Russian spirit of the Scottish Distillery:

How do people from the company under sanctions try to sell their business immediately

Lindores Abbey Distillery is a family business located at the historical place in Scotland. OSINT community Molfar got information from insider, that Distillery is on sale. It could be an ordinary case, but not. Here is why. 

The Lindores Distilling Co. Ltd, was founded in February 2013 by the spouses, Andrew James McKenzie Smith and Helen Ruth McKenzie Smith. The distillery was inherited by Andrew after the death of his elder brother in 2013. As of March 2021, the owners of the Russian group of companies in the system integration field – Anton Buslov, Sergey Uryadov and Sergey Fokin, were listed as the shareholders of 85 B-shares (75%) through the legal entity Spirex Ltd. The remaining 15 А-shares belong to Andrew and his family’s trust. In February 2021, the company announced the sale of 50% stake in its subsidiaries to Andrey Korobov, General Director at Yakut Fuel and Energy Company PJSC and a former head of the “RT-Global resources” investment fund (a subsidiary of State Corporation Rostec).

Russian investors are the direct owners of the distillery, which is evidenced by the following facts:

Buslov and Fokin were deputies at the subsidiary of the Moscow City Property Department of the Government of Moscow, and simultaneously their private company won public contracts with the Departments of subsidiaries;

Buslov organized and visited the chess tournament held at the distillery in Scotland in May 2019. In the June 2019 article, Buslov is referred to as one of the main reasons why the entire tournament took place. Buslov’s participation in running events sponsored by Lindores Abbey Distillery. In September 2020, in Moscow, on the Alfa-Bitza sports club territory, they held Lindores Abbey RVO Race bike race; Fokin and Buslov with his son Yehor were among the participants;

The company’s Russian domain is registered by S.O.D.A, LLC; presumably, it is a former company of Buslov, Fokin and Uryadov; a photo of Buslov and Morgunov on the Lindores website, the article also says that Buslov attended the chess contest; in a June 2019 chess contest video, Buslov appears to be the man to the right, behind the casks. In these frames (1, 2), the woman he is talking to is likely to be Novikova.

It means that Distillery is directly connected with Rostec, Russia’s state aerospace and defence conglomerate, which got under sanctions lately. Does the Lindores Abbey Distillery become another case of avoiding sanctions? Hope it will not.