Exclusive: How Russian companies have hidden secret military work: the norm

Behind the perimeter of a Defense Ministry base in southern Russia are three barracks buildings where two witnesses said they saw private fighters being cantoned before being sent to fight in Syria for the first time. President Bashar al-Assad.

Yet, on paper, the barracks have nothing to do with the Russian Ministry of Defense: court documents list them as a children's holiday camp.
And the construction of the buildings was commissioned by an obscure private company, Megalain, without the publicly accessible paper trail that is legally required for publicly funded projects.
Megalain is a company related to the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has appeared on a blacklist of US sanctions for his relations with the Russian Defense Ministry.
Reuters was unable to establish the possible role of Prigozhin in the construction project and could not determine how Megalain was chosen to build the facility or who paid for it.
But the secret surrounding the purpose of the buildings built on the land of the Ministry of Defense is an example of how companies involved in the secret campaign in Syria, where private fighters support the Russian army and camouflage their activities.
This military intervention was decisive in reversing the course of the war in favor of Moscow's ally, Assad.
Much of the fighting is being fought by private military fighters working in coordination with the Russian Ministry of Defense, dozens of people told Reuters about the deployment of Russian fighters in Syria.
The barracks near the village of Molkino, in southern Russia, were a meeting point for these fighters, according to a person close to them living in the buildings and a second person who visited the site.
The person close to the fighters also said that a photo submitted by Reuters about it, listed on the website of one of the companies involved in the construction project, represented a building used by the fighters.
Russian military officials have not responded to a request for comment on the purpose of the Molkino facilities.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the presidential administration knew nothing about the construction of the barracks and that "it was not our problem".
Megalain did not respond to a written request for comments and there was no response on the listed phone numbers for the company.
According to Concord Management and Consulting, Prigozhin's main business, the questions submitted by Reuters "have nothing to do with reality".
"We consider that the agency itself is a biased media," he said.
Private fighters and denials
Reuters documented for several years how private fighters were fighting and dying in Syria and were using logistical support and infrastructure provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Russian authorities have previously denied that these fighters have any connection whatsoever with the state. They said that all Russians fighting in Syria on the government side are private citizens who volunteer there.
The buildings, completed in 2015, are located on the territory of a Russian military intelligence base. To get there, vehicles must pbad through a checkpoint held by armed soldiers in Defense Ministry uniforms, Reuters reporters observed during their visit to the site.
The existence of the buildings is disclosed in court documents reviewed by Reuters that describe a dispute between Megalain and a contractor named Sevzapstroi involved in the construction.
In its ruling, the court called one of the buildings a "pioneer camp" – a reference to Soviet-era summer camps for children – and the other two temporary housing buildings for vacationers.
He cites an agreement between Sevzapstroi and TD Vivahaus, a subcontractor of the project, as the source of the descriptions.
A manager of Vivahaus, a construction company for which Sevzapstroi had begun the judicial work, told Reuters the obligation to simulate the purpose of the buildings in the official documents filed under the project.
"We agreed with the client that we would write that it would be a beautiful pioneer camp near the Black Sea," said the director, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the problem.
He did not specify whether he was referring to his direct client Sevzapstroi or the ultimate Megalain client.
According to court documents, Megalain reportedly transferred 86 million rubles ($ 1.4 million at the time) to contractor Sevzapstroi for the construction of the three Molkino buildings.
Sevzapstroi has since ceased to exist and no contact with the company could be reached for comment.
At the time of the payment, Megalain was 50% owned by a company called Lakhta and 50% by Concord Management and Consulting, according to the Spark database, which collects official data on the companies of the tax department and the company. state statistics agency.
According to the database, Concord Management and Consulting mainly belonged to Prigozhin from 2003 to 2011.
At the time of the transaction with the Molkino factory, Concord belonged to Prigozhin's mother. She is no longer listed. As of 2017, Prigozhin itself again became owner, according to the database.
The second co-owner of Megalain, Lakhta, was founded in 2003 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, then the sole owner, revealed the database.
Lakhta was owned from 2013 to 2018 by Svetlana Sobirova. She was sales director of the real estate project Lakhta Park, which, according to Spark, belongs to the wife of Evgueni Prigozhin, Lyubov.
Called by phone, Sobirova said she was no longer working for Lakhta Park and declined to comment further. An employee of Lakhta Park said that he could comment and that the company had not responded to a written request for comment.
A Vivahaus official said Thursday that the company could not comment because all staff working in the company in 2015 had since left.
Reuters received no response to requests for comments sent to Prigozhin's wife and mother via Concord.
Image of the building
Prigozhin was placed on a blacklist of US sanctions in 2016 for its "deep" relations with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Last year, a US federal grand jury charged Prigozhin and 12 other Russians, alleging that he had funded a plot to interfere with the 2016 US presidential election.
Prigozhin once told the Russian media that he was not worried about the measures taken by the United States against him, as he had no commercial interest in the United States and no one. He had no intention of going there.
The US State Department and the US Treasury Department, which administers the sanctions, did not answer questions about Prigozhin.
The TD Vivahaus website, in a section presenting its portfolio of works to potential customers, presented an image of a building that exactly matches one of the structures in the court documents.
The site only stated that it was a "residential building" in Molkino, without giving details.
Reuters showed the photo to one of the two witnesses, a person close to the group who organizes the private fighters and who stayed in the group's camp in Molkino.
He told Reuters that the building on the photo was part of the camp used for the fighters.
The second person visited the camp twice last year, while he was looking for information about his son, left for Syria to fight with private fighters.
Later, the father learned that he was dead. The father also had a friend who worked for military intelligence in the camp adjacent to the barracks buildings.
The father described to Reuters the exact location of the facilities and his description corresponds to the location of the buildings paid by Megalain.
"Children's Camp" on a Russian military base.

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