Belarus Is Involved in the Export of Rapeseed from Occupied Ukrainian Territories. Details provided by participants in rapeseed export deals

This material was produced with the help of the Ukrainian hacking community KibOrg, the Belarusian hacking group CyberPartisans and Skhemy, an RFE/RL Ukraine project.

This is the second part of our investigation into the export of grain from Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia. The first part sheds light on the Russian scheme to export Ukraine’s crops and the hidden ties to Putin’s palace.

The export of agricultural products from the occupied territories is a violation of international norms. Nevertheless, Russia exports grain and other crops grown on Ukrainian land to international markets, disguising them as Russian products.

The geography of the supply chains for products exported from the occupied part of Ukraine is extensive. In the first part of our investigation, we revealed how wheat from Kherson was shipped to Azerbaijan and Turkey, corn to Syria, and barley to Iran. We also discovered that Crimean peas were exported to Spain.

Several EU member states, including the Baltic States, Greece and Belgium, have purchased some of the grain and oilseeds from Russia. Eurostat data indicates that the EU imported over €5 million worth of these products from Russia in 2023. [*]

To prevent the import of such supplies, the European Commission (EC) has imposed a prohibitive duty on the import of grain, oilseeds and processed products from Russia and Belarus, effective July 1, 2024. The EC has stated that this measure will halt the import of these products into the EU.

This investigation focuses on the shipping of rapeseeds, a key strategic oilseed crop in Belarus, from the occupied districts of the Kherson Region to Belarus. Ukrainian hackers from KibOrg have provided BIC journalists with data from the Federal State Information System Grain. In accordance with Russian law, commodity producers are required to enter information on transactions into this register. The data show that shipping documents were issued for 4.9 thousand tonnes of rapeseed. These are deliveries to Belarus registered on the official website of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation or mentioned in communications with representatives of exporting companies.

Voluntary-compulsory cooperation

OOO Svitanok (a limited liability company under the laws of Ukraine) has been in operation since 1997 in the urban-type  settlement of Syvaske in the Kherson region. After war in the east of Ukraine began in 2014, its director and co-founder farmer Serhii Maksymenko began working as a volunteer. [*] During the full-scale invasion, he distributed milk from his farm to inhabitants of the village of Novotroitske in the Kherson region. He and his son were captured by the Russian military in April 2022.

“He was captured during the occupation, spent many days there, and returned looking quite exhausted after all the torture,” Margarita Cherepakha, an acquaintance of Maksymenko, told BIC journalists. [*] According to her, the farmer was not allowed to leave the occupied territory after his release. He began cooperating with Russian authorities and, according to an excerpt from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, became a Russian citizen.

OOO Svitanok is now registered under Russian Federation law. [*]

The farm has been selling rapeseed to the Russian company OOO Torgtrade (a limited liability company under the laws of Russian Federation). In total, this company exported 113 batches of winter rapeseeds with a total weight of 2.6 thousand tonnes in 2023, most of which were destined for delivery to the Belarusian company OAO Novoyelnyanski Mezhrayonagrosnab (a public joint-stock company under the laws of Belarus).

According to data from the declarations available to the BIC, the prices of Ukrainian rapeseed for Belarusian companies were significantly lower than market prices. OOO Veles-Agro (a limited liability company under the laws of Russian Federation), which we will discuss in more detail below, was selling seeds for $330-350 per tonne in August 2023. The transport cost was around $20 per tonne, according to several transport companies. At the time, rapeseed prices were much higher at €450-460 per tonne, according to Euronext, the pan-European stock exchange.

The low purchase price is favourable for traders and their customers (in this case – Russian and Belarusian companies), but not for Ukrainian farmers who find themselves under occupation. An urgent need to sell or pressure may force them to sell their crops below the average market price.

Chechen business

We have not been able to contact the farmer Maksymenko. However, a BIC journalist was able to speak with the director of OOO Torgtrade, Vadim Alekseev, who introduced himself as the head of one of the departments of the Kherson Region administration.

“Crimea, Kherson Region, Zaporizhzhia – the main supplies (of sunflower and/or rape seeds) come from there anyway. We also get some from Taganrog and Mineralnye Vody, but we mainly source our supplies from there anyway,” he said.

During the phone call, Alekseev was pretty open about the specifics of doing business in the Kherson region. He also had some complaints about the permit system and bribery at an exit from the region.

