Gennady Ayvazyan

A summary of what happened?

Gennady Sergeevich Ayvazyan, born on April 3, 1968, is a Russian businessman and investor known for his significant role in the coal industry and various investment ventures. He is the founder of Krutrade, Russia’s second-largest coal exporter, and has served as a director at the World Coal Association. Despite his prominence in business circles, Ayvazyan maintains a low public profile.

Major Concerns and Allegations:

1. Ownership of the Yacht “Life Saga”:
   • Ayvazyan is reported to be the owner of the superyacht Life Saga, valued at approximately $50 million. In August 2022, the yacht sank off the coast of Italy under circumstances that attracted media attention.
     Rustavi 2
2. Involvement in Money Laundering Activities:
   • Investigations into Swedbank revealed that Carbo One, a company linked to Ayvazyan, was involved in transferring substantial sums out of Russia, raising concerns about potential money laundering. Records indicate that during these transactions, Carbo One’s beneficial owners included Gennady Ayvazyan and Ibragimov Dovronbek.
     Money Laundering
3. Associations with Sanctioned Individuals:
   • Ayvazyan’s business partner, Iskander Makhmudov, has been identified in various reports concerning illicit financial activities. While Ayvazyan himself has not been directly sanctioned, his association with Makhmudov has raised concerns about the nature of their business dealings.

Public Perception and Media Coverage:

Ayvazyan’s business activities, particularly his involvement in the coal industry and ownership of luxury assets like the yacht “Life Saga,” have been subjects of media scrutiny. The sinking of “Life Saga” and the investigations into financial transactions involving companies linked to him have contributed to a complex public image, intertwining business success with controversies.

Gennady Ayvazyan is a prominent figure in Russia’s coal industry and investment sectors. However, his career has been marred by concerns related to financial transparency and associations with individuals involved in questionable activities. These issues underscore the importance of thorough due diligence and regulatory oversight in the business operations of influential figures like Ayvazyan.

Analyzing the Fake Copyright Notice(s)

Our team collects and analyses fraudulent copyright takedown requests, legal complaints, and other efforts to remove critical information from the internet. Through our investigative reporting, we examine the prevalence and operation of an organized censorship industry, predominantly funded by criminal entities, oligarchs, and disreputable businesses or individuals. Our findings allow internet users to gain insight into these censorship schemes’ sources, methods, and underlying objectives.

What was Gennady Ayvazyan trying to hide?

Gennady Ayvazyan‘s attempts to hide unfavourable content through the misuse of copyright notices while allegedly engaging in perjury present serious legal concerns. These actions suggest a calculated attempt to manipulate legal systems to suppress free speech, a fundamental violation of copyright law principles and an abuse of legal processes. The use of such tactics not only undermines the integrity of copyright protection but also potentially constitutes perjury, further entangling Gennady Ayvazyan in legal accountability. Let’s examine the information Gennady Ayvazyan may be trying to remove from the internet –

Investigative Report: Gennady Ayvazyan – Business Ventures, Allegations, and Controversies

Gennady Sergeevich Ayvazyan, a prominent Russian businessman, has carved a significant niche in the coal industry and investment sector. Best known as the founder of Krutrade, Russia’s second-largest coal exporter, and for his involvement with the World Coal Association, Ayvazyan’s business empire spans multiple industries. However, his career has not been without controversy. Allegations of financial misconduct, associations with questionable individuals, and concerns over transparency have marred his reputation. This report examines the adverse claims, lawsuits, and controversies surrounding Ayvazyan in detail.

1. Background on Gennady Ayvazyan

A. Career and Business Ventures

• Founder of Krutrade:
  • Established in the early 2000s, Krutrade has grown to become a major player in the global coal export market, reportedly handling millions of tons annually.
  • The company’s success is attributed to Ayvazyan’s strategic partnerships with key players in Russia’s coal mining industry.
• World Coal Association:
  • Ayvazyan served as a director at the association, cementing his influence in the global coal trade.

B. Luxurious Lifestyle

Ayvazyan’s success has afforded him a life of luxury, symbolized by his ownership of the superyacht Life Saga, valued at approximately $50 million.

