Company part-owned by Chairman of SCL Group sought €200 million investment from Russians in 2015
As Cambridge Analytica was pitching to prospective political clients in the United States, including Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, the Chairman of their parent company was seeking €200 million from Russian-speaking investors for his new oil and gas venture.
In late 2014, SCL Group Chairman and future CEO of Cambridge Analytica, Julian Wheatland became a Director in a London oil and gas company called Phi Energy Limited.
As of November 2015, Wheatland had no ownership interest in Phi Energy. In December 2015, that changed, and Wheatland acquired 3500 shares in the company. Also involved were Tarick Kreimeia (via his company Navitas Holdings), a Wheatland-business partner in a finance and project development company, and Ennio Senese, a Dutch corporate executive.
Sometime in 2015, the group hired Stanislav Novak, a Russian translator based in Ukraine. Novak was tasked with translating an investment teaser from English to Russian. The teaser explained that Phi Energy was looking for a €200 million investment in order to purchase a refinery in Northern Europe.
After being asked for comment in early July, Novak’s resume, which mentioned his work for Phi Energy, was deleted from the website of his translating company. A cyber-security expert explained that the deletion appeared to be a specific action and not the result of a mistake, “The upload area is still accessible from the web. So they both removed that file, and updated the robots.txt to explicitly make all the search engines dump the caches.”
In an email, Novak confirmed his work for Phi Energy but declined to comment further, citing the existence of a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
It is unclear if any Russians ended up investing in the project. Phi Energy was dissolved in late 2016.
Mysterious LLC
The fourth shareholder, and as of late 2015, a business partner with the SCL Group Chairman, was a Cypriot shell company (Ravica Holdings) with links to powerful Russians. The sole Director of the company which held shares in Phi Energy along with Wheatland was a Cypriot woman named Sofia Iosif.
Iosif, via a Russian conglomerate called Interros, manages billions of dollars worth of assets for the Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin. Since at least 2006, Potanin has entrusted Iosif with nominally owning Interros, a company in which billions of dollars flows annually. Iosif was named in divorce proceedings between Potanin and his estranged wife. 2014 audited accounts for Interros show that the shareholders took home over $861,000,000 in dividend income. With her 45% stake, Iosif would’ve handled at least $387,000,000 of Potanin’s money in 2014 alone — the year when Wheatland joined Phi Energy as a Director.
The ultimate owner of Ravica Holdings, one of the three other shareholders in Phi Energy alongside Wheatland, is Cyproservus Co. Limited, an affiliate of the Cypriot law-firm of Chrysses Demetriades. Cyproservus provides services to at least 2,600 active companies, making it impossible to determine the true ownership of Ravica Holdings.
Interros, the Potanin/Russian conglomerate which was the controlling shareholder of the world’s largest producer of palladium, Norilsk Nickel, also uses Cyproservus. Because of this, the two share the same registered office space in a building in Nicosia, Cyprus, along with at least 1,000 other registered companies.
A partner of the law firm affiliated with Cyproservus, Pavlina Constantinides, made the following statement:
Due to professional ethics I am not in a position to provide to any third party any information on Ravica Holdings Limited (the “Company”) unless I receive our clients’ authorisation in this respect.
As of this writing, Ravica Holdings hasn’t authorized any disclosures. When asked for more specific information on the type of services Cyproservus provides and for how many companies it acts as a shareholder, Constantinides said, “we are unable to assist you any further in this matter.”
Interview with Phi Energy CEO
The CEO and additional shareholder of Phi Energy, Ennio Senese exchanged messages with this reporter over the course of a couple weeks. Many of his comments were provably false based on corporate documents filed with the UK Companies House, and other open-source information. Senese denied any Russian involvement in the company.
When asked for information about Ravica Holdings, Senese said, “Ravica wasn’t a shareholder of Phi when I was there.” In truth, however, Ravica and Senese were two of the three shareholders in Phi Energy as of February 2015, and that remained true until the day the company was dissolved.
When given another opportunity to explain his relationship with Ravica Holdings days after the first messages were exchanged, Senese stuck to his original proclamation, “I was the CEO of Phi and Ravica was not in play… I was the CEO from inception until Jan 2016 more or less. Ravica was never involved.”
After the Russian translator confirmed his work for Phi Energy, this reporter reached out to Senese again and asked, “Why did Phi hire a Russian translator?” This time, Senese was more blunt with his response, “We didn’t.”
When shown proof that Ravica Holdings was indeed involved when he was CEO and shareholder, Senese said he had “no clue… Also, quite frankly, I don’t care about it either.” Senese gave the name of a Danish businessman who he said was behind a Cyprus LLC that was involved in Phi Energy, though he didn’t believe this was the same entity as Ravica Holdings.
Senese was then shown the work of the Russian translator, who he denied hiring. The ex-CEO of Phi Energy said, “I don’t remember this,” though he later confirmed that he wrote the English half of the translated investment teaser.
Phi Energy was also registered in the Netherlands, where Senese resides. To avoid any possible confusion about the role of Ravica Holdings, company documents for the Dutch company were reviewed and confirmed that the UK company was the parent group.
A 21-page brochure published in 2014 outlining Phi Energy’s business and key people lists Wheatland as the Chief Financial Officer. It’s alleged partners included oil and gas companies in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. In 2015, Phi Energy declared itself a dormant company to the UK Companies House, allowing it to avoid filing any financial information.
Wheatland did not respond to multiple requests for comment. It remains unclear if any Russian investors ultimately participated in Phi Energy.