“The military police or whatever they are, they stop the truck and ask for papers, they ask for documents for the cargo and demand a permit,” Alekseev explains. “Because in the Russian Federation, we don’t have such requirements for transporting grain, like I don’t have to provide any pass or permit allowing for the transport of grain from a region or a district... They try to squeeze the last 2,000-3,000 roubles out of poor Belarusians. Or they stop the truck and it just sits there until the hauler makes some sort of compromise.”

He did not specify when this occurred. He also did not respond to a question about the specific checkpoint at which the documents were demanded. He would only say that it was “relatively a long time ago” and “it’s not a common occurrence, but it does happen”. When asked which markets the company serves, Vadim Alekseev replied: “I focus on the Republic of Belarus.”

Torgtrade is a young company owned by Roza Mollaeva, a 77-year-old resident of Chechnya. [*]

Berikkhanov’s LinkedIn page says he graduated from Grozny State Oil Technical University and worked in Grozny’s Finance Department. Presumably, he made connections with influential people there. In a leaked Sirena-Travel system database, which stores information about airline passengers and their insurance, we found airline tickets booked by Berikkhanov for Mollaeva and Zurab Isaev, a member of a well-known Chechen family. [*]

Isaev was awarded the Medal of Merits to the Chechen Republic by Ramzan Kadyrov. Isaev and Berikkhanov are also linked by their work in Grozny’s Finance Department and their joint pilgrimage to Mecca. [*]

A mysterious bankrupt

We asked Berikkhanov which companies in Belarus Torgtrade supplies with rape seed.

“In Belarus, we deliver the supplies to our own company,” he replied. “We do not transport them for sale and resale. We bring it to our facility, to our factory, Trial Expert”.

The address for the vegetable oil production plant indicated on the website of OOO Trial Expert (a limited liability company under the laws of Belarus) is the same as the address of the registration office of AOA Novoelnyansky Mezhrayonagrosnab (Dziatlava District, Navayelnia village, 21 Chapaev street). The latter was in bankruptcy proceedings at the time of publication.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, the owner of Trial Expert is not Berikkhanov. The listed owners are two Belarusians: ex-loader Aliaksei Bahutski and former deputy head of construction at Evrotorg Ihar Yakubovich. The latter held the same position at OOO Custom Service (a limited liability company under the laws of Belarus) in 2023. [*]

A BIC journalist called Yakubovich to invite him to a conference, pretending to be an official from the Kherson region. The company’s interests “could be represented by Tamerlan Berikkhanov”, Yakubovich replied.

Yakubovich also spoke about cooperation with a Chinese company, and plans to increase oil production capacity. He named some of Trial Expert’s client countries: “We want to quadruple or quintuple the capacity there, compared to what we have ... we export to various countries, Israel and Malaysia, among others. So here, and in Belarus, we have a lot of customers.”

A businessman/official and a patriot/traitor

In 2015, then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, accompanied by the head of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov, visited Yalta. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called the visit a violation of state sovereignty.

During the visit, Medvedev and Aksyonov went to the Yalta cafe and patisserie Tre Joyeux. Yana Krupko (Tikhomirova after marriage) was the company’s director at that time. [*]

Tikhomirova is listed as holding senior positions in the Rostov-based agricultural company OOO Monolit (a limited liability company under the laws of Russian Federation) and the Moscow-based OOO Osnova (a limited liability company under the laws of Russian Federation) (non-food retailing). She is married to Anton Tikhomirov, general director of OOO Agrotrade (a limited liability company under the laws of Russian Federation). This Moscow-based company, according to the records of the Federal State Information System Grain, also earned money in 2023 from the export of rapeseed from occupied Ukrainian regions to Belarus. [*]

Mikhail Tikhomirov, believed to be Anton’s father, officially owns Agrotrade. Before the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Tikhomirov Jr. was the general director of OOO Tikhomirov (a limited liability company under the laws of Ukraine). The company provided grain harvesting and export services.

During the Ukraine presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, the company was awarded the title of “Company of the Year 2010”. Anton Tikhomirov was awarded the “Star of the Economy of Ukraine” Order and the “Manager of the Year 2010” Certificate. 

