Companies owned by people with alleged ties to the Russian criminal underworld were registered at Asmat Shanava’s restaurant. Leaked emails also indicate she helped facilitate a payment for a foundation backed by the the Russian government, writes OCCRP.
The Pirosmani restaurant in the Czech city of Karlovy Vary serves Georgian food in a cozy setting, with only four tables clustered around a fireplace. The walls are plastered with pictures of the proprietor, Asmat Shanava, posing with public figures like Václav Klaus, a former president of the Czech Republic.
The collage of snapshots projects the image of an industrious and well-connected businesswoman — and she gives that impression in person too. On the day reporters visited, Shanava was overheard speaking on the phone behind a pink curtain in a mix of Georgian and Russian.
“I will arrange it. I will be there in 30 minutes,” she said before hanging up, grabbing her Louis Vuitton handbag, and rushing out the door to drive off in her black Mercedes.
Reporters had hoped to ask Shanava questions about her connections to a Kremlin-backed foundation that has been accused of supporting espionage, as well her apparent association with individuals linked in media reports and court records to the Russian criminal underworld.
Czech corporate records suggest that fans of Georgian food are not the only patrons of the Pirosmani restaurant. At least three people identified as having underworld ties had companies registered at Pirosmani’s address.
Meanwhile, leaked emails indicate that Shanava acted as a go-between for a sanctioned Russian government-backed organization, the Foundation for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad, or Pravfond. Her name was provided to the foundation as someone who could move cash for Pravfond to pay lawyers in a high-profile criminal case.
European intelligence agencies and experts accuse Pravfond of playing a role in disinformation campaigns across the continent, while the foundation has also carried out its stated mission of helping defend Russian citizens abroad. These have included notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, along with several Russian spies and influence agents.
In the Czech Republic, Pravfond was involved in defending Alexander Franchetti. A Czech court sentenced Franchetti in absentia last year in relation to his activities in Ukraine, where he had formed a pro-Russian militia group in 2014.
But Pravfond had a problem: EU sanctions made it difficult for the organization to make direct payments to lawyers. That’s when the foundation turned to Shanava, leaked emails show.
Shanava declined to comment when contacted by phone, and said she had sent questions submitted by reporters to her lawyer. Shanava’s lawyer said she was on sick leave, and did not reply to the questions before publication.
‘Friends from Russia’
The EU sanctioned Pravfond and its executive director Aleksandr Udaltsov in June 2023. But tens of thousands of internal Pravfond emails obtained by the Danish public broadcaster, DR, show how the foundation has continued to send funds to recipients in at least 11 EU member states.
The emails were shared with OCCRP and over two dozen media partners in the “Dear Compatriots” project. They reveal a wide range of tactics to dodge sanctions, including sending money through bank accounts held by third parties — including Shanava.
Attached to one leaked email is a letter from Franchetti to Pravfond’s director, Udaltsov. Franchetti explained the difficulty of paying for his legal defense in the Czech Republic after sanctions were imposed against Russia following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
He told Udaltsov in his December 2022 letter that sending money directly from Russia would be «unacceptable and dangerous,” due to “changes in the situation between the Czech Republic and the Russian Federation.”
Instead, Franchetti suggested going through Shanava.
He noted that Shanava was a citizen of Russia with a bank account in that country, and said she had “practically agreed to… [having] the money transferred to her in rubles and she’ll pay it out in the Czech Republic.”
Franchetti’s legal problems had begun just over a year before writing that letter, when he was detained at the Prague airport in September 2021 on Ukraine’s request. Ukraine had sought his extradition, alleging his involvement in paramilitary activities in Crimea following Russia’s 2014 invasion of the peninsula.
Although a court ultimately denied Ukraine’s extradition request, Czech authorities proceeded to file domestic charges. Prosecutors accused Franchetti and his group of facilitating sabotage operations in Crimea, scouting energy infrastructure, and spying on Ukrainian government forces.
Franchetti was acquitted in October 2022, but prosecutors challenged the ruling and the acquittal was eventually overturned. By that time Franchetti had left for Russia, and he was sentenced in the Czech Republic in absentia.
