Private company Consul Prime sells places in the queue at Russian consulates...

Private company Consul Prime sells places in the queue at Russian consulates. People close to Abramovich are behind the business, a Verstka investigation finds

Russians abroad wait months for a chance to apply for an international passport or arrange a power of attorney. But there is a way to get into a consulate faster: pay Consul Prime, a private company and official partner of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Verstka found out who created the service and how it gives clients priority places in the queue.

What we learned:

💜The Consul Prime companies were founded by longtime associates of Roman Abramovich: former Chukotka senator Yefim Malkin and businessman Mikhail Livergand. The service's first Russian legal entity was established in December 2021, before the authorities publicly announced plans to use intermediaries.

💜Consulates allocate priority queue slots to Consul Prime clients that are unavailable to people trying to book appointments themselves. In some countries, the service charges hundreds of euros for an urgent appointment, while those using the free queue have to wait months.

💜Malkin and Livergand invested hundreds of millions of rubles in the service's Russian companies. They were also the main investors in the network, according to bank statements reviewed by Verstka and the commercial investigations bureau TriTrace. The Russian companies remain unprofitable, however. Ilya Shumanov, the bureau's managing partner and an anti-corruption expert, suggests that the international network's profits may be concentrated abroad.

💜Several years before the project launched, the deputy foreign minister responsible for overseeing consular intermediaries bought luxury property in central Moscow from an Abramovich associate: Yefim Malkin, who established Consul Prime's first legal entity.

Read Verstka's investigation into how people close to Abramovich gained unique access to the consular services system (VPN required):

Link not working? Read it here.

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Verstka

The oligarch's helping hand: How Abramovich's associates built a business around Russian consulates

Clients of a private company get priority slots at consulates, while Russians in the free queue have to wait months