She Was a Russian Socialite and Influencer. Cops Say She’s a Crypto Laundering Kingpin

OFAC announced sanctions against the founder, as well as Elena Chirkinyan and Andrej Bradens, who also goes by the surname Carenoks, both of whom work for TGR—Chirkinyan is described as Rossi’s “second in command.” Four companies tied to Rossi and TGR have also been included on sanctions lists: TGR Partners Ltd, TGR Corporate Concierge, TGR DWC LLC, and Siam Expert Trading Company Ltd. The companies, on their websites, claim to provide a range of financial services, events management, and similar corporate services.

“What TGR will do is provide an interface to be able to take illicitly generated cash and put it into the legitimate banking system, although that might be in jurisdictions of risk for example,” Lyne from the NCA says. In 2023, the sanctions claim, TGR’s Chirkinyan allegedly helped transfer funds out of Russia, from Russian state-media media outfit RT, which has been widely sanctioned by Western governments, to help fund a Russian-language media organization in the UK.

However, the sanctioned TGR companies are likely the tip of a dense iceberg, with multiple legal identities linked to the brand name or company records. Archived versions of the now sanctioned TGR Partners’ website have in the last few years claimed the business has “partner” offices in the UK, Singapore, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, the UAE, Latvia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, and the US. (The most recent version of the website only includes the UK and UAE addresses.)

TGR Corporate Concierge, which was also sanctioned, was previously called TGR Wealth Solutions, according to public company records. Many of the businesses linked to TGR—which also includes those not sanctioned by officials—share the same phone numbers, legal addresses, and similar website designs, a WIRED review shows.

Bradens also owns at least 50 percent of Pullman Global Solutions LLC, a Wyoming-based entity, according to OFAC.

Rossi and Bradens did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chirkinyan could not be immediately reached for comment.

The companies have a limited public presence. Many of the websites do not contain many specifics about what the businesses do and often include boilerplate-style text. The TGR Partners website also includes a peculiar series of blog posts from early 2020, listing the most expensive wines in the world, Europe’s best virtual museums and galleries, and the winners of the 2020 Oscars. “I think that is very typical of traditional money-laundering typologies, where a website will simply be lifted, a new company will be put on there, and the images and text won’t necessarily correlate to what the company purportedly does,” the NCA’s tactical lead for the operation says.