For some Russian art collectors, Uzbekistan is a way to avoid sanctions

A few days after New Year 2023, a Dutch company specializing in the delicate work of shipping and storing expensive works of art unloaded a shipment of paintings and sculptures from a yacht moored in the port of Vlissingen. Among the paintings were works by Salvador Dalí, Pierre Auguste-Renoir and Henri Matisse.

The 68-metre yacht, named Triple Seven, was operated by an offshore company linked to Alexei Repik, a Russian pharmaceutical tycoon who has also invested in real estate in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, now occupied by Russia after a devastating siege.

After unpacking, the artwork was sent to Amsterdam airport, then to the capital of Uzbekistan, and three days later to Repik in Moscow, using the services of a little-known Uzbek logistics company called Broker Bek.

Russian art collectors have been shut out of global markets since Moscow’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 led to unprecedented sanctions from Western countries. Art dealers have pulled out of Moscow, and major auction houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s have closed lucrative offices in Russia.

Stepping in to fill the gap: mysterious logistics companies like Bek Broker, which has helped bring more than 200 works of art to Russia over the past two years, according to the new arrangements by Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit.

According to Systema estimates, the total value of works of art brought to Russia during this period exceeded $36 million.

Who or what is Bek?

Tashkent-based Bek Broker is by no means a new, casually operating company.

According to customs data, the company has been helping to organize transportation and customs clearance in Russia for more than two decades, transporting thousands of shipments for Russian clients including oil giant Lukoil and state pipeline operator Transneft.

The company, owned by four Uzbek nationals, registered a Russian subsidiary in 2011, housed in an unassuming nine-story apartment building in a residential area of ​​Moscow. There is no public record of the company’s financial results.

Bek Broker did not respond to Systema’s numerous requests for comment.

Customs data shows that between 2018 and 2022, Bek Broker transported at least 8,700 cargo shipments from Russia to Uzbekistan. In the opposite direction, to Russia from Uzbekistan, only 106 shipments were transported.

When the Kremlin started an all-out war against Ukraine and Western countries imposed far-reaching sanctions on Russia, Beka Broker’s logistics changed.

In the 2 1/2 years since the invasion, Bek Broker has handled 1,962 cargo shipments to Russia — with a declared value of $41.6 million — through last month, customs data show. Bek Broker has handled just 61 shipments from Russia to Uzbekistan.

Customs data also indicate a noticeable change in the categories of goods being transported. The company’s main goods shipped to Russia have become works of art, with the declared value of paintings, figurines and other items shipped totaling $36.6 million.

By comparison, during the same period Bek Broker imported cargo worth just $5 million.

Triple Seven

The paper trail linking Repik to the 2023 art shipment comes in part from the Panama Papers, a massive 2016 leak of law firm documents that exposed how wealthy people around the world — including Russians — hid their wealth.

The company managing the Triple Seven yacht is Nawton Ltd., based in the British Virgin Islands. Nawton paid a Dutch shipping company, Kortmann Art Packers and Shippers BV, to remove the art from the yacht and ship it to Tashkent and then to Moscow.

The Panama Papers leak revealed that Navton also owned a plane with registration number M-FINE. According to flight records, the plane was previously used by Ekaterina Tikhonova, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters.

In total, the Dutch company shipped 44 works of art and other valuable and semi-valuable items from the yacht, worth a combined $4.6 million, including paintings by Dalí, Renoir, and Matisse; sculptures by Rembrandt Bugatti and Fernando Botero; and Japanese prints. The lot also included many elephants—vases, inkwells, paperweights, candlesticks—that were favorites of the Repik family.

In the collegial world of Russian art collectors, Repik himself is not considered a particularly astute collector.

“In the circles of market players associated with Russia, Repik is practically unknown and has not distinguished himself in any way,” Konstantin Akinsha, an art historian and former journalist, told Systema. “He is not a collector. He was more interested in elephants, an interior decorator without taste or understanding.”

Repik’s wife, Polina, likes to share her collecting achievements on social media.

