ALT.WAGNER
Convoy Private Military Company created in occupied Crimea receives millions from Russian bank and billionaire Rotenberg

Ukrainska Pravda
Mon, August 14, 2023 

The Convoy Private Military Company (PMC), established in occupied Crimea in the autumn of 2022, has received 300 million roubles [roughly US$3 million – ed.] from VTB, one of Russia's largest banks 69% of which is owned by the state, and Arkady Rotenberg, an oligarch who is close to Russian President Putin.

Source: an investigation conducted by the Dossier centre

Details: The investigation says that in just a month and a half of autumn 2022, the Convoy PMC received 437.5 million roubles [roughly US$4.4 million]. Of this amount, 120 million roubles [roughly US$1.2 million] came from the company owned by Putin's friend [the Ai-Petri Sanatorium owned by Arkady Rotenberg], another 200 million roubles [roughly US$2 million] from a state bank, and the rest from fuel companies that have nothing to do with the Convoy PMC.

None of these companies commented on the transfer of money.

Donations from state-owned and near-state corporations are transferred to the account of the St Petersburg Cossack Community Convoy. This Community, in turn, transfers the money to the account of the Military Security Company Convoy LLC. Over the course of a month and a half in the autumn of 2022, 85 million roubles [roughly US$853,000] were transferred in this way.

As the investigators noted, the money is then cashed in for expenses "in a very simple way": funds from the Convoy account are transferred to the head of the PMC Konstantin Pikalov as "loans to the founder". According to the documents studied by journalists, he takes approximately 60 million roubles [roughly US$602,000] a month.

The organisation pays for military equipment that can be purchased openly (body armour, uniforms, tents, medical equipment) directly from their own accounts, the Dossier writes.

Pikalov is associated with the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin – the media called him Prigozhin's "right-hand man" and Wagner's curator in Africa. As the Dossier stated, the Convoy PMC's combat area is located in Kherson Oblast, and this summer the unit consisted of about 400 fighters.