The network of small companies set up by former star K2 investigator Charles Carr keeps reeling in contracts. Already present in London, Milan, Zug and Paris, its growth is being backed by the family office of wealthy American Amre Youness, one of the masterminds of the suspect flow of funds out of ENRC in Africa.

The small C and F Partners intelligence firm operated by Charles Carr from his home in Milan is thriving thanks, in part, to the efforts of his partner, Petra Tucker (Petra Vujnovic). She has been running the financial investigations department since the company was set up in 2017. She has now been made a director of London-based C and F Partners subsidiary C and F 21, which operates from Baker Street, the mythical home of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

The Swiss market has not been forgotten. "Charlie" Carr operates there via low-profile investigations company Aquinas. The manager of this company, which was set up in Zug in 2017 at the same time as C and F Partners in London and Zurich, is Swiss lawyer Beat Ehrensberger. Until 2014, he was general counsel at Kazakh multinational Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), known today as Eurasian Resources Group or ERG [IO, 30/08/23]. Ehrensberger has since gone into business on his own account and heads a number of small companies in Zug, among them mining and infrastructure project developer Emerging Capital Partners, law firm Be Law and financial services company Foreman Holding.

High-level sponsor

C and F Partners and Aquinas are majority-owned by Carr but have a minority shareholder in the form of Geneva-based TMC Financial, the Swiss branch of a family office which includes British firm TMC Management, TMC Financial in the US and TMC Partners in the Bahamas. The man behind this network is American national Amre Youness.

Until the early 2000s, Youness was CEO of International Mineral Resources (IMR), a private company owned by the Central Asian trio who set up ENRC – Alexander Mashkevitch, Patokh Chodiev and the late Alijan Ibragimov. Youness, who was once their trusted aide, headed several mining companies affiliated to IMR and ENRC, including Samancor Chrome and Shaft Sinkers in South Africa and Chambishi Metals in Zambia. Such was the case until 2014, when Youness disappeared from public view after the scale of looting in IMR became apparent in court cases in Washington DC and in England.

Projects Galore

These ex-ENRC contacts, which Carr acquired during the years he spent at K2 Integrity (ex-K2 Intelligence), benefit his business. As transpires from invoices which IntelligenceOnline has seen, Aquinas services ENRC group every now and then as it is still engaged inlegal battles with several parties involved in the massive court case in which wasembroiled for several years. The battle between the group and Britain's Serious Fraud Office has now been dropped, however [IO, 15/09/23 and 23/08/23].

C and F also operates a network which works on African affairs. From 2020 to April 2023, Carr sat on the board of the Fondation Brazzaville, a not-for-profit run by consultant Jean-Yves Ollivier, which serves as a vehicle to promote the international influence of Republic of the Congo president Denis Sassou-Nguesso. The foundation's communications operations were for some time run by Forward Global (ex-Avisa Partners), which has also worked on the Kazakh cases.