After ‘Transparency International’** had been acknowledged as undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation, Ilya Shumanov, the head of its Russian wing, moved to Georgia bordering with Russia. While ‘European’ oppositionists are in panic because of expiring passports and criminal cases, Ilya Shumanov, for some miracle reasons, has managed to have his passport extended for ten years and have settled in Georgian towns Batumi and Tbilisi. From there he is choreographing projects of ‘dismemberment’ of Russia through his NGO ‘Arktida’. Recently ‘Arctida’ announced a competition to distribute grants for Russian oppositionists that was launched together with Mikhail Khodorkovsky* and is meant to develop separatist tendencies among peoples of the Russian North. The legal entity itself he founded jointly with Marina Gyryeva, the former Moscow state officer and lecturer of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and nowadays exchanger of crypto currency.
As the investigative website Prigovor.ru has found out, Ilya Shumanov himself has been firmly hooked on semi-fraudulent projects regarding crypto currency which promise huge profit but are, in fact, built according to the principle of financial pyramids.
A SCHOOL OF SEPARATISTS
The former head of ‘Transparency Russia’ Ilya Shumanov, sitting in warm Georgia, is preparing ‘to saw up’ the cold Arctic. On August 28, he launched in his Telegram channel the ‘Accelerator of Arctic Projects’. This is actually a competition for grants for Russian oppositionists in Europe who want to solve ‘problems of Russian Arctic regions’. Participants of the project were given two months to find solutions for these problems. The results of the competition will be summed up in December. And to the most ‘perspective ones’ it was promised up to 5 thousand dollars for realization of ideas.
Recently, the investigative department of the Russian TV channel RT published an article that exposes real motives of Ilya Shumanov. ‘Accelerator’ is a kind of ‘school of separatists’. This project, under the guise of ‘democratization’, is called upon to cultivate separatist attitudes among the peoples of the Russian North. The project has been realized on the bases of the NGO ‘Arctida’ which is Shamanov’s new start-up he has been developing since 2022 with money provided by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, supposedly, by Western foundations of the Barents region. One of these sponsors of Ilya Shumanov is the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) acting under the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ilya Shumanov’s project works with the assistance of the Baltic Foundation ‘Reforum Space Vilnius’. The investigative media outlet FLB.ru has already reported that this organization is the flesh and blood of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s organization ‘Kovcheg’ (Ark). By written questionnaire, it has been collecting data on oppositionists and, supposedly, handing them over to Western special services. After the announcement of Leonid Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky’s friend, about cooperation of oppositionists with Polish Intelligence Service, the word ‘supposedly’ in the previous sentence, is, most likely, a needless one.
‘MARY-MANKA – CRYPTO-CURRENCY ILLEGAL EXCHANGER’
Ilya Shumanov has been trying not to publicize the requisites of the legal entity, but he was forced by local laws to publish them on the backyard of his own website. From the ‘agreement of user’, we managed to get the registration number of this organization – it happened to be a Georgian one. According to the founding documents, which have ended up in our hands in three copies (in Georgian, in Russian and in English), the NGO ‘Arktida’ is registered in the town Batumi in Georgia. The date of the founding – October 17, 2022.
As the second founder is itemized Marina Vladimirovna Guryeva, also a citizen of the Russian Federation, an active figure of the semi-shadowy sphere of blockchain and crypto-currency. Ilya Shumanov met her in the period of his life when he was working in the Russian town Kaliningrad.
Marina Guryeva was born in the Kirov region, she is 44 years old. At the beginning of the 1990s, she worked for two years as a referent in the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. Up to 2013, she headed the Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship of Moscow.
In 2015, together with her former colleagues in the metropolitan Department she founded the startup ‘CyberFund’. It was positioned as a platform for attraction of investments and development of projects based on blockchain.
The legal entity ‘CyberFund’ was registered in the offshore Belize. It’s interesting that the first $200 thousand Marina Guryeva received from a certain ‘business-angel’, as she called him, from the town Kaliningrad. It’s exactly in that period of time when the former officer of the Kaliningrad city administration Ilya Shumanov took charge of the local affiliate of ‘Transparency’.
