Journalists find two new Russian oil companies with links to Medvedchuk family businesses

Journalists with the publications Skhemi (from Radio Liberty) and Scanner Project have discovered two new Russian oil extraction companies linked to the family of Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk.

Between December 2022 and January 2023, Alexander Dontsov, director of the oil company NZNP Trade, headed two Russian oil extraction companies, INGT and KNK. Oksana Marchenko, Medvedchuk’s wife, controls NZNP Trade.

Both INGT and KNK are new companies, according to the journalists’ investigation. Neither has submitted any reports on its activities or disclosed where it will extract oil, since neither has yet received the necessary licenses.

The founder of INGT and KNK is joint-stock company GK Market, which does not disclose information about its ownership. It is known, however, that GK Market owns oil brokers ATI and Tradeproyekt, which in turn operate a network of gas stations in the Lipetsk, Tyumen, and Kurgan regions.

In studying GK Market’s 2022 transactions, researchers discovered people connected to the Medvedchuk family’s businesses, namely Timur Abertasov and Nikolay Sukhov, among the company’s shareholders.

Skhema and Scanner Project note that the expansion of the Medvedchuk family’s oil business coincides with Viktor Medvedchuk’s announcement of a new political movement, which he spoke about on Russian state propaganda television channel RT in late January 2023. The new movement, according to Medvedchuk, will “debunk the idea that Ukraine is a monolith in its own views and in its alleged support for [President Volodymyr] Zelensky and his criminal regime.”