The American investment fund Argentem Creek Partners (ACP) provided a venture loan of $20 million to the Filipino fintech company Salmon, co-founded by Russian businessmen Pavel Fedorov and Georgiy Chesakov. These Russians held top positions in the sanctioned Tinkoff Group, "Rosneft," and worked in the Russian government.
This was reported by the French publication Intelligence Online.
According to data from the ACP website, this loan became the largest venture loan in the history of Series A technology companies in the Philippines, propelling Salmon into one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Southeast Asia. In January 2024, Salmon acquired the Rural Bank of Santa Rosa and obtained a banking license in the Philippines.
It is known that Salmon's co-founder and CEO Georgiy Chesakov built his entire career at Tinkoff Group, whose main asset - Tinkoff Bank - was included in the tenth package of EU sanctions against Russia in early 2023. Until the spring of 2022, he headed the international growth department.
Pavel Fedorov was co-chairman of the board of the same Tinkoff Group from November 2021 to March 2022. Prior to that, he was Senior Vice President of the mining giant "Norilsk Nickel" and Vice President of "Rosneft," an oil company that is 70% owned by Russia.
As noted by Intelligence Online, after Fedorov left his position at "Rosneft," "he remained at the heart of the company in a more informal role as the right hand of its chairman and CEO Igor Sechin, who has been one of Vladimir Putin's most loyal senior officials since their joint work in the St. Petersburg mayor's office in the 1990s."
After "Rosneft," Fedorov also served as Deputy Minister of Energy, responsible for the oil and gas sector.
ACP is currently involved in a legal dispute over assets of the Ukrainian holding company GNT Group, primarily focused on the grain terminal of the Odessa Sea Commercial Port.
Earlier, the beneficiaries of GNT Group, Serhiy Groza and Volodymyr Naumenko, stated that at the end of 2022, the fund initiated a hostile takeover of the holding's business as part of the credit dispute.
According to them, all of ACP's actions are aimed at deliberately reducing the value of assets in order to acquire the entire business of the group at the lowest price, with subsequent resale. This situation also posed a threat to the operation of the "grain corridor" in the winter-autumn of 2023.
On March 13, 2024, the District Court of Nicosia (Cyprus) canceled the order appointing a temporary liquidator at G.N. Terminal Enterprises Limited (Cyprus; the parent company of the GNT Group).
The liquidator was illegally appointed on March 10, 2023, at the request of the creditor Argentem Creek Partners (ACP). The judges also annulled all decisions made by the liquidator.
