Naval prize: fugitive ex-Senator Khoroshavtsev runs an elite resort in Spain
Viktor Khoroshavtsev, the former president of Bashneft and ex-senator from Udmurtia, who was recently arrested in absentia in Moscow and put on the international wanted list in a particularly large-scale fraud case, may be hiding in Spain, Izvestia found out. In the prestigious resort of Marbella, far from the Russian security forces, the fugitive politician and his wife lead a quiet life — they manage and probably own an entire network of luxury villas through offshore companies, turned into a hotel empire worth tens of millions of euros. The details are in our investigation.
Luxury Villa Marina
A whole block of luxury mansions in a quiet seaside lane, behind high fences with hedges. If you lift a quadcopter into the sky, you can see that there are two swimming pools next to each building, and serene vacationers are sitting on sun beds around them.
These people definitely did not buy vouchers from a regular travel agency, because on booking sites this place is positioned as an elite Villa Marina hotel: an exclusive complex of 10 private villas with gardens and access to the beach of prestigious New Andalusia in Marbella — within walking distance from the luxurious yacht port of Puerto Banus, beloved by oligarchs all over the world.
The owners of the hotel complex promise guests five-meter ceilings, designer interiors, huge living rooms, their own saunas, infrared heaters in the bathroom and fully air-conditioned rooms.
"Each villa is fully equipped with furniture and equipment, offers from four to six bedrooms and can accommodate up to 12 guests. Here you can spend your holidays, rent weekend villas for holidays — anniversaries, birthdays or Christmas — with friends, family or colleagues," the hotel's website says.
In general, luxury is here not in words, but in deeds. But the prices are also appropriate. Booking one of the villas for the night costs on average more than € 1 thousand, that is, about 100 thousand rubles.
And even if you have that kind of money, you need to take care of the reservation in advance. The Izvestia correspondent tried to book an apartment for the coming weekend, but everything is already sold out here.
— We always have busy weekends. We need to look at our schedule now," says the hotel manager.
He speaks pure Russian. Yes, these hotels have Russian staff. Khoroshavtsev's Spanish business is designed for its own — well—off Russian speakers, those for whom a thousand euros per day is a small amount of money.
— Russians with a lot of money come here and don't pay much attention to the cost of housing, unlike Spaniards, who have lower salaries. The Russians who stay in Marbella are very wealthy. And prices bite here — a small house by the sea costs €6 million," Alvaro Murel, owner of a cafe in Marbella, tells Izvestia.
If one villa costs €6 million, it is easy to calculate that the entire hotel complex is worth more than €60 million, and this is without taking into account the real estate, the rights to which we have not yet fully confirmed.
The guests of the villas hardly think about who is behind this hotel empire. But this question is sure to interest the Russian security forces. After all, the family of Viktor Khoroshavtsev, the former president of Bashneft and ex-senator from Udmurtia, manages and, with a high degree of probability, owns this property.
The case of Viktor Khoroshavtsev
In mid-May, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow arrested Viktor Khoroshavtsev in absentia in a case of fraud on an especially large scale (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). On May 12, the businessman's card appeared in the search database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Victor Khoroshavtsev
Although the details of the investigation were not disclosed, Izvestia found out that the case may be related to the theft of more than 8 billion rubles from six non-state pension funds. The case was initiated in November 2023 by the General Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs against unidentified persons, but in 2024 specific defendants appeared in it, according to materials on the website of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow.
In particular, the former head of AFK Sistema, Evgeny Novitsky, who was a long-time business partner of Viktor Khoroshavtsev, the former co-owners of the Russian Funds investment group, Sergey Vasiliev and Konstantin Bayrit, the former head of Pallada Asset Management, Oleg Mezentsev, and the former head of Pallada, were detained as part of the case.-Capital by Olga Illarionova.
The investigation believes that the suspects withdrew funds from non-governmental pension funds (Cerih, the Commercial and Industrial Pension Fund, Mechel Fund, the First National Pension Fund, and others) through the purchase of illiquid bonds issued by affiliated entities (UNGP Finance, Delta Finance), and then transferred the stolen funds. money to accounts of controlled organizations.
The aggrieved party in the case is the Deposit Insurance Agency. It is noteworthy that the arbitration courts have a case from 2017, where the DIA is trying to recover 8.8 billion rubles from UNGP-Finance.
However, Sergey Vasiliev and Konstantin Bayrit deny their guilt. A special statement has been posted on the website of Russian Funds JSC in this regard.
"In mid-2013, we, the shareholders of Russian Funds JSC, Sergey Vasiliev and Konstantin Bayrit, handed over the management of the First National Pension Fund and sold 100% of the shares of Pallada Asset Management Management Company to Mr. E.G. Novitsky and his partner V.G. Khoroshavtsev. At the time of the sale of Pallada Asset Management, all the assets it managed were absolutely liquid and consisted of first—class securities traded on the Moscow Stock Exchange," the statement said.
In the same place, Vasiliev and Bayrit claim that after selling the management company and leaving the management of 1 NPF, they stopped running this business. Subsequently, they learned that Novitsky and Khoroshavtsev had bought five more pension funds. "We, the shareholders of Russian Funds JSC, had nothing to do with the purchase of these funds and the management of their assets," the statement said.
