By Evgeny Dyatlov
February 21, 2025 Anno Domini

Vyacheslav Kantor is considered an oligarch, to whom the phrase “I can explain the origin of all my millions except the first” is quite applicable.

Although this statement is not entirely true—in Kantor’s business not everything is unambiguous and transparent, as he claims, but at least there are hints or stories of other people.

But Vyacheslav Kantor’s entry into big business from science, which he allegedly engaged in under socialism, is covered with darkness of the unknown. He himself explains his start in this field, which took place in the late 80s, under the late USSR, very vaguely: “We came to business poor, like church mice. We had neither political support nor commercial experience.”

And here it seems that Vyacheslav Vladimirovich is a little cunning. Because his first business, according to his official biography, was the commercial center “Composite”, which was engaged in the sale of computer equipment and its installation at industrial enterprises. Then there was a Soviet-American enterprise, and then he had money to privatize the Novgorod chemical enterprise “Azot”, which was soon renamed “Akron” and became the basis of its business empire. At the same time, Vyacheslav Kantor claims that there was not a drop of crime in this privatization.

Well, it’s a fresh legend, it’s hard to believe. Because joint ventures were then organized under the watchful supervision of the relevant authorities, and trading in computers brought thousands of percent of profits. At first, this profit was controlled by the special services, and when the USSR began to collapse, the brothers sat on it. And the question is not clear: where did a former researcher of the Moscow Aviation Institute, who was Kantor before going into business, take the currency to buy expensive imported office equipment? Do not forget that in the USSR, currency was then tightly controlled by the state, not to mention that opening a foreign currency account abroad was a real fantasy. Even the very presence of currency for a citizen of the USSR was punishable by execution.

It was not for nothing that we touched upon those distant years and the issues of the origin of capital of Vyacheslav Kantor, who in his biography seems to hint that he received them for scientific works. They say that together with Zhores Alferov he developed the idea of a sunlight reflector that could illuminate the Earth even at night. From there, they say, and money. Kantor doesn’t say it directly, but it’s mentioned in all biographies.

However, first of all, where is the reflector itself that illuminates the Earth? The idea and its embodiment are very different things. Did the Council of Ministers of the USSR really get so much currency that it was enough for computer trading? And secondly, the idea was developed back in 1981. At least, that’s what Kantor himself says. But no one has seen the thesis, about which Vyacheslav Vladimirovich boasts so much, and you can’t ask Alferov anything.

So Vyacheslav Kantor, unfortunately, does not pull on the Soviet Elon Musk. And Musk himself also has acquired capital not quite, as everyone thinks, by the way. Let’s go back to Vyacheslav Vladimirovich. Whose life path is truly amazing. To understand how difficult everything is and, by the way, to get a hint of how a simple researcher from the Research Institute became an international oligarch, it is enough to look only at the list of his awards. Pay attention to the countries that awarded Vyacheslav Kantor with their highest awards.

And yes – the Ukrainian Order of Yaroslav the Wise Kantor received not from the hands of Yanukovych, as one might think. Kantor was awarded by Viktor Yushchenko, who, with all the desire, cannot be called sympathetic to Russia. And Kantor was Yushchenko’s advisor, by the way. And then he received awards from the hands of another president. This time, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

All this preface suggests that, in fact, Vyacheslav Kantor has long and closely co-operated with Soviet (and then Russian) special services. In addition, this explains the origin of his capital. All over the past have somehow forgotten where the so-called “gold of the party”, that is, the Communist Party Soviet Union (CPSU), which fully owned the resources of the Soviet Union, went. And in the late ’80s, when it became clear that the Union was about to collapse, the highest nomenclature began to frantically invest the capital of the country and the party in assets and business.

It was with this money that Kantor “rose”. You can’t deny him the talent of a businessman, but the start-up capital is the “gold of the party”. More precisely, the money of the people of the USSR. Which were stolen not by mythical “CIA agents”, but by true party members and their special services. Maybe at first the goals were noble. But then all this turned into a frank deriban of the country. As a result, we have a bunch of “cantors” who privatized that very country. And it is from here that the connections and the privatization of a huge chemical plant, which became the asset of Vyacheslav Kantor, still bring huge profits.