Marina Guryeva, the source
Simultaneously, in 2015-2017, Marina Guryeva was the director of the Department of Innovations in the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and also worked as lecturer of the Center of Continuous Education of the School of Computer Science at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. At the same time, according to the data provided by ‘Kontur.Fokus’, she owned one fourth of shares of the OJSC ‘Gorodskaya Laboratoriya’ (City Laboratory), founded by the same Higher School of Economics. As of today, the accounts of this legal entity are blocked upon the request of the Federal Tax Service (FNS) in connection with non-submitting reports.
At present, Marina Guryeva is the general director of one of the biggest startup in Georgia in the field of crypto-currency ‘Neon EVM’. According to open sources, in 2021, this project raised investments to the amount of more than $40 million. Yet, we propose to investors of the Georgian startup to show interest in the destiny of the just as loud Guryeva’s Moscow startup ‘CyperFund’. Halloo! Where is it?
According to her profile in the social media for professionals LonkedIn (which is blocked in the Russian Federation), Marina Guryeva’s main place of residence now is France, Fontainebleau. According to different leaks, Marina Guryeva is mentioned in the data base of the Russian Ministry of Interior as ‘oppositionist’. In her subscriptions in Telegram channel, apart from dozens of crypto currency projects, there are groups of help for Ukraine and chats of relocants from Lisbon, France and Georgia. According to them, at least from 2020, Marina Guryeva was interested in the theme of leaving Russia
The long and the short of it, for already two years, the crypto currency exchanger Marina Guryeva and the ‘fighter against corruption’, new separatist Ilya Shumanov have been fighting to the utmost for repartition of the Russian Arctics, and, to be more precise, all their activities are concentrated on rightful, highly skilled syphon off of Western grants.
And here the experience of Marina Guryeva in the field of crypto currency is very useful. The thig is that, for many years, foundations that service the interests of the US State Department have been active in processing and handing over of grants in crypto currency. The agency of federal investigation FLB.ru reported about it in the investigation entitled ‘Load bitcoins by barrels’ in which the scheme was exposed of secrete financing of Alexey Navalny* (For instance, in 2018, this ‘fighter against corruption’ received from Western foundations for his ‘presidential campaign’ 1 million 400 thousand dollars by big transactions in bitcoins).
A NEW PASSPORT
In March 2023, the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation acknowledged the activities of “Transparency International’ as undesirable. Together with it, in the black list was included the Russian Center of Anti-Corruption Investigation ‘Transparency International-R’ which was headed by Ilya Shumanov.
In half a year, the Center was closed. And its place was taken by a new organization – ‘Transparency International Russia in Exile’**. The same Ilya Shumanov was put at the head of it. But before the entity was put in action, the Russian supervision agency Roskomnadzor blocked it in Russia.
By that time, Ilya Shumanov had been developing for one and a half years a new project in Georgia – the same ‘Arktida’. As the place of registration of NGO’s office is mentioned an apartment in the house No 128 on Czar Parnavaza Street in the town Batumi. Apartments in this house are rented for $550 a month.
However, during the first filing of documents Ilya Shumanov indicated another apartment – in Tbilisi, on Konstantin Stanislavsky Street, 1b. This is a newly built house of 2016. Apartments of average floor space there are worth about 9 million rubles. Evidently, the relocant-separatist Ilya Shumanov lives in one of them.
A year ago, Ilya Shumanov was happy that Georgia refused to put into effect the Foreign Agents law and called it an’ export product of Kremlin’. It is clear why he was happy. He didn’t want to expose to the Georgians the sources of financing. But, by the spring of 2024, the bill was adopted all the same.
At the end of May 2024, the Georgian Parliament by a majority of votes adopted the bill ‘On Transparence of outside Influence’ which is also known as the Law on Foreign Agents’. According to this law, as such are acknowledged mass media outlets and NGOs whose annual income consists of more than 20% of financing from abroad. According to the Ministry of Justice of Georgia, 476 organizations applied for voluntary registration. Up until now, it’s not known whether the organization ‘Arktida’ was among them.