On her Instagram page, she posted photos of part of her art collection: one of them, from March 2021, shows the Triple Seven yacht and an elephant-shaped vase by French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, which is worth $35,000, according to customs records.

Representatives from Kortmann, a Dutch shipping company, told Systema that they do not know the final destination of the artworks they transported in January 2023.

A month later, however, Repik was personally endorsed by Great Britainwhich cited regular meetings between the businessman and Putin. Australia and Canada followed suit.

In January of this year, the Triple Seven yacht was spotted along the coast of Turkey, and Polina Repik continued to post photos from Turkey on her Instagram account.

Aleksei Repik did not respond to Systema’s requests for comment. However, Polina Repik told Systema that the family sold Triple Seven in 2021.

A public maritime registry called Equasis, which was checked by Systema, showed the yacht was still registered under the name Repiks as of this month.

She confirmed that the artworks had been brought to Russia, but said they had been transferred to a museum whose name she did not disclose.

Silk Road – for art

The entire Central Asian region has become an important channel for all kinds of companies seeking to bypass Western sanctions and import goods to Russia.

In March 2022, the European Union, along with the United States, Switzerland and other countries, jointly imposed sanctions on the shipment of luxury goods to Russia. The restrictions applied to works of art and antiques worth more than 300 euros.

Before that, the Russian art market was a bustling and lucrative industry for collectors, experts, shippers, restorers and all sorts of related businesses. The most expensive work of art ever sold at auction was Salvator Mundi, a painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which was sold by Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $450.3 million in 2017.

However, in 2023, sales of works by Russian artists in Russia alone increased by more than 125 percent, exceeding $25 million, according to ARTInvestment, a company that analyzes the Russian marketThis is one indicator of how the Russian collectors’ market has shifted inward, towards Russian artists.

In addition to restrictions on the import of luxury goods, Western countries have begun confiscating assets belonging to Russian oligarchs — influential businessmen with political connections.

In May 2022, British authorities confiscated a Faberge egg belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, an oligarch who made his fortune in oil and metals. Almost two decades earlier, Vekselberg had made waves in the art world when he bought dozens of Faberge eggs and other objects from the Forbes family in the United States, pledging to return them to Russia.

In November 2022 German police confiscated 30 paintings from the yacht of Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin, while the yacht was undergoing renovation in Hamburg. The police also four Fabergé eggs were confiscated from him.

In 2023, authorities confiscated artwork from the yacht of Farkhad Akhmedov, an Azerbaijani-Russian businessman who previously served in Russia’s upper house of parliament.

Alex Prezanti, a British lawyer and co-founder of the nonprofit State Capture: Research and Action, says any citizen or entity based in the U.K. or the European Union could face criminal charges if found to be sending art to Russia in violation of sanctions.

He says a person could also be liable if the artwork ended up in a third country, such as Uzbekistan, if the sender knew the destination was Russia. However, liability will largely depend on what the sender knew or should have known about the ultimate owner and destination of the artwork.

Create art, not weapons

The Repiks were not the only wealthy Russian family to use Bek Broker’s services to transport works of art.

Customs records showed that Mkrtch Okroyan, a businessman whose companies produce engines for cruise missiles and spare parts for military helicopters used by the Russian army, also imported art through Tashkent.

In February 2023, investigators linked to the late anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny released the results of an investigation showing that Okroyan’s family owned a three-story mansion west of London, estimated to be worth around £10 million.

Following the discovery, a number of paintings and other works of art, valued at about $286,000 according to customs records, were shipped to Uzbekistan; one Russian customs document, dated February 21, 2023, shows Okroyan’s wife, Alla, signing for the shipment of the paintings to Tashkent. Bek Broker then completed the shipment from Tashkent to Moscow

Seven months later, in September 2023, the United States added Okrojan and his family to its sanctions list, followed a few months later by the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Mkrtich Okroyan did not respond to requests sent to him directly or to his company.

Written by Mike Eckel based on the report of System correspondent Dmitry Sukharev