The American investment fund Argentem Creek Partners (ACP), which is suing for the Odessa port terminal Olimpex Coupe International, is doing business with Russians and may be acting in their interests.
This was reported by the French publication Intelligence Online .
In particular, ACP provided a $20 million venture loan to the Philippine fintech company Salmon, co-founded by Russian entrepreneurs Pavel Fedorov and Georgy Chesakov. Previously, they held senior positions in the sanctioned Tinkoff Group, Norilsk Nickel and Rosneft.
Fedorov is considered the right hand of Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, Vladimir Putin’s closest ally. In addition, he managed to work as Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, and was responsible for the oil and gas sector.
The ACP loan was the largest ever Series A venture loan to a technology company in the Philippines. He has led Salmon to become one of the fastest growing fintech companies in Southeast Asia. In January 2024, Salmon absorbed Rural Bank of Santa Rosa and received a Philippine banking license. This will allow the Russian firm to expand the scale of its lending operations in the country.
Argentem Creek Partners, founded by Daniel Chapman, an American entrepreneur with extensive connections in the Russian-speaking world, has been enthusiastically positioning itself as a leading investor in Ukraine since the outbreak of war. Therefore, his financing of the Russian project looks more than strange, the French publication notes.
It also notes that ACP and Salmon’s press releases make no mention of their uncomfortably close proximity to Russian sanctioned businesses and the government.
Let us recall that over the past two years, Argentem Creek Partners has been engaged in a legal battle with the Ukrainian agricultural holding GNT Group, trying to collect the Olimpex Coupe International terminal in the Odessa port for debts. ACP claims that the Ukrainian company is not fulfilling its obligations. GNT, in turn, says that American funds (Innovatus is also in the case) are trying to seize their assets by raider in favor of an unknown third party.
Recently, through the court, ACP managed to obtain a change in the terminal manager. It was businessman Andrey Naumenko, director of the Gray Invest Ukraine company, the ultimate beneficiary of which is US resident, Russian citizen Vazha Jashi.
The latter appears in criminal proceedings opened under Article 110-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (financing actions committed with the aim of forcibly changing or overthrowing the constitutional order or seizing state power, changing the boundaries of the territory or state border of Ukraine).
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