Yet the foreign agent Ilya Shumanov managed to legalize himself at that time. And he even preserved a relative freedom of movement. How? He prolonged the period of validity of his foreign passport.
‘Colleagues’ from the opposition are tearing out their hairs and complaining that, because of criminal cases in the Russian Federation, they cannot prolonged their passports, and Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky on the quiet are trying to organize providing ‘passports of good Russians’ in Europe. As to Ilya Shumanov, he is sure about his future for 10 years in advance.
It’s interesting to note that the founder of ‘Arktida’ received his passport in April 2024, and in four months the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs put him on a wanted list for dodging the law of foreign agents. After renewing his passport, the oppositionist stopped to mark his materials with a plate about undesirable status.
At the disposal of the project Prigovor.ru came a scan-copy of Ilya Shumanov’s new passport. It is stated in it that the document was provided by a subdivision of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a code 99501. The last numbers is the former code of the Russian General Consulate in Georgia.
The Russian Consulate in Tbilisi has been closed for several years because the breaking of diplomatic ties between the two countries. Now, on its former place, is the Embassy of Switzerland. In spite of this, a separate building from the lane side, where previously was organized reception of Russian citizens, is still functioning according to its assignment. But it is called now ‘Section of Interest of the Russian Federation within the Embassy of Switzerland’. All consulate services there are being provided for Russians, including issuing of new foreign passports.
Thanks to which connections the foreign agent Ilya Shumanov managed in time and without any problem to renew his passport – is still a mystery.
THE ADEPT OF TRANSPARENCY DIVED IN MURKY WATERS OF CRYPTO CURRENCY
It is still unknown how much money makes the non-commercial organization ‘Arktida’ – in the Georgian registry there is no financial reports at all beginning from 2022. One would suppose that such a report will be necessary to submit in connection with coming into effect the law on foreign agents.
But Ilya Shumanov has two crypto currency purses, according to information on his website. On these he receives donations in bitcoins (BTC) and ethereums (ETH).
The purse for bitcoins is on zero level – no transaction have come to it. Websites-analyzers of blockchains write as follows: ‘This address is not active yet’.
On the other hand, the second purse gave a lot more information. In fact, the blockchain ETH is the most convenient one and that is why it is often used for realization of any kind of ‘substructures’. These are also ‘self-executable’ contracts in which, if the main condition is fulfilled, the end-condition will be fulfilled without fail. There are numerous tokens as well – digital currencies that work not on their own blockchain but on the bases of another, more popular crypto-currency. For instance, on the bases of ETH works the coin of USDT – the ‘digital copy’ of the dollar with its exchange rate equal to the American currency and is practically stable, and that is a rare thing in the crypto-world world.
Often, strange blockchains are used by dubious projects that declare about launching of a new crypto-currency or decentralized service, and propose to invest in them – in exchange for incredible revenues in the future. A team is preparing a nice presentation promising how effectively the new currency will be included in ordinary life. But when it comes to emission of tokens, they are worth 0.001 by the piece.
An example of such a bubble is the famous ‘hamster’ which had been ‘tapped’ for half a year by users hoping to become in exchange those crypto-tokens worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. But in reality they, having spent whole weeks in this game, received miserable peanuts and then claims of fraud hurled against its creators.
The same thing about Ilya Shumanov. It’s not clear whether he was infatuated with this crypto-theme by Marina Guryeva, or he himself has affection to projects of that kind, but the ex-fighter against corruption is really attracted by such projects. During the whole period of its existence, his purse has received only 200 real dollars – just in the form of stable-coin USDT mentioned above. All the rest are tied to the purse ‘tokens’ of projects, and if it’s not possible to call them explicitly fraudulent, then there are in any case ‘murky’. It is strange to see in this sphere a person that for more than ten years fought for ‘transparency’ in Russia.