Only if before the collapse of the USSR this money belonged to the people, now it belongs to Kantor. And – to his curators from the special services, which head the current Russia. And ordinary Russians can, at best, ruin their health in the production of fertilizers at the Kantor plants. At the same time, to sympathize with the poor Russian businessman Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor, whose property was seized by scoundrels from the European Union in that cursed Europe. Among the list of this property, the imagination is shocked by the presence of eleven (!) villas on the Emerald Coast (Costa Smeralda) in the north of Sardinia. They were were confiscated by the Italian authorities for communication with Putin and financing of Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Vyacheslav Kantor himself, as in the case of capital, tried to “move away” from the topic of his connection with Vladimir Putin. They say he has nothing to do with it. Although in 2015 he himself stated that he “admired” Putin, and in 2016 he received the Order of Honour from his hands.

However, the words that he had nothing to do with the Russian president were clearly not enough to avoid sanctions. That’s why I had to rewrite “Akron” into front persons. Now Kantor owns a 45 per cent stake in the company through Luxembourg’s Redbrick Investments and the Russian Akron Group JSC. He transferred almost 50 per cent of the shares to trust management to three firms owned by Akron’s top managers. The measure was forced – “Akron” and supplies fertilizers to the West, which allowed Vyacheslav Kantor to double his assets, as fertilizer prices have risen sharply over the past two years.

And now let’s go back to the 1980s, at a time when the “researcher” Vyacheslav Vladimirovich Kantor took his first steps in business. “I didn’t have a penny behind my soul”. In his biographies, Vyacheslav Vladimirovich modestly ignores his family. What is very strange for a Jew is that this nation is usually overly respectful to parents and close relatives. However, there is nothing surprising in the fact of Vyacheslav Kantor’s silence. The fact is that his father, Vladimir Isaakovich Kantor, was a prominent representative of the trade mafia of the late USSR. And he was in charge of the Sokolniki department store in Moscow. He even became the hero of a documentary about the trade workers of the USSR.

In 1985, Vladimir Kantor was arrested, with his confiscated valuables estimated at 622 thousand Soviet rubles. The salary of the director of the department store with all bonuses then did not exceed 200 rubles. So it’s clear where all this “hard work” comes from. The story of Vladimir Kantor itself is very interesting—we recommend watching the film—but the point is that instead of the capital punishment imposed under such an article, Kantor Sr. received only eight years. And then four years after the arrest. True, having heard the sentence, he died of a heart attack, but that’s not the point.

And the fact that this episode gives us an understanding of where the junior researcher Vyacheslav Kantor has connections and start-up capital. Because it’s no secret that there were either cops or kagebashniks behind the trade mafia in the USSR. Sometimes both at once. A curious detail: during searches in the garage of Vladimir Kantor’s son (and his son had one) it turned out that the gate was double. And this cavity was full of jewelry. The products were seized, but for some reason, Vyacheslav Kantor himself was not brought to justice for complicity.

The answer to these questions is simple: behind Kantor Sr. stood the PGU, that is, the First Main Directorate of the KGB. It covered the younger Kantor from the investigation and then helped with business, with access to foreign markets, with registration of foreign representative offices of Kantor firms, with currency, and with everything else. Soon the USSR collapsed, but the “office” did not go anywhere. The PGU was transformed into the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service). No one knows where the interests of intelligence ended and business began, and vice versa. But it was this close co-operation that made the failed scientist Vyacheslav Kantor an international oligarch. The same connections allowed Kantor, not the bandits, to privatize the Novgorod chemical plant.

Well, and then – on the knurled. Privatization of everything that could be reached in the 1990s, the roof in the form of special services, which after a short time themselves became the authorities and masters of the country. In 1999, Vyacheslav Kantor again pulled out the jackpot—he made friends with Vladimir Putin, who, according to Kantor, “was appointed heir to the throne”. However, the word “friendship” here has a peculiar meaning, but the point is that both of them found a common language and came to mutual understanding.