In 2014, Tikhomirov Jr. started working with the Russian administration of the peninsula. He became the head of the republican enterprise Krymskiy Zernovoy Elevator. He was an adviser to the head of the Yalta city administration for two years, and from April 2015 to November 2016 he worked as the secretary of the Yalta branch of the United Russia party.

By 2016, Tikhomirov had been the deputy head of the Yalta city administration for about a year, overseeing transportation, communications, youth politics and sports. Ukrainian Myrotvorets Research Center database lists him as a traitor.

OOO Agrotrade shows up in the documents for 30 deliveries of rapeseed with a total volume of 671.8 thousand tonnes commissioned by Novobelitskiy Kombinat Khleboproduktov and OOO Agroprodukt (a limited liability company under the laws of Belarus). One village listed as a product origin is Havrylivka Druha, Kherson Region, Kalanchak Municipal District (the settlement is currently occupied by the Russian army). 

Tikhomirovs’ Agrotrade was incorporated in 2023. The company made 163.4 million Russian rubles (about €1.77 million at the average exchange rate for 2023) in revenue in 2023 and had a net profit of 7.4 million Russian rubles (€80,200 at the average annual exchange rate). [*]

A BIC journalist contacted Anton Tikhomirov, introduced himself as an official from the Kherson region, and asked to discuss grain supplies from the occupied territory to Belarus. The businessman replied briefly, saying he did not need any help from the local authorities, that the business ran smoothly and there were no problems at the checkpoints.

A typical profiteer

The Federal State Information System Grain shows that another company, OOO Veles-Agro, was involved in exporting rapeseed from occupied territories in Ukraine to Belarus. We found 53 batches of oilseed grain with a total weight of 1,171 tonnes, which were listed as sent to the Belarusian companies OOO Agroprodukt (a limited liability company under the laws of Belarus) and ZAO Oblrapsagroservis (a closed joint-stock company under the laws of Belarus).

Veles-Agro is founded and headed by Sergey Verkhoshinsky, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan. [*]

We were unable to reach the contact number for Veles-Agro. A BIC journalist mentioned the company while talking to Torgtrade director Vadim Alekseev. Alekseev is aware of the competitor’s activities and did not object when the investigator referred to Veles-Agro’s work as “the activities of typical profiteers”.

Rapeseed was exported from Kherson region to Belarus not only by enterprises but also by individual entrepreneurs. In 2023, individual entrepreneur Aleksei Lukyanchenko from Barnaul was to deliver nine batches of rapeseed with a total weight of 289.3 tons to Novobelitsky KKHP, a subsidiary of Belarusian OAO Gomelkhleboprodukt (a publicl joint-stock company under the laws of Belarus). All the batches were prepared in April 2023 in the village of Novotroitske, Kherson region. [*]

Despite our best efforts, we were unable to establish communication with Lukyanchenko. None of the ten phone numbers associated with his name were active at the time of writing.

Non-Phone Conversation

We asked several lawyers to evaluate the actions of those supplying and buying grain from the occupied regions of Ukraine.

"The companies that are involved in this certainly violate the international humanitarian law, the international Geneva Conventions",  Mikhail Kirilyuk, lawyer at the National Anti-Crisis Management, believes.

The export of agricultural products from the occupied territories of Ukraine may indicate looting of property, which is a war crime, according to Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer with the Regional Center for Human Rights (RCHR). She adds that cases in which products are purchased from Ukrainian farmers in the Russian-occupied territories instead of being stolen require further analysis:

"In order to determine whether there has been a breach of the law, it is essential to ascertain the price at which the grain is purchased from the farmers. If this price is different from the market one, it could provide evidence of looting of property as a war crime. Additionally, it is important to examine the circumstances under which the farmers began cooperating with the Russians, including any instances of coercion, intimidation, or a lack of alternative markets for the sale of grain. These factors could potentially indicate a crime of looting of property".

We reached out to Ihar Yakubovich, director of OOO Trial Expert, a company that processes rapeseed in Belarus, to get his thoughts on the moral, ethical, and legal aspects of grain supplies from the Ukrainian regions seized by Russia.

“I don’t want to discuss matters like this. I’m sorry,” he replied.

We also reached out to Tamerlan Berikkhanov, Mikhail Tikhomirov (the owner of OOO Agrotrade), individual entrepreneur Lukyanchenko, and OOO Veles-Agro with the same questions. We have not received a response at the time of publication.