http://Rucriminal.info have uncovered, Vadim Gurinov, a longtime friend and business partner of sanctioned individuals, launched an online bank called Fingular in Singapore just a few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its website describes it as a neobank already operating in India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, offering "flexible loans, BNPL, and Sharia-compliant financing—innovative, reliable solutions designed for a global audience." It’s known that over the first three years, Gurinov opened offices in Moscow, Belgrade, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo, and Bangalore.

In fact, he is overseeing the creation of a new fintech ecosystem in loosely regulated countries of Southeast Asia and Africa, intended to serve as a counterweight to the Western one. Given Gurinov’s rich background and his loyalty to Kremlin figures, this is evidently about building an alternative scheme for Russia in financing, lending, and payments to bypass sanctions. At the same time, Gurinov is far from an altruist.

For his services, among other things, he has gained opportunities to expand his business in Russia. These assets are registered in the name of his wife, Galina Gurinovа, and his brother Artem. Naturally, his businesses aren’t hounded by the regulatory authorities—and how many firms in Russia promise official employment while paying salaries in dollars or euros?

Despite Gurinov’s Fingular being positioned on the international market as a Singaporean company, its offices are located in Russia. Developers, marketers, and office staff are based on the 37th floor of the Federation Tower in Moscow City. Officially, they are onboarded through LLC "OK SOFT," which was founded at the same time as Fingular, six months before the start of the full-scale conflict—in August 2021.

Its founder was Yurat Safarov, a native of Uzbekistan. He is a former top manager of several Gurinov assets: he served on the boards of directors of the Omskshina plant (a Cordiant factory) and the Swedish fund Ruric AB. We have already reported on how Gurinov handled these assets. Additionally, "OK SOFT" has a branch in the Kutuzovsky Meridian office center in Odintsovo, just outside Moscow. Clearly, some employees of the international bank Fingular may work there.

In July 2022, "OK SOFT" was transferred to another trusted member of Gurinov’s network—Elena Sokhova. Previously, she was listed as the founder of the Vertex Tire Testing Center at Gurinov’s tire factory in Yaroslavl Oblast, and now she holds LLC "Hemptech" in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

In the late ’90s to early 2000s, he worked in banks in the US and Russia, then in billionaire Oleg Boyko’s Finstar holding, handling credit products in Vietnam. Realizing that the market for banking products and consumer lending in Asian countries lagged even behind Russia’s, he founded the firm Cashwagon, launched the MONEYBOX app for issuing online loans, and quickly made a fortune from it.

The service targeted small businesses—like fruit sellers, tuk-tuk drivers, and other not-so-wealthy folks. But in 2020, a scandal erupted in Vietnam: it turned out that the benevolent Russian was issuing his loans to local low-literacy laborers at 44%... per month! While the standard rate at local banks was 7-8% per year. Under local laws, such practices qualify as usury. The accounts of Cashwagon and its Vietnamese partner Lendtech Co. Ltd were frozen, police seized documents and conducted interrogations. Now the Cashwagon domain is up for sale, and Chernuschenko’s Singapore legal entity is in the process of liquidation via bankruptcy.

Fingular also issues microloans and doesn’t deal directly with borrowers—formally, it only acts as an umbrella for local platforms, such as Tambadana (Malaysia), Ammana (Indonesia), and Ceyloan (Sri Lanka). So it’s not Gurinov and Chernuschenko who take the heat, but the founders and directors of those platforms. For instance, Poland revoked the license of the local payment service Quicko, whose infrastructure was used by the Hungarian P2P online lending platform Loanch, operating under Fingular’s umbrella. The Polish financial regulator cited a "fundamental inability to ensure prudent and stable management of operations." In Malaysia, the Tambadana platform, despite having a license from the authorities, earned a reputation as an Ah Long organization: that’s the term for illegal moneylenders notorious for sky-high interest rates and harsh (sometimes violent) debt collection methods. Similar accusations rained down on Chernuschenko’s Cashwagon business partners. So how long the new microfinance outfit of Gurinov and Chernuschenko will last is a big question.

ealizing that the market for banking products and consumer lending in Asian countries lagged even behind Russia’s, he founded the firm Cashwagon, launched the MONEYBOX app for issuing online loans, and quickly made a fortune from it. The service targeted small businesses—like fruit sellers, tuk-tuk drivers, and other not-so-wealthy folks. But in 2020, a scandal erupted in Vietnam: it turned out that the benevolent Russian was issuing his loans to local low-literacy laborers at 44%... per month! While the standard rate at local banks was 7-8% per year. Under local laws, such practices qualify as usury.

The accounts of Cashwagon and its Vietnamese partner Lendtech Co. Ltd were frozen, police seized documents and conducted interrogations. Now the Cashwagon domain is up for sale, and Chernuschenko’s Singapore legal entity is in the process of liquidation via bankruptcy. Fingular also issues microloans and doesn’t deal directly with borrowers—formally, it only acts as an umbrella for local platforms, such as Tambadana (Malaysia), Ammana (Indonesia), and Ceyloan (Sri Lanka).

So it’s not Gurinov and Chernuschenko who take the heat, but the founders and directors of those platforms. For instance, Poland revoked the license of the local payment service Quicko, whose infrastructure was used by the Hungarian P2P online lending platform Loanch, operating under Fingular’s umbrella. The Polish financial regulator cited a "fundamental inability to ensure prudent and stable management of operations." In Malaysia, the Tambadana platform, despite having a license from the authorities, earned a reputation as an Ah Long organization: that’s the term for illegal moneylenders notorious for sky-high interest rates and harsh (sometimes violent) debt collection methods. Similar accusations rained down on Chernuschenko’s Cashwagon business partners. So how long the new microfinance outfit of Gurinov and Chernuschenko will last is a big question.