A Russian-owned, Seychelles-based, offshore services provider that created hundreds of anonymous shell companies for Russian oligarchs, tax dodgers and money launderers has lost its operating licenses following a cross-border investigation by Finance Uncovered, Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC.
Alpha Consulting was one of 14 offshore services providers identified in ICIJ’s Pandora Papers, a trove of more than 11.9 million leaked documents that exposed the covert world of offshore finance and spotlighted how wealthy individuals around the globe shield their fortunes from scrutiny.
The move to take away Alpha Consulting’s licenses comes 16 months after regulators and police raided the corporate services provider’s headquarters in the Seychelles’ capital, Victoria, hours after Finance Uncovered, the BBC and SBC published an extensive investigation into the company’s dealings. The investigation showed how Alpha Consulting, created in 2008, grew to play a critical role in a loose international web of Russian-speaking financial service providers operating from the world’s tax havens.
Finance Uncovered and its partners found that Alpha Consulting had registered hundreds of anonymous shell companies thousands of miles away from Seychelles in the United Kingdom, often on behalf of business figures from former Soviet states, in an effort to shield its clients’ identities. The offshore services firm recruited Seychelles citizens — some with very little or no financial expertise — to sign their names on corporate documents as nominee directors. These companies then registered in the U.K. as limited partnerships, a type of corporate entity that has been largely exempt from the country’s transparency laws.
In the Pandora Papers documents, Finance Uncovered and its partners unearthed a May 2017 news bulletin written in Russian that was shared with various offshore service providers, including Alpha Consulting, emphasizing how limited partnerships would fall outside the scope of disclosing ownership information in the U.K.
Many of the companies Alpha Consulting registered ultimately belonged to people within Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orbit, the investigation found. Among them: Yevgeny Prigozhin, the deceased leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Leonid Reiman, a Russian businessman and former government official, and Alexander Vinnik, an entrepreneur and computer expert who at one point operated the Russian BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange. Vinnik, who in May of last year pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in the United States, was returned to Russia earlier this year as part of a prisoner swap.
Some of the firms created by Alpha Consulting have been linked to “alleged large-scale corruption, a fugitive oligarch, and an unlicensed online pharmacy selling prescription medicines,” Finance Uncovered and its partners found in their investigation.
Alpha Consulting has 90 days to appeal the FSA’s decision. The firm’s co-founder, Victoria Valkovskaya, did not immediately return ICIJ or Finance Uncovered’s requests for comment.
When Finance Uncovered and its partners presented Alpha Consulting with their findings in 2023, Valkovskaya said the offshore services provider had no direct hand in the operations or in the decisions of the companies it set up and fronted and said that the use of nominee directors did not run contrary to any law. The news outlets previously reported that providing corporate nominee services is legal in the U.S., U.K. and Seychelles.
In 2023, U.K. lawmakers passed the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which tightens restrictions on limited partnerships by mandating they “maintain a connection to the U.K.” However, the legislation also said that transparency reforms related to limited partnerships “will take place no sooner than spring 2026,” and that the British government views ensuring compliance as a “significant undertaking.”
In a Sunday interview with SBC, Chief Executive of the Financial Services Authority in Seychelles Randolf Samson declined to elaborate on the motivations behind revoking Alpha Consulting’s licenses, but said that regulators have a responsibility to combat efforts to misuse the jurisdiction and to protect the reputation of the country.
“If a loophole exists in the U.K., it is clear that it will affect countries such as Seychelles,” Samson told the SBC. “On both sides, there is an acknowledgement that these loopholes need to be taken out.”
