Andrew Bain's ties to Russia, the Taliban, and War Profiteering
Andrew Bain's ties to Russia, the Taliban, and War Profiteering
Part one of a two part open source investigation by the author and two unaffiliated OSINT firms into US Expat and Ukrainian Andrew Knight Bain
Andrew K. Bain, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer who only attained the rank of Lieutenant when he left active duty, has been living in Ukraine since 1992 and wants to sell his 51% share of The Mozart Group to the Taliban according to a voice message that came into my possession. This, alongside his new role with a secretive Afghan company looking to score lucrative logistics and reconstruction contracts in Ukraine with the help of a former U.S. ambassador and some Ukrainian insiders, plus his documented affiliations with numerous Russian figures, will most likely make him a person of interest for Ukrainian and U.S. authorities.
I’ve made a partial transcription of recording below. The full recording has been turned over to the Directorate of Intelligence for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for further investigation and it will also be provided to certain agencies of the U.S. government.
I was in Poland. I met with Bain, I met with a U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, and I met with the Afghan billionaires, and we’re putting a company together called Victorian Logistics Services based out of Poland, operating in Bulgaria, Romania, and concentrating on Ukraine. We’re providing everything from fuel, armored vehicles, generators, all logistics, and the reconstruction of the infrastructure, and also we’ve got an armed security license for Ukraine. Apparently it’s the only armed license that’s getting issued. Please keep this to yourself because we’re not advertising it, It won’t be going on any of our brochures or anything like that, or the website, however we can tell people that we’re going to be armed when we have a face-to-face with them.
We’ve also got licenses for any port where we can’t have any of our cargo searched so again we’re literally at the highest of f**k’ng levels. The ex-US ambassador to Afghanistan is the Chairman, eh, to our company board of directors, so I’ll be obviously running the operations side of it.
But the main thing is fuel.
I’ve touched base with Bain again and Bain’s all over the fuel side of things, and he actually asked (between me and you, please keep this confidential).
He actually asked if the Afghans wanted to buy his share of Mozart yesterday. And he wanted it bought out for 2.5 million so he could concentrate on the logistics. Obviously that’s between me and you. Don’t be repeating that.
So Andrew Bain, who observed what Andy Milburn and his SOF veteran friends were doing by training up Ukrainian forces in mid-March, leveraged his time and business connections in Ukraine to take a 51% share of a company that he now wants to be rid of for a bigger, better deal as a war profiteer in bed with the Taliban.
I started looking into Andrew Bain’s past with the help of a few experienced OSINT investigators in mid-December after learning about his dealings with the Taliban. This is Part One of what we discovered.
The source references are available for subscribers behind the paywall.
Andrew K. Bain
Companies
ATLANTIC GROUP LIMITED (AGL) [1]
FREE UKRAINE FOUNDATION [2]
PROVID ADVERTISING LIMITED (Αρχ. Μακαρίου ΙΙΙ, 276, LARA COURT, 3105, Λεμεσός, Κύπρος, Cyprus) [3]
Subsidiaries include:
AGAMA Communications [4]
Pleon Talan [5]
Elaborate [6]
Talan Group [7]
Clever Force (Subsidiary of Talan Group) [8]
AGAMA Communications [9]
Media Direction [10]
MAD Media [11]
SOFIA PROPERTIES LIMITED (Αγαπήνορος & Αρχ. Μακαρίου ΙΙΙ, 2, IRIS TOWER, Floor 4, Flat/Office 401, 1076, Λευκωσία, Κύπρος, Cyprus) [12]
Subsidiary:
Cubic Holdings [13]
UMEDIA HOLDINGS LIMITED(Αρχ. Μακαρίου ΙΙΙ, 276, LARA COURT, 3105, Λεμεσός, Κύπρος,Cyprus) [14]
Subsidiary:
Perekhid Outdoor [15]
RISKS
Employees/companies with ties to the former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych
Bain’s business partner of 30 years and co-founder of The Atlantic Group, Sergi Straitsky, had strong ties to Yanukovych (widely regarded as the worst President in Ukraine’s history) and other Russian politicians and oligarchs.
Staritsky had a network connection to Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, a Ukrainian oligarch and politician. In 2005, Khoroshkovsky acquired one of Ukraine’s largest TV stations “Inter” and invited Staritsky to become its head.