Before Franchetti slipped away, however, he needed to pay for his ongoing legal saga. Pravfond put up some of the cash, and at least a portion of it landed in an account held by Shanava, according to one of the leaked emails.
“At the end of April this year, the grant money was received into the bank account of A. Shanava,” read a July 2023 email from Pravfond’s director to an official at Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The email said Shanava was able to make a payment to a court translator, and the director added that a receipt was attached.
Franchetti did not respond to a request for comment.
Shanava was also linked to the high-profile case of Russian hacker Yevgeniy Nikulin, according to reporting by the Czech Republic’s public broadcaster.
Nikulin had installed malware on computers belonging to employees of LinkedIn, DropBox, and a now defunct social media company called Formspring. He then sold data he had stolen, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
American investigators traced one of Nikulin’s hacks to an apartment in Moscow. He was sentenced to more than seven years in prison by a U.S. court in 2020, after being extradited from the Czech Republic where he had been arrested while travelling four years earlier.
In sending Nikulin to the U.S., Czech authorities had rejected Russian requests for extradition to his home country. The public broadcaster, Czech Radio, reported that Shanava played a minor role in efforts to support Russia’s fight against Nikulin’s extradition.
She told the broadcaster that “friends from Russia” had asked her to find a lawyer for the case. Pravfond has not been mentioned in relation to the case, and Shanava did not say who her Russian contacts were.
‘Thieves in law’
While the cases of Nikulin and Franchetti indicate that Russian officials viewed Shanava as a kind of fixer in the Czech Republic, corporate documents show associations of a different nature.
Out of eight companies registered at the Pirosmani restaurant address, three were owned by individuals identified in public records and media reports as figures within the Russian criminal world.
One of the companies was owned by David Gvadzhaya, who described himself as a vor v zakone, or «thief in law.” The vor v zakone are members of a high-level criminal caste that emerged from the Soviet gulags. They continue to play a powerful role within criminal networks today, both in Russia and abroad.
Gvadzhaya started a company in the Czech Republic in 2009, according to the country’s business register. Six years later, he was arrested after attempting to collect a debt at the Hotel Jalta in Prague. During the encounter, he introduced himself as a vor v zakone and told the debtor that his sons could be killed if he didn’t pay up.
A Prague court found Gvadzhaya guilty of extortion, and authorities deported him in 2016. Gvadzhaya remained listed as the owner of the company registered at the Pirosmani address until January 2018. He reportedly died of Covid-19 in Turkey in 2021.
Another company registered at the restaurant was Talents Ltd., owned by Artem Demurov. He served time in Georgia following a conviction in 1973, when the country was part of the Soviet Union. Demurov was apparently recognized as a vor v zakone upon his release in 1977, according to documents accessed by reporters that cited criminal records. It’s unclear exactly what Demurov was convicted of. Reporters could not find the case file, and were unable to reach him for comment.
Documents with information about Demurov’s criminal past were found in the research tool Himera-Search, which archives information leaked from Russia’s interior ministry, as well as databases such as tax, flight and corporate records.
A different company registered at Shanava’s restaurant was owned by Levan Dzhangveladze, the brother of Merab Dzhangveladze, who was identified in media reports and court records as a prominent vor v zakone. Merab was convicted in Italy in 2014 of membership in an organized crime group.
Levan was widely reported to have handled financial affairs for his brother’s organization before he was shot and killed on the street in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi in March this year. His company, Violeta trade sro, was registered at Shanava’s restaurant’s address from its founding in 2010 until 2022.
Shanava declined to answer questions about her association with people identified as having links with the Russian criminal underworld, and the origins of her relationship with Pravfond are similarly unclear. But one leaked email suggests that Franchetti — the man who formed a pro-Russian militia in Ukraine — may have brought her to the foundation’s attention.
In writing to the Pravfond director about problems with paying his Czech lawyers, it was Franchetti who suggested that Shanava could help. She knew the lawyers, he wrote, and he noted that she and his wife were close.
“These lawyers were presented to me by a long time friend of my wife,” Franchetti wrote. The friend, he added, was Shanava.