Alpha Consulting, a Russian–owned supplier of anonymous shell companies and offshore nominees, has been stripped of its operating licence by regulators in the Seychelles after a lengthy investigation prompted by Finance Uncovered and its media partners.

The move comes 16 months after police and regulators in the Indian Ocean nation’s capital, Victoria, raided the firm’s offices in response to reports published by Finance Uncovered, the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) and the BBC.

Set up in 2008 by former translator Viktoria Valkovskaya (above), Alpha Consulting grew to become an important node in a loose international network of Russian-speaking corporate-secrecy providers active throughout the offshore world.

Firms in this network have built tens of thousands of matryoshka-doll-like corporate secrecy structures for clients wishing to trade, hold assets or move money through bank accounts in the name of anonymous shell firms. Many of the clients are based in the former Soviet Union.

Reporters found Alpha Consulting’s services were ultimately used by figures including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group; Leonid Reiman, a former Russian minister and close friend of President Vladimir Putin; and Alexander Vinnik, the tech entrepreneur behind money-laundering, Russian cryptocurrency platform BTC-e.

UK loophole

But at the heart of the journalists’ findings were hundreds of anonymous shell firms registered more than 8,000 miles from the Seychelles, in the United Kingdom.

Loopholes in Britain’s corporate transparency laws have allowed a small band of Seychelles citizens, recruited by Valkovskaya, to register hundreds of limited partnerships in the UK on behalf of Alpha Consulting’s ultimate clients who wished to remain anonymous.

Reporters linked some of these UK firms to alleged large-scale corruption, a fugitive oligarch, an unlicensed online pharmacy, suspected investment scams and the management of an oil tanker suspected of lifting US-sanctioned oil from Venezuela.

Reporting by Finance Uncovered and other media has made clear that providing nominee services is not illegal, and that Alpha Consulting had no involvement in the management of any of the businesses it helped set up and front. All decisions at these firms were taken by Alpha Consulting's end clients.

Shown a summary of the journalists’ findings in 2023, Valkovskaya welcomed the information, much of which was unknown to Alpha Consulting and which, she said, had been promptly fed into a suspicious transaction report (STR) sent to the Seychelles government’s Financial Intelligence Unit.

Valkovskaya stressed that Alpha Consulting was not responsible for the actions of firms it helped to front. “We try our utmost to report any suspicious activity but we do not have a forensics investigations unit, and can only rely on public records and press investigations.”

Many of the journalists’ findings were discovered with the help of previously unpublished documents from the Pandora Papers, a leak of almost 12 million files from the offshore services industry, obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and first reported on in 2021.

Licences revoked

In an interview being broadcast today on SBC, Randolf Samson, chief executive of the FSA, said: “After long deliberations, the FSA made the decision that [we] needed to revoke the licences of Alpha.” He refused to explain the reason for the decision, which came into effect on 3 March. Earlier this month, the FSA published a short update on its website, announcing Alpha Consulting’s International Corporate Services Provider (ICSP) licence had been withdrawn. Again, no reason was given.

Valkovskaya did not immediately respond to emails and texts seeking comment. Alpha Consulting has been given 90 days to appeal the FSA’s decision.

Seychelles law enforcement officials raided Alpha Consultings’s workplace in November 2023, hours after the media reports about the firm’s activities were published. The officials took away copies of documents and hard drives.

The media reports highlighted how, in many cases, Alpha Consulting helped construct UK firms in a way that—lawfully—avoided 2016 and 2017 transparency laws, designed to ensure that companies set up in Britain publish the names of their ultimate owners in documents on the corporate registry’s website, Companies House.

In his interview for SBC Samson said: “At the end of the day, as a regulator, we've got a responsibility… to ensure that the Seychelles is not misused for any purposes, which ultimately will have a huge reputational effect on the on the Seychelles as a jurisdiction and also as a country.”

He said the regulator’s investigations had included a “high level exchange” last year with counterparts from the UK. Samson said both countries were cooperating to tackle abuses. “If a loophole exists in the UK, it is clear that it will affect countries such as Seychelles… On both sides, there is an acknowledgement that these loopholes need to be taken out.”

Corporate secrecy

Despite Samson’s remarks, the UK has not in fact closed loopholes that allow anonymous owners to form some classes of limited partnerships in the UK using nominees. According to Finance Uncovered’s analysis of Companies House data, a cottage industry specialising in corporate secrecy continues to generate more of these anonymous UK firms every month.

Among the Seychelles citizens Valkovskaya recruited to front shell companies was Roy Delcy, her onetime husband, who has since died, and a woman who cleaned Alpha Consulting’s offices.

Another recruit was Luther Denis, whose main job was working for a pest control and sewage company unconnected to Alpha Consulting. Interviewed in Creole by SBC reporters in 2023, he said he knew nothing about the firms to which he was appointed.

“We only sign papers but we do not take the decisions,” Denis explained. “There is a company here called Alpha Consulting. It is an offshore company. All these papers that they make you sign…you are paid a certain amount of money [for doing so].”

Denis received about $250 a month for signing documents relating to firms registered in the UK.

FSA boss Samson said: “Oftentimes these people, they have no idea what's going on in the company, so the company could be making million-dollar deals—it might be legal or illegal—and these people will not know.

“But at the end of the day, as a regulator, … we have the responsibility, as much as possible, to protect our people, and to ensure that the Seychelles is not misused for any any purposes, which ultimately will have a huge reputational effect on the on the Seychelles as a jurisdiction.”

Valkovskaya has previously told reporters that Alpha Consulting provided Denis and all nominees with “clear and comprehensive information regarding their roles, responsibilities and associated risks.” She said nominees were also indemnified by the agency’s clients, adding: “The use of nominees is not something new or illegal in the industry.”