bylinetimes.com/2025/07/30/m...

bylinetimes.com/2025/03/31/m...

meduza.io/en/feature/2...

the entire section is worth reading.

@blairmcdougall.com "The complaint of the democracy activists I used to work with is that all of this brutality is happening while the regime’s money is washed through business associates in London."

Hello @willneal.bsky.social !

No mincing of words there.

But Guriev appears wholly unconvinced the buck stops with Gorbachev, or Kushnir, or Hunnewell, or even 777, suggesting his suspicions may very well be directed elsewhere.

Where exactly, for now, being the billion-dollar question. 13/ENDS

After losing his claim against Guriev, Gorbachev says he now doesn’t have the funds to meet the roughly £12 million awarded to the Kremlin oligarch in damages, after Kushnir, Hunnewell and 777 all inexplicably stopped financing his legal costs back in May 2023. 12/13

Blazquez first met Rukhadze in Tbilisi sometime in the early 2000s. Public rulings from separate UK proceedings show Blazquez later went on to assist Hunnewell tracking down or managing assets on behalf of late Georgian oligarch Arkady Patarkatsishvili’s family. 11/13

The request that 777 be brought in on the funding deal appears to have come off the back of Hunnewell co-founder Irakli Rukhadze’s close friendship with one of the Miami group’s operating partners, Andres Blazquez. 10/13

Currently the target of a money laundering investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, 777 has a long history of dealings with now-sanctioned Russian oligarchs, including key Putin confidant Gennady Timchenko and billionaire fintech entrepreneur Oleg Boyko. 9/13

It’s not clear under what circumstances, or why exactly, Hunnewell Partners teamed up with Kushnir. What’s known, however, is that the firm soon requested that 777 Partners, a shady Miami investment group, also be brought in to assist with financing. 8/13

Kushnir was later joined by Hunnewell Partners. Described by critics as an “enabler” of Georgia’s brutal Ivanishvili regime, Byline has reported on the UK group before, exposing its secret dealings with sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich. 7/13
👉 shorturl.at/KIRyi

Documents from those proceedings reveal Gorbachev’s lawsuit was first funded by Levi Kushnir—a controversial Israeli businessman and former Portsmouth FC chairman, who acquired his stake in the club from Alexandre Gaydamak, a Russian oligarch convicted of arms trafficking in Angola. 6/13

Gorbachev’s claim backfired after the courts ruled his evidence “was contradictory, lacked credibility, and at times, was plainly false.” Guriev, suspecting his adversary had not acted alone, has since brought new proceedings in Florida to ascertain who else may have been involved, and why. 5/13

Back in 2019, Guriev was sued in the UK by Alexander Gorbachev, an old comrade from his days as a Communist Party youth secretary, who claimed Guriev promised him a $1.3 billion share in PhosAgro over the course of conversations in London pubs, restaurants and saunas more than a decade prior. 4/13

While Guriev was sanctioned by the US, the UK and the EU in 2022 for his ownership of companies generating significant revenue for Russia’s war machine, it was not, in fact, the first time his stake in PhosAgro had caused him trouble. 3/13