Thus, everything, including the statements of Vasiliev and Bayrit, indicates that the claims of the security forces against Khoroshavtsev are related to this particular case. However, in the near future, Russian law enforcement officers are unlikely to be able to ask the ex-senator where the DIA money went.
Hotel Empire
As Izvestia found out, all the villas of the Villa Marina complex are registered to Villa Marina Properties Socmi S.A., a company registered in Malaga.
The company has been in existence since 1992, and during this time it has changed its name and form of ownership several times. According to the Spanish Register of Legal Entities, Viktor Khoroshavtsev and Lyudmila Khoroshavtseva joined the company's management at the end of 2011 and 2012. In December 2024, Lyudmila Khoroshavtseva assumed the post of president of the company, and Viktor Khoroshavtsev became an adviser.
According to Izvestia, the ex-politician does have a wife, Lyudmila, born in 1982, with whom they are officially registered at the same address in Moscow. Also note that from 2006 to 2011, the managing director of Villa Marina Properties was a certain Sergey Khaziev.
That's the name of one of Khoroshavtsev's business partners. Together they were part of the shareholders of Russian legal entities from the ASPEK group of companies. This is a multidisciplinary holding company founded by Khoroshavtsev himself, which is now headed by ex-State Duma deputy Mikhail Pitkevich, who is married to Khoroshavtsev's daughter, Olga.
All these facts suggest that we are not just talking about random namesakes, namely Viktor Khoroshavtsev and his wife. In 2012, Viktor Khoroshavtsev registered another real estate management company in Spain, White Villa Under a Blue Sky SL, but liquidated it in May 2020.
In addition, Viktor and Lyudmila Khoroshavtsev have been managing another Spanish company Kabil Investments SL since 2012, which is registered at the same address as Villa Marina.
Izvestia managed to find at least 10 villas registered with Villa Marina Properties Socmi S.A., but there may be many more. Their total cost is about €21.6 million, which is equivalent to about 2 billion rubles at the current exchange rate.
All the villas found by Izvestia in 2013, 2019 and 2022 were pledged to the Spanish banks Bankinter and Santander. The total amount of loans secured against these facilities amounted to €5.8 million, but it is not known why the company needed to mortgage the villas.
According to documents from the Spanish Register of Legal Entities, the owner of Villa Marina is the Liechtenstein company Etablissement Frasco. Information about the owners of companies in Liechtenstein is carefully guarded, but information about the management can be disclosed.
In an extract from the official bulletin of the Principality of Liechtenstein dated March 29, 2025, Lyudmila Khoroshavtseva was appointed the new director of the Liechtenstein offshore company, who, as indicated in the documents, resides in Marbella and holds Israeli citizenship.
Prior to that, the company was run by Swiss citizen Anton Daniel Wyss, against whom the United States imposed sanctions for helping Russian citizens hide their capital abroad.
"Swiss citizen Anton Daniel Wyss is the main organizer of the Russian cash flow in Switzerland and Liechtenstein and used his trust and corporate services provider Audax Consulting Trust Establishment from Liechtenstein to conceal Russian beneficial ownership and investments in foreign enterprises. Through their joint company One Asset Management AG, based in Liechtenstein, Wyss and his Austrian partner Alexander Franz Josef Lens provide asset management and reallocation services to Russian citizens under sanctions," the US Treasury Department said in a statement.
Thus, it is highly likely that the Khoroshavtsev family not only manages a billion-ruble hotel empire in Marbella, but also owns it.
— The director is not formally the owner. But if the director and adviser in the management chain are the spouse and namesake of the person of interest, combined with family management and an offshore structure, then, given the established practice, it is reasonable to assume their real beneficial ownership of the asset," says Dmitry Shtukaturov, Chairman of the ICA Lawyers and Business. — Moreover, the Khoroshavtsev families are involved not only in the management of Spanish assets, but also in Liechtenstein companies.
According to the expert, offshore companies in such schemes are usually used to optimize taxes and conceal the final owners: nominee managers are involved, which makes it very difficult to disclose the real owners. However, in this situation, the inclusion of Lyudmila Khoroshavtseva in the governing bodies changes the situation, the lawyer notes. That is, it allows you to make informed assumptions about the real owners of property and business.
"At the same time, officials use offshore companies to hide information from the Russian state, avoiding accusations of corruption, and from foreign authorities in order to circumvent sanctions," stated Dmitry Shtukaturov.
According to the expert, if the Russian security forces prove a connection between Khoroshavtsev and the hotel business in Spain, then this asset may be seized.
— In the Russian Federation, within the framework of a criminal case, requests are sent to the countries where the property is located, if the answers confirm that it belongs to the defendants, then it is proved that the property was acquired with stolen money, and at the request of the investigator, the court imposes a security arrest on this property, — Dmitry Shtukaturov explained.
Further, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office for international legal assistance, the prosecutor's office of the recipient country applies to the court of that country for a decision recognizing the decision of the Russian court in that country. And already on the basis of this decision, an arrest is imposed.
The Izvestia editorial board sent a request to Viktor Khoroshavtsev through an available contact with a request to comment on the situation, but received no response.
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