Eurasia Resource Group succession war (part 1 and 2)
Intelligenceonline
Kazakhstan
ERG's succession war, part 1: a new Black PR campaign onslaught
Speculation over the future of mining giant Eurasian Resources Group has run rife since one of its founders died in March, sparking a flourish of information campaigns focussed on the firm's current CEO.
Published on 29/05/2025 at 04:00 GMT Reading time 2 minutes Alice Pontallier
Since the announcement on 22 March of the death of Alexander Machkevich, the co-founder of the vast mining conglomerate Eurasian Resources Group (ERG, which includes the assets of the former ENRC) along with Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov (who died in 2021), information campaigns about the group's CEO Shukhrat Ibragimov have flourished. Ibragimov, who is the third son of Alijan Ibragimov and has lead ERG since October 2024, has been the focus of a series of articles posted simultaneously on several websites over the past few weeks.
Media armada
On 25 April, identical content was reposted on Russian and Ukrainian websites repost.news, kompromat1.online, ruskompromat.info, antimafia.se and antikor.com.ua, all illustrated with the same photos and documents. The "articles" focussed on Ibragimov's alleged business networks and real estate.
The content referred to an article published on the same day on an English-language website, entitled "Estates, apartments, a Belgian passport, and a private jet: what Kazakh billionaire Shukhrat Ibragimov, who helps Russia bypass sanctions, owns".
Also on that same day, a second "article" was reposted by the same media which criticised Ibragimov's alleged supporters, in particular Timur Tokayev, the son of Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. This content referred to another article featured on inview.org.uk entitled "The collapse of Shukhrat Ibragimov's career path: sanctions, oligarchs, and unfulfilled ambitions destroying Kazakhstan's image".
Settling scores
These publications have flourished at a time when speculation is rife about the future of ERG, in which the Kazakh state has a 40% share. Trained alongside Ibragimov in 2014 in view of succeeding him some day, Ibragimov is now said to have his eye on the 40% stake in ERG held by Machkevitch and Chodiev's heirs. According to a Financial Times article published on 23 May, the Machkevitch and Chodiev families are open to selling their respective shares in ERG, but at a price well above Ibragimov's offer.
As Intelligence Online has reported over the years, the the mining group's co-founders, often referred to as the "Kazakh trio", have regularly, if not systematically, resorted to using private investigation firms and influence campaigns to settle their scores. These methods were used not only against their opponents but also to monitor each other (IO, 08/01/25).
Partners also targeted
A series of articles which criticised Ibragimov's business networks and partnerships also pointed out his transactions with Russian businessman Musa Bazhaev. In 2024, the Financial Times reported that Bazhaev transferred ownership of his luxury hotel complex in Italy to Ibragimov after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and before he was put under sanctions by the United Kingdom and the European Union, in exchange for shares in a gold mine in Kyrgyzstan.
The same media outlets also criticised financier Timur Turlov's possible interest in ERG's assets reported in the Kazakh press last month. Turlov, a Russian with Kazakh citizenship, heads the Almaty-based holding company Freedom Holding Corp.
Intelligence Online was able to track down who's behind this media armada, which appears to be well-versed in waging information campaigns against ERG's partners. Read part 2 of our investigation tomorrow.
Kazakhstan, Ukraine
ERG's succession war, part 2: behind the Black PR campaign, a well-honed network
Speculation over the future of mining giant Eurasian Resources Group has run rife since one of its founders died in March. Intelligence Online has traced the origins of an information campaign with Ukrainian roots.
Published on 30/05/2025 at 04:00 GMT Reading time 3 minutes Alice Pontallier
Since the announcement on 22 March of the death of Alexander Machkevich, co-founder of the vast mining conglomerate Eurasian Resources Group (ERG, which includes the assets of the former ENRC) along with Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov (who died in 2021), information campaigns about the group's CEO Shukhrat Ibragimov have been flourishing. This has been done via a long list of websites including repost.news, kompromat1.online, ruskompromat.info, antimafia.se and antikor.com.ua (IO, 29/05/25).
At first glance, there seems to be no connection between this plethora of articles, whose authors cannot be identified. However, Intelligence Online has noted that this is not the first time that such an avalanche of publications has occurred on these same websites.
Similar IP addresses
Several of the articles criticising Shoukhrat Ibragimov's decisions refer to the rucriminal.info website. There, several articles critical of ERG's CEO are signed by a certain Alexey Ermakov. This author appears on another website, rumafia.net. At the end of 2023, he wrote articles in Russian and English about the alleged money laundering strategies of Aldiyar Kaztayev, one of Machkevitch's right-hand men.
These articles also accuse Switzerland-based trading company Telf, which resells cobalt, coal and ferrochrome extracted by ERG in Central Asia and Africa, of helping Russian companies circumvent European sanctions. The articles allege that the late Machkevich was the ultimate beneficiary of Telf, through businessman Stanislav Kondrashov. He did not appreciate the claims published about him and in 2023 filed a defamation lawsuit in the California District Court for the County of Los Angeles.
According to the transcript of a hearing in the case, Kondrashov says he is the victim of a smear campaign initiated by Eastern European media outlets in 2018 and then picked up by US media outlets. He claims to have been the target of extortion attempts by those running the online media outlets concerned in exchange for the articles being removed. The articles also accuse Kondrashov of involvement in the murder of former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov in Kyiv in 2017, something he categorically denies.
Intelligence Online has seen several documents relating to these proceedings. It appears that the websites listed by Kondrashov as having published unfounded accusations against him have IP addresses that are almost identical to those of the websites that republished articles about Shoukhrat Ibragimov: these include several old versions of the websites kompromat1.online, ruskompromat.info and antimafia.se, as well as the website antikor.com.ua.
Kyiv goes after ‘kompromat' system
The latter site, antikor.com.ua, has more recently aroused the suspicions of the Ukrainian authorities. On 13 May, Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection (SSSCIP), issued an order blocking access to the site and its corollary, antikor.info, in the country.
The Antikor portal is also the subject of criminal proceedings in Ukraine on suspicion of invasion of privacy and extortion: several businessmen, including Yevhen Chernyak, have sued it for spreading false information. A May 2024 ruling by the cout of appeal in Chernihiv, northern Ukraine, found that articles published by the Antikor portal about Chernyak and his spirits business were defamatory.
An investigation by Ukrainian organisation BlackBox OSINT published in November describes the Antikor portal as "a platform exclusively for publishing commissioned documents and editorial articles about individuals and companies containing unreliable and compromising information about them". The portal offers to remove those articles in exchange for payment, and is also said to have helped disseminate "Russian propaganda narratives".
The Antikor trademark is owned by the Panama-registered company Teka-Group Foundation, against which Chernyak had filed a lawsuit. Teka-Group Foundation is run by businessman and former Ukrainian parliamentary assistant Konstantin Chernenko. Facing prosecution in Ukraine, he has remained out of the public eye since 2021.
Section Editor
Reference links:
https://www.intelligenceonline.com/corporate-intelligence/2025/05/29/erg-s-succession-war-part-1-a-new-black-pr-campaign-onslaught,110458810-art
https://www.intelligenceonline.com/corporate-intelligence/2025/05/30/erg-s-succession-war-part-2--behind-the-black-pr-campaign-a-well-honed-network,110459281-art