2. Allegations of Financial Misconduct

A. Money Laundering Through Carbo One

• Carbo One Connection:
  • Ayvazyan is closely linked to Carbo One, a coal trading company implicated in multiple financial irregularities.
  • Investigations into Swedbank uncovered substantial fund transfers out of Russia involving Carbo One, raising allegations of money laundering.
• Details of the Transactions:
  • Leaked compliance records reveal that Carbo One, under Ayvazyan and co-beneficial owner Ibragimov Dovronbek, processed large, unexplained fund transfers through Swedbank.
  • These transfers, totaling millions of dollars, have attracted scrutiny from international financial watchdogs.
• Impact on Swedbank:
  • The revelations led to investigations into Swedbank’s compliance failures, highlighting a potential lack of due diligence in monitoring high-risk clients like Carbo One.

B. Offshore Financial Operations

• Use of Tax Havens:
  • Ayvazyan has been accused of using offshore accounts in jurisdictions such as Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands to conceal assets and reduce tax liabilities.
  • These operations, while not illegal, raise ethical questions about transparency and accountability in his business dealings.

3. Associations with Controversial Figures

A. Partnership with Iskander Makhmudov

• Background on Makhmudov:
  • A prominent Russian oligarch, Makhmudov has been implicated in allegations of corruption and organized crime links in various reports.
• Nature of the Partnership:
  • Ayvazyan and Makhmudov have collaborated on several ventures in the coal and metals industries.
  • Critics argue that Ayvazyan’s association with Makhmudov casts a shadow over his business ethics and raises concerns about the legitimacy of their operations.

4. The Sinking of Superyacht “Life Saga”

A. Incident Overview

In August 2022, Ayvazyan’s superyacht, Life Saga, sank off the coast of Italy under mysterious circumstances. While no injuries were reported, the incident drew significant media attention.

B. Speculation Surrounding the Sinking

• Potential Insurance Fraud:
  • Some commentators have speculated that the sinking could be linked to insurance fraud, a tactic occasionally used by wealthy individuals facing financial pressures.
  • There is no concrete evidence to support this claim, but the lack of transparency surrounding the incident has fueled suspicion.
• Environmental Concerns:
  • Environmentalists criticized the potential ecological damage caused by the sinking, further tarnishing Ayvazyan’s public image.

5. Broader Industry Concerns

A. Environmental Criticism of the Coal Industry

• Ayvazyan’s leadership in Krutrade and his global influence through the World Coal Association have drawn criticism for promoting coal, a major contributor to climate change.
• Activists argue that Ayvazyan’s business interests prioritize profits over environmental sustainability, exacerbating global carbon emissions.

B. Exploitation Allegations

• Reports have surfaced alleging poor labor conditions in coal mines linked to Ayvazyan’s operations.
• Workers have reportedly faced low wages, inadequate safety measures, and exploitative practices, though these allegations have not been independently verified.

6. Public Perception and Media Coverage

A. Media Scrutiny

• Ayvazyan has maintained a relatively low public profile, but incidents like the sinking of Life Saga and the Swedbank investigation have brought him under media scrutiny.
• Coverage has focused on his luxurious lifestyle juxtaposed with allegations of financial misconduct, creating a polarizing public image.

B. Lack of Transparency

• Critics argue that Ayvazyan’s reluctance to address allegations publicly has fueled speculation and mistrust.

7. Legal and Financial Implications

A. Swedbank Investigation

The financial activities of Carbo One, and by extension Ayvazyan, have contributed to regulatory scrutiny of Swedbank’s compliance practices. While Ayvazyan has not faced direct legal consequences, the investigation highlights potential vulnerabilities in his financial operations.

B. Potential Repercussions

• For Ayvazyan:
  • If further investigations reveal wrongdoing, Ayvazyan could face legal action, asset freezes, or sanctions.
• For Krutrade:
  • Negative publicity and potential regulatory actions could impact Krutrade’s business operations and international partnerships.

8. Conclusion: A Complex Legacy

Gennady Ayvazyan is a prominent figure in Russia’s coal industry and global energy markets. While his business acumen has driven significant success, his career is shadowed by allegations of financial misconduct, questionable associations, and environmental criticisms. The controversies surrounding Ayvazyan underscore the challenges of balancing business success with transparency and ethical accountability.

