He is nothing but loyal to the Kremlin.
Zaur Askenderov is one of Vladimir Putin’s lieutenants in the once - perhaps still - troubled North-east Caucasus.
This week the speaker of the parliament of Dagestan - the largely muslim republic next to Chechnya - heaped praise on the man he called “our leader”.
Putin, Askenderov said, had made Russia “great and powerful again”. The president’s tough position, he added, had helped the country “stand up to the challenges of the collective West”.
The businessman turned politician, however, still has family connections in countries he sees as enemies.
His daughter, 20-year-old Djennet, has recently attracted attention in exiled free media for partying in Monte Carlo.
And, public registers show, Askenderov’s brother is the official controller of a firm registered in Edinburgh’s swanky west end.
Kamil Askenderov is listed as the only person of significant control in Alvisa Whisky (Scotland) LP.
Read more: Revealed: Scottish "ghost" firms funelling dirty money into Russia
This is a Scottish limited partnership or SLP, a kind of opaque corporate entity that has proved enormously popular in the former Soviet Union. Like most SLPs it does not file annual accounts or reports, so it is impossible to know what it does.
However, Kamil Askenderov is also general director of a big Russian alcohol manufacturing and distribution firm called Alvisa - where Zaur Askenderov was vice president until he went in to politics.
And Alvisa does make whisky. It bottles what it says is Scotch distilled and aged in Scotland at a factory in Stavropol, with brands like Glen Eagles, Nucky Thompson and Lucky Nucky.
So there is no reason to believe Alvisa Whisky (Scotland) LP is involved in any wrongdoing.
However, Kamil Askenderov’s control of the firm is flagged on the website OpenSanctions - which brings together various data bases tracking connections between business and politics.
Why? Because he is the sibling of a Russian politically exposed person or PEP.
Zaur Askenderov has been personally sanctioned by the government of Ukraine because of his support for Putin’s war on the country. The businessman-turned-politician made the news for personally financing jeeps and military kit sent to the front.
The Askenderovs’ international links have already come under scrutiny - in Ukraine.
Earlier this year journalists at Ukrainska Pravda, revealed a whole series of properties owned by Russian oligarchs on France’s Côte d’Azur. This included Kamil Askenderov. His home used to be owned by his brother, before he entered politics in 2012, reported the newspaper.
Kamil Askenderov was officially named as his SLP’s person of significant control when it was created in January 2018. The firm’s partners are both part of the Alvisa empire. Its official address is a virtual office and mail drop in South Charlotte Street, around the corner from the official residence of Scotland’s first minister.
But the businessman is now the only SLP controller flagged because of family links to a Kremlin-linked PEP.
Another Edinburgh-registered business, Bredbury Solutions (correct) is controlled by a Ukrainian resident called Vadym Balatskyi. His brother, Maksym, was an information minister in the occupying administration in Crimea, the first part of Ukraine to by annexed by Russia.
The SLP was set up anonymously in 2012 at a private home in Rosyth widely used by shell companies and has changed address to a variety of houses in the years since. It is now registered at another virtual office in Edinburgh.
Bredbury Solutions is what is often called a zombie SLP. That means it is not clear whether the business is live or not. The partnership has previously dissolved itself twice - on each occasion for just a few days. This July it changed its address and again dissolved. Vadym Balatskyi was named as PSC in 2018, under transparency rules introduced after a Herald campaign.
There have been numerous revelations over the years about politicians or government officials or their family members using SLPs. Back in 2021, for example, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in Sarajevo, Bosnia, revealed that associates of the nephew of Turkmenistan’s dictator Garganguly Berdymukhamedov had an Inverness SLP which enjoyed a state monopoly on imports of buffalo meat. In 2018 it emerged that the nephew of Russia’s deputy defence minister was convicted of using an SLP to make sham imports.
A year earlier this newspaper reported on a whole series of SLP holdings linked to PEPs in Ukraine, including the husband of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the son of the ousted and exiled kleptocrat former president Viktor Yanukovych.
Read more: Ukraine: US sanctions Scottish firms believed to be helping Kremlin
In 2016 Latvian investigative journalists revealed that the playboy nephew of Uzbek hardman Islam Karimov was involved in a scandal around the ownership of Riga hotels using a Fife SLP.
There is no reason why the relatives of politicians should not have businesses. However, transparency campaigners stress that SLPs are relatively opaque, do not routinely file accounts or reports and therefore bring risks of abuse.
The UK Government, which is entirely responsible for the legislation governing SLPs, has promised a series of measures to improve their regulation - and that of other UK corporate entities.
However, even existing rules provide information on potential exposure to PEP risk. And that means service providers - the businesses which create, host or support shell companies - should be able to check the backgrounds of their clients.
There is no suggestion that registration agents in Scotland were involved in any illegal or unethical activities, however Ben Cowdock, lead investigator at anti-corruption campaign Transparency International, stressed businesses servicing SLPs should be double-checking their clients.
He said: “Despite now being subject to greater levels of transparency, SLPs continue to be used by sanctioned individuals and politically linked people to manage their assets.
“It is important that those administering these vehicles carry out checks on their clients to ensure these entities are not used for money laundering.
“Rogue service providers who continue to sell SLPs to high risk customers should be penalised by regulators to help cut off the supply of these money laundering vehicles to criminals."
This is the final article in a three part series by David Leask on Scottish-registered businesses' connections to Putin's Russia.
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