Khoroshkovsky was a high-profile political figure during the former President Viktor Yanukovych era.[16] In 2010, he was appointed head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), and in 2012 he became vice-prime minister of Ukraine. [17]
Khoroshkovskiy was a shareholder of one of Russia’s largest steel companies “Evraz”. [18]
He’s been a close associate of Dmytro Firtash,[19] one of the richest Ukrainian oligarchs with ties to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.[20] Firtash has been under house arrest in Vienna, Austria since 2014 appealing a US extradition request on bribery charges.[21]
During the 2004 presidential campaign in Ukraine, firms related to the Atlantic Group and Sergei Staritsky reportedly provided outdoor advertising for pro-Russian Presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovuch.[22] A widespread election fraud in favor of Yanukovych led to a wave of protests across Ukraine, known as the Orange Revolution, which propelled pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko to victory.
Sergiy Staritsky had a network connection to Leonid Kozhara, the pro-Russian “Party of Regions” member and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.
On February 21, 2020 Staritsky was killed in the house of Kozhara while visiting there.[23]
Kozhara is facing murder charges and waits for the court verdict.[24]
Kozhara and Staritsky reportedly were friends and had known each other since college.[25]
Pleon Talan, PR and Communication Agency, part of the Atlantic Group [26, 27]
In 2011 Pleon Talan organized a meeting between the head of Ukraine’s pro-Russian Cabinet Mykola Azarov (sanctioned by the U.S. government)[28] and Ukrainian bloggers.[29]
Following the meeting, the bloggers noted Talan’s pro-government position.[30,31]
In 2011, Ivetta Delikatnaya, a representative of the Atlantic Group leadership, published a complimentary opinion piece defending Dmytro Tabachnyk, the Minister of Education in Azarov’s Cabinet[32]
CLIENT-RELATED RISKS
Farmak, pharmaceutical company
Farmak, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Ukraine, has been a client of Pleon Talan.[33,34]
Farmak was accused of selling drugs to Russia and occupied Crimea.[35] The practice has continued after Russian re-invaded Ukraine in 2022.[36]
In 2018, the company acknowledged such exports stating that they covered the needs of Ukrainians living in Russia and other CIS countries.[37]
Alfa-Bank Ukraine
Alfa Bank Ukraine has been a client of Pleon Talan[38]
Alfa Bank Ukraine is a subsidiary of the Russian Alfa Bank, the largest privately-owned bank in the country.[39]
It is currently owned by Mikhail Fridman, Pyotr Aven, and German Khan, all of which are government-connected oligarchs on the “Putin List”, a list of prominent Russians created by the U. S. Department of Treasury for possible sanctions.[40]
In December 2022, Fridman was arrested in London on money laundering suspicions.[41]
CORPORATE RISKS
Firing of the former AGAMA Communications CEO Irina Novikova
In March 2017, Andrew Bain announced the dismissal of the AGAMA Communications CEO Irina Novikova, who had worked for the company for 17 years[42]
Novikova sued the company over illegal dismissal and was reinstated in her position by a court order[43]
She later accused the company leadership of bullying and preventing her from fulfilling her work obligations[44]
Additional notes:
Failed Mongolian business deal
In 2013, Andrew Bain and his partner David Stewart pursued a business deal in Mongolia. The attempt ended in a lawsuit against a Texas lawyer, whom the business partners accused of fraud[45]
Summary
Part one of this investigation into Andrew Bain’s business dealings Russian entities and terrorists during a time of war focused on only one of his two partners, Sergiy Staritsky (recently deceased).
Part Two will feature his other business partner David Stewart’s deep connections to Russia as well as Bain’s co-founding and atrocious mismanagement of the Ukrainian Freedom Fund, a U.S. 501c3 corporation that, so far, doesn’t seem to have ever filed a tax return nor responds to requests for information about its accounting practices, as well as the secretive Poland-based startup Victorian Logistics Services that he reportedly is a part of.
Since one of Bain’s two partners at The Atlantic Group is deceased*, his co-founder from the Ukrainian Freedom Fund inexplicably left the company some years back, he tried to fire the CEO of one of his subsidiaries after 17 years of service, and now his current effort to force Andy Milburn out of the Mozart Group suggests a pattern; i.e., that if you go into business with Andrew Bain, you may not be in business with him for long.
I wonder how the Taliban will feel about that.
*Addendum (Jan 12, 2023): My original post said that both of Bain’s business partners were deceased. Andrew Bain informed me via LinkedIn tonight that David Stewart, one of his two former business partners, is not deceased. That was the only correction Bain gave me for this article.