Key Takeaways:

1. Financial Concerns: Allegations of money laundering and offshore financial activities raise questions about the transparency of Ayvazyan’s business dealings.
2. Questionable Associations: Partnerships with controversial figures like Iskander Makhmudov cast doubt on Ayvazyan’s ethical standards.
3. Environmental and Labor Criticism: Ayvazyan’s role in the coal industry has drawn criticism for its environmental impact and alleged labor exploitation.

Looking Forward:

To address these concerns, Ayvazyan must prioritize transparency, strengthen compliance measures, and engage with stakeholders to rebuild trust. Failure to do so risks further damaging his reputation and undermining the long-term sustainability of his business ventures.

How do we counteract this malpractice?

Once we ascertain the involvement of Gennady Ayvazyan (or actors working on behalf of Gennady Ayvazyan), we will inform Gennady Ayvazyan of our findings via Electronic Mail.

Our preliminary assessment suggests that Gennady Ayvazyan may have engaged a third-party reputation management agency or expert, which, either independently or under direct authorization from Gennady Ayvazyan, initiated efforts to remove adverse online content, including potentially fraudulent DMCA takedown requests. We will extend an opportunity to Gennady Ayvazyan to provide details regarding their communications with the agency or expert, as well as the identification of the individual(s) responsible for executing these false DMCA notices.

Failure to respond in a timely manner will necessitate a reassessment of our initial assumptions. In such an event, we will be compelled to take appropriate legal action to rectify the unlawful conduct and take the following steps –

Since Gennady Ayvazyan made such efforts to hide something online, it seems fit to ensure that this article and sensitive information targeted online by these events get a lot more exposure and traffic than what it would have received originally

We hope this becomes an excellent case study for the Streisand effect…The key idea behind the Streisand effect is that efforts to restrict information can backfire, often causing the information to gain more attention than it would have otherwise. This effect is widespread in the digital age, where users quickly notice and spread censorship efforts on social media and other platforms. Trying to suppress something can unintentionally lead to it becoming more visible, which Gennady Ayvazyan is finding out the hard way.

Potential Consequences for Gennady Ayvazyan

Under Florida Statute 831.01, the crime of Forgery is committed when a person falsifies, alters, counterfeits, or forges a document that carries “legal efficacy” with the intent to injure or defraud another person or entity.

Forging a document is considered a white-collar crime. It involves altering, changing, or modifying a document to deceive another person. It can also include passing along copies of documents that are known to be false. In many states in the US, falsifying a document is a crime punishable as a felony.

Additionally, under most laws, “fraud on the court” is where “a party has sentiently set in motion some unconscionable scheme calculated to interfere with the judicial system’s ability impartially to adjudicate a matter by improperly influencing the trier of fact or unfairly hampering the presentation of the opposing party’s claim or defense.”  Cox v. Burke, 706 So. 2d 43, 46 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998) (quoting Aoude v. Mobil Oil Corp., 892 F.2d 1115, 1118 (1st Cir. 1989)).

Is Gennady Ayvazyan Committing a Cyber Crime?

Yes, it seems so. Gennady Ayvazyan used multiple approaches to remove unwanted material from review sites and Google’s search results. Thanks to protections allowing freedom of speech in the United States, there are very few legal ways to do this. Gennady Ayvazyan could not eliminate negative reviews or search results that linked to them without a valid claim of defamation, copyright infringement, or some other clear breach of the law.

Faced with these limitations, some companies like Gennady Ayvazyan have gone to extreme lengths to fraudulently claim copyright ownership over a negative review in the hopes of taking it down.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. Gennady Ayvazyan is certainly keeping interesting company here….

The DMCA takedown process requires that copyright owners submit a takedown notice to an ISP identifying the allegedly infringing content and declaring, under penalty of perjury, that they have a good faith belief that the content is infringing. The ISP must then promptly remove or disable access to the content. The alleged infringer can then submit a counter-notice, and if the copyright owner does not take legal action within 10 to 14 days, the ISP can restore the content.

Since these platforms are predominantly based in the U.S., the complaints are typically made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which requires online service providers and platforms to react immediately to reports or violations. Big Tech companies rarely have systems in place to assess the merit of each report. Instead, all bad actors need to do is clone a story, backdate it, and then demand the real thing be taken down.