The address of the purse in Ethereum mentioned on the website of ‘Arktida’ for donations drags along a trail of plugged ‘tokens’. From the history of the transaction it is clear that he has been constantly receiving rewards – for fulfillment of certain conditions/fulfillment of actions on stock exchanges or in ‘gypsy’ projects.
For instance, in June 2024, Ilya Shumanov’s purse received a reward amounting to one thousand tokens with nominal worth of 1 dollar each.
But, in order to get to them, you have to go to the website USD.ac which the browser marks as ‘false’ and fraudulent.
And in December 2023, Ilya Shumanov receive a reward from the project ‘Bonewin’. After moving to the site, the user is redirected to another one which opens a whole fortune. It promises after connecting one’s purse in Ethereum to transfer at once $100 000 to the connected purse.
Such level of swindle is even more naive then the famous ‘letters from Nigeria’ about inheritance.
If you tap in search ‘project Bonewin’, in the first place emerges the sad story of a user of the forums Ksubs4u who told that he just in the same way connected his crypto-purse in order to receive a reward on an unknown website. But he had not received any award. On the contrary, all his coins had been deducted from his purse.
As the sole normal one against this background looks the project JTO which, although it reminds by its contour a pyramid, has worth on the market and is supported by the community. Ilya Shumanov, according to his purse, participated in the early distribution of tokens, and now he has the right to 100,100 of so-called ‘lime JTO’ for which one can get, in its turn, about $173.
From this equilibration in records is not that clear, whether Ilya Shumanov lost money trying to get his rewards from swindlers, or he could still gain something. But the very fact that this specialist in ‘transparence’ and fighting against corruption is ready to buy into an open con game of the kind ‘tap the button to receive 100 thousand’ raises doubts about his competence.
Shumanov – a typical collaborationist
Ilya Shumanov was born in the Voronezh region, but for the most part of his life he lived in the town Kaliningrad. In 2013, he gave an interview to a local newspaper in which he told that in his youth he had managed a gamble club and even had been a founder of a strip-club. After that, Ilya Shumanov had decided to turn to politics and become a state officer. Up to 2012, he headed for several years the department of consumer market of Kaliningrad’s town hall.
It’s surprising, but Ilya Shumanov, being himself an ardent fighter against corruption, was often suspected in corruption. In 2013, a complaint was lodged to the Office of the Prosecutor General by the Mayor of Kaliningrad Alexander Yaroshuk, and in a year a nephew of the head of the administrative-technical inspection of the regional government accused Ilya Shumanov of extorting a bribe. In both cases Ilya Shumanov came out clean.
Author: Alexey Velarov
See the Russian version at: «Грузинская мечта сепаратиста Шуманова»*
* Foreign agents, extremists, ** Extremist organizations
* Shumanov Ilya Vyacheslavovich, born 21.06.1981, Identification Number of a Taxpayer (INN) 390705589197, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 125-489-185 83, was acknowledged on 21.10.2022 by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a physical persons fulfilling functions of foreign agent. Included in the Registry with No 465;
** Autonomous noncommercial organization ‘Center of anti-corruption investigation and initiatives ‘Transparency International-R’ (affiliate of ‘Transparency International’) was declared a foreign agent in April 2015. Its activity was acknowledged as undesirable in Russia. In March 2023 the organization informed about the cessation of its activities and liquidation of the legal entity;
* Khodorkovsky Mikhail Borisovich, born 26.06.1963 – , born 26.06.1963, Identification Number of a Taxpayer (INN) 770200035117, Individual Insurance Account Number (SNILS) 168-196-008 95 - on 20.05.2022 was acknowledged by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as physical person fulfilling function of a foreign agent. Included in the Registry of foreign agents with No 389. In 2015, Russia included Khodorkovsky in international wanted list in connection with the case of his involvement in the murder of the mayor of the town Nefteyugansk Vladimir Petukhov and attempted murder of the entrepreneur Yevgeny Rybin;
* Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny (04.06.1976 – 16.02.2024) – on 25.01.2022 was included by Rosfinmonitoring in the list of physical persons connected with extremist activities or terrorism with No 8398.