So, as you can see, the secret of Vyacheslav Kantor’s success is quite simple—you need to be able to be friends. But to be friends not with someone, but with the right people. Apparently, he got this talent from his father, whom the right people took out of the sentence. The same people helped an ordinary emenes to open a profitable business with foreigners. Then, buy the plant, pushing out competitors. By the way, Kantor, according to his own words, urgently needed $3 million to privatize this plant, which in 1993 was an astronomical sum. But he had this “money”. From where, you can guess.

And sanctions and confiscation of eleven forks in Italy—so you have to pay for everything. This Jewish boy Slava Kantor should understand from childhood. This lesson was also to be taught to him by his father, who paid for the fact that the OBHSS did not prevent him from doing business in the state store, and the KGB was not interested in the currency, which he slowly bought on the black market. However, judging by the fact that Vyacheslav Kantor’s fortune has doubled over the past two years, eleven confiscated villas in Italy are not such a high price. Besides, for some reason it seems that these villas were the price for the very friendship with the authorities, which Kantor is publicly proud of, or publicly denies.

We see a pattern in Russia where its institutions use logos/emblems bearing the hallmark of the Jewish-Hasidic organized crime syndicate Chabad Lubavitch and its dominating presence in the neo-Soviet Empire, mainly in the forms of the Jewish candelabrum known as the “menorah”. Have a look at the following and ask yourself if it’s merely reaching or just coincidence.

Hannukah Menorah lights up capital of Kazakhstan for first time in years

Moscow Public Menorah Permit Was Rare Exception

“In light of an urgent request personally sent by the Chief Rabbi of Russia, Berel Lazar, to the Mayor of Moscow, an exception was made by the Mayor and permission was granted.

For the past seven months, there were absolutely no public gatherings allowed in Moscow, in order to keep people as safe as possible during the pandemic. But this merited a rare exception.”

By Kelly Crow
The Wall Street Journal
July 30, 2020 Anno Domini

Two months after the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russian construction bil- lionaires Arkady and Boris Rotenberg in March 2014, the brothers sent their art adviser on a shopping spree, according to a Senate investigation report released Wednesday. At a Sotheby’s auction that month in New York, the Rotenbergs, who are life-long friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, paid $6.8 million for 10 works of art, including a cubist still life by Georges Braque and a swirling tableau by Marc Chagall, the report said.

Days later, the Rotenbergs again added to their collection, paying a private U.S. dealer $7.5 million for “Chest,” René Magritte’s 1961 painting of a colorful pile of buildings, according to the report. When Senate investigators later asked the art dealer if she had vetted the buyers’ identities to make sure they weren’t blacklisted, she said she never asked. When it comes to due diligence, the report said, “She relies on her gut.”

Who is buying art these days? Such disclosure details in art deals like these are being scrutinized following a two-year investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which alleges art is increasingly being used as a tool by blacklisted individuals to evade sanctions. The report directed sharp criticism at auction houses and art dealers for doing little to screen or stop sanctioned people from trading art in the U.S.

Companies based in the U.S. are forbidden by law from having any financial dealings with sanctioned individuals. Americans caught transacting with the Rotenbergs or any sanctioned individual can face steep fines or even jail terms. The seller of a painting isn’t required to ask or know the identity of the buyer to close a deal, though, because blue-chip art isn’t subject to the same anti-money-laundering disclosure laws that govern U.S. banks.

The art world has installed its own disclosure protocols, but has long struggled to enforce them. Collectors prize discretion and don’t always want their identities or income sources shared. Dealers likewise tend to be tight-lipped about their major clients, and no one wants to cede business to rivals willing to ask less and sell more. This helps explain why so many catalogs brim with works whose only ownership clue is “private collection.”

“I know the auction houses and dealers don’t always want to know who they’re selling to because they’re making significant money, but we also have a national-security interest in making sure sanctions work,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) who led the bipartisan report with Tom Carper (D., Del.). “Secrecy is the problem,” Sen. Portman added.