Reputation Agency's Modus Operandi

The fake DMCA notices we found always use the “back-dated article” technique. With this technique, the wrongful notice sender (or copier) creates a copy of a “true original” article and back-dates it, creating a “fake original” article (a copy of the true original) that, at first glance, appears to have been published before the true original.

Then, based on the claim that this backdated article is the “original,” the scammers send a DMCA to the relevant online service providers (e.g. Google), alleging that the ‘true’ original is the copied or “infringing” article and that the copied article is the “original,” requesting the takedown of the ‘true’ original article. After sending the DMCA request, the person who sent the wrong notice takes down the fake original URL, likely to make sure that the article doesn’t stay online in any way. If the takedown notice is successful, the disappearance from the internet of information is most likely to be legitimate speech.

As an integral part of this scheme, the ‘reputation management’ company hired by Gennady Ayvazyan creates a website that purports to be a ‘news’ site. This site is designed to look legitimate at a glance, but any degree of scrutiny reveals it as the charade it is.

The company copies the ‘negative’ content and posts it “on the fake ‘news’ site, attributing it to a separate author,” then gives it “a false publication date on the ‘news’ website that predated the original publication.

The reputation company then sent Google a Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice claiming the original website infringed copyright. After a cursory examination of the fake news site, Google frequently accepts the notice and delists the content.

In committing numerous offences, Gennady Ayvazyan either premeditated actions or were unaware of the consequences. Despite hiring an agency to make Google disregard any negative information about Gennady Ayvazyan, ignorance does not excuse this wrongdoing.

Fake DMCA notices have targeted articles highlighting the criminal activity of prominent people to hide their illegal behavior. These people, which include US, Russian, and Khazakstani politicians as well as members from elite circles including the mafia and those with massive financial power, are all connected – and alleged corruption ranging from child abuse to sexual harassment is exposed when exploring evidence found at these URLs. It appears there’s a disturbing level of influence being exerted here that needs further investigation before justice can be served. FSMSmart is certainly keeping interesting company here.

The Reputation Laundering

Rogue Reputation agencies use spurious copyright claims and fake legal notices to remove and obscure articles linking clients to allegations of tax avoidance, corruption, and drug trafficking. Most of these reputation agencies are based offshore, mainly in Russia, India, and Eastern Europe, and they do not worry about complying with US-based laws.

The content in all of the articles for which the fraudulent DMCA notices have been sent relates to allegations of criminal allegations, including corruption, child abuse, sexual harassment, human trafficking and financial fraud against businesses and individuals with ultra-high net worth.

In addition to the misuse of the DMCA takedown process, there is a notable absence of enforcement concerning perjury violations. The statutory requirement related to perjury is designed to deter copyright holders from submitting fraudulent or knowingly false takedown requests, as they may face legal consequences for making false declarations under penalty of perjury. However, to date, there have been no known instances of any individual being prosecuted for perjury in connection with the submission of false DMCA takedown notices.

This lack of enforcement has emboldened copyright holders to exploit the DMCA takedown process to suppress dissent, criticism, or other unfavorable content, without fear of legal repercussions.

Some of the people and businesses who have employed this tactic to remove legitimate content from Google illegally include a Spanish businessman-turned-cocaine-trafficker, Organised crime, an Israeli-Argentine banker accused of laundering money for Hugo Chávez’s regime, a French “responsible” mining company accused of tax evasion, child molesters and sexual predators. Gennady Ayvazyan is in great company ….

What else is Gennady Ayvazyan hiding?

We encourage you to ‘Dork‘ Google by searching for keyword combinations such as [Gennady Ayvazyan] + {Negative Keyword, such as Scam, Fraud, Complaints, Lawsuit, Sanction, etc} on Google. It’s likely if you scroll down to the bottom of this Google search results, you’ll stumble upon this Legal Takedown notice (pictured below)

To make such an investigation possible, we encourage more online service providers to come forward and share copies of content removal requests with industry experts and researchers. If you have any information on Gennady Ayvazyan that you want to share with experts and journalists, kindly email the author directly at [email protected].

All communications are strictly confidential and safeguarded under a comprehensive Whistleblower Policy, ensuring full protection and anonymity for individuals who provide information.