September 11 Commission Report - Gnostic Liberation Front

of 600 billion rubles made earlier this year. [Credobank Exiting City As Assets, Deposits Fall, Richard
Sleder, The St Petersburg Times,]
In understanding the ownership of “Western Siberian Steelworks,”(aka ZapSib),
ownership is traced to the Evraz Group S.A., supposedly controlled by Roman
Abramovich (now using the name Abramov):
“– Evraz Group S.A. (LSE: EVR), one of the leading vertically integrated steel production and mining
businesses with operations mainly in Russia, today announces the commissioning of a double-strand
slab continuous caster with annual capacity of up to 2.5 million tonnes at OAO West Siberian Iron and
Steel Plant (ZapSib). This investment is in line with Evraz Group’s strategy….” [NOVOKUZNETSK,
Russia RNWire]
Evraz Group S.A. (“Evraz Group”) is a limited liability company registered under the laws of
Luxembourg on December 31, 2004. The registered address of Evraz Group is 1, Allee Scheffer L-
2520, Luxembourg. Evraz Group’s parent is Crosland Global Limited (“CGL” or the “Parent”) which
is under control of Mr. Abramov. Evraz Group was formed through a reorganisation in which 95.83%
of the shares in Mastercroft Limited (“Mastercroft”), a limited liability company registered in Cyprus,
directly owned by Crosland Limited (“Crosland”), the parent of CGL, were contributed into Evraz
Group in April 2005. [Evraz Group S.A., Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements, Year ended
December 31, 2005]
Unfortunately, Abramovich seems to have had a number of U.S. and Israeli “backers,”
who remained unreported in this deal (just like Khodokovsky turned out to have a hidden
partner with Jacob Rothschild).
“The Kurbanov claim was the first to intimate publicly that Abramov may not have been the
controlling shareholder he claimed. Since the December filing, the lawyers involved in the Kurbanov
case have been negotiating with him for weeks, but they no longer return calls to discuss the case.
Before they fell silent, one of them told The Russia Journal that she believed Abramov’s purported
control shareholding in Evraz included other trusts. One which had come under Russian media scrutiny
was the estate of a senior executive of the group, Andrei Sevenyuk, who was killed in an aircraft crash
in September 2004. Before his death, Sevenyuk had hinted to The Russia Journal that he was in control
of a sizeable stake in the company. Subsequently, uncorroborated reports suggest that his survivors
accepted Abramov’s payment of $124 million for a shareholding of 4.17%, leaving what Morgan
Stanley estimated as a residual 0.8% bloc of shares still in the Sevenyuk estate’s control. Moscow
newspaper reports have speculated, however, that when he was alive, Sevenyuk controlled at least
15%. If true, then together, Sevenyuk and Kurbanov may have been the beneficial owners of
approximately half the shares Abramov claimed for himself.
Until and unless he settled with them, or with their heirs, Abramov ran the risk of trying to sell what
wasn’t his.
Other court claims dispute the ownership which Evraz claims in its prime assets. A claim filed in
federal and local courts last November in the US state of Delaware four companies representing an
Israeli and US investors had once controlled about 72% of the shares of the Kachkanarsky oreprocessing
combine (GOK), an iron-ore and vanadium mine that is today Evraz’s most important
source of the raw material. The claimants say that between 1999 and 2001, they were forcibly deprived
of their asset. According to the plaintiffs’ complaint in Delaware’s Chancery Court, Evraz, one of the
eleven listed defendants, is described as having been “owned, directly or indirectly, by [Mikhail]
Chernoi, [Oleg] Deripaska, [Iskander] Makhmudov, and [Mikhail] Nekrich, and operated and managed
by them, or under their direction and control.” [Abramovich Kicks a Ghost, Ft Puts Foot in Mouth,
John Helmer, The Russia Journal, March 22, 2006]
THE SEPTEMBER 11 COMMISSION REPORT Page 227