Even after meeting with Senate investigators in 2018, Sotheby’s and Christie’s competed last year for the chance to auction Lyonel Feininger’s “Bridge II,” a painting investigators said the Rotenbergs likely owned. Christie’s said later it didn’t know the work’s true seller at the time. When Sotheby’s won the consignment, it asked the Rotenbergs’ alleged adviser for the work’s owner and was told it belonged to a Marshall Islands company. The house gave the painting a $5 million estimate and included it in its February 2019 London sale. Just before the auction, the house pulled the work; Sotheby’s told investigators the work hadn’t elicited any potential bidders.

Altogether, the report alleges the Rotenbergs used U.S. dollars to spend or move around funds totaling $91 million, including $18.4 million in art and antiques, since sanctions were imposed.

Sen. Portman said he and Sen. Carper launched the investigation two years ago to research the efficacy of U.S. sanctions imposed on members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle in March 2014, weeks after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a covert military operation in eastern Ukraine.

Arkaday Rotenberg, a St. Petersberg native and industrialist who befriended Mr. Putin when they joined the same judo club as children, was among those sanctioned. His brother Boris was added shortly thereafter. But after more sanctions were imposed on a wider circle of Russian oligarchs in 2018, Sen. Portman said he and other legislators “wanted to figure out why the sanctions didn’t appear to be working.”

Senate investigators who briefed The Wall Street Journal on the report’s findings said they started looking broadly at blacklisted Russians but soon focused on Arkady Rotenberg’s art-collecting activity. Eventually, they expanded their investigation to art bought by his brother and son, Igor, who is also sanctioned. Investigators said the family offers a case study in how some blacklisted Russians are using the opaque art market to circumvent financial restrictions.

Christie’s, Sotheby’s and the smaller London houses, Phillips and Bonhams, are all named in the report for doing business with the Rotenbergs. Spokespeople for each said they had zero tolerance for evasion of sanctions and were willing to work with the U.S. govern- ment on this issue. The houses also said they didn’t know the Rotenbergs were bidding through an alleged art adviser, Gregory Baltser, until investigators informed them of the connection. All said they stopped allowing him to bid after Senate investigators came asking questions.

“I was shocked when I found out,” Phillips’ Chief Executive Edward Dolman said.

Mr. Baltser, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Russia, confirmed that his company, Baltzer LLP (the misspelling is intentional), has aided Russian collectors in the past but through his lawyer denied that he ever bid on behalf of the Rotenbergs. His lawyer, in a statement, said the investigation has “done substantial collateral damage to Baltzer and its employees, and has forced Baltzer to largely suspend operations.”

A representative for the Rotenbergs called the Senate allegations “totally absurd” and said they never used any tools, including art, to launder money or circumvent sanctions. “All transactions with works of art made by Rotenberg family members or on their behalf were made openly, strictly with lawful personal purposes and always on market terms,” the statement said.

In 2018, the European Union amended its anti-money-laundering regulations to require businesses to verify the identities of sellers and buyers of art valued over €10,000.

The Senate report recommended ways to alter U.S. laws to compel more disclosure in art sales, but so far two bills that could potentially address the issue are stalled.

Arkady Rotenberg, now 68 years old, built a nearly $3 billion fortune, according to Forbes, overseeing infrastructure companies. His brother Boris and son have made fortunes in industries like energy and real estate.

Until now, little was known about the composition or extent of the Rotenberg collection. The brothers have been seen at judo and ice hockey matches in Russia but seldom attend gallery dinners or make buzzy purchases. The report alleged that for at least a decade the brothers have been collecting modern art, particularly surrealists like Salvador Dalí and Giorgio de Chirico.

Unlike the Rotenbergs, Mr. Baltser appeared to seek the art spotlight, opening a Moscow hangout called the Baltzer Club where he invited Russia’s newly wealthy art lovers to watch global auctions and bid, ideally through him. His website offered to help collectors bid with “anonymity,” according to the report.

Investigators tracked payments in Russia to a company incorporated in Belize called Steamort that sent $9,500 monthly payments to Mr. Baltser for years, surpassing $1.1 million. The report said it couldn’t name the owner of this account. Mr. Baltser confirmed he had been paid by the account but said his contract forbade him from disclosing its clients’ identities.

In January, Mr. Baltser wrote a column for Forbes Russia where he said the art market should prepare to divulge more ownership details in art deals. “I would call these changes revolutionary,” he wrote.