Sales of Russian companies have increased on the darknet
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Russian companies have become more active in selling on the darknet. In 2023, more than 1.8 thousand legal entities were listed in the shadow segment, which is 40% more than a year earlier, Solar group analysts found out. Most often, such firms are acquired for illegal money laundering, supply chain attacks, and use in false partnership scenarios. Experts note a decrease in interest in fly-by-night companies. Since fraud involving them is easy to detect, long-registered legal entities have become more active in making purchases on the darknet.
It is usually difficult for tax authorities to track such transactions, says Luka Safonov, general director of the Cyberpolygon company: “For example, a company is registered in the name of some non-statutory person from whom you cannot ask. Money is withdrawn there, taxes are not paid on it, and this money is cashed out. Tax debt then turns into litigation, but since the director of the company is, for example, an 80-year-old pensioner, everything falls apart in court. That’s how cars get stolen. They lease a car, transfer it to other companies, and after the first payment they disappear.
For money withdrawal schemes and fictitious construction projects, you may need a clean company. A company can come and take out a loan for 400 million rubles. for the construction of a bridge as a company that works with the Moskomarkhitektura with bridge construction, and then the money disappears. An order is written to transfer a 100% share of such and such a legal entity to the new owner, and the notary confirms the transfer. He may not even see a single owner, and the notary doesn’t care how much money there is.
When it comes to how these people become business owners, there are several options. You can squeeze it out, you can become the owner using fake documents. It happens that this is done to order. They pay money, threaten, or it may happen that a person has lost his passport, and company loans have been attached to him, and so on. Again, these are people who tend to be involved in different schemes anyway, and it’s an ongoing market.”
It is possible that the increase in the number of companies sold on the darknet is associated with attempts to circumvent Western sanctions, says Roman Yankovsky, a lawyer and partner at Tomashevskaya and Partners: “Previously, this was done, among other things, for various tax schemes, for example, illegal VAT deductions, refunds taxes, because of this, the tax office can check a company that works with such fly-by-night companies. Indeed, in Russia now it is not only dangerous to own a shell company, but also to have any relationship with a company with a bad tax history, because the tax inspectorate, within the framework of a risk-based approach, can conduct audits due to suspicions of participation in such schemes.”
Analysts from the Solar group also found 13 thousand advertisements for the provision of illegal services on the darknet and Telegram channels. The most popular there are proposals for the sale of accounts and access to online banks, services for “punching” data and recruiting employees, including for carrying out cyber attacks on large organizations and departments.
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