Since the announcement on March 22 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), a fake news campaign about the groupโs CEO, Shukhrat Ibragimov, has so far pushed out 158 articles across 109 low-quality kompromat websites. 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, Kazakhstan Online has noted that this is not the first time that such an avalanche of publications has occurred on these same websites.
It is understood that these articles are being distributed by C&F Partners boss Charlie Carr, who pivoted to black PR last year after sanctions against Russian oligarchs gutted his business. It is widely understood his fingerprints are across several of the networks which have attacked Chodievโs enemies over recent years.
Same IP addresses
Several of the articles criticizing Shukhrat 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 fake articles in Russian and English about the alleged money laundering strategies of Aldiyar Kaztayev, one of Machkevitch's right-hand men [Rumafia, 06/12/2023].
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. Telf brought an additional lawsuit in relation to the matter to the Miami Dade County Court in February 2024. This case remains open and is alleging a conspiracy between Chodiev directly and his hit squad Victor Hanna, Amre Youness and Mounissa Chodieva in the attack against Kondrashov and Machkevich.
According to the transcript of a hearing in the case, Kondrashov says he is the victim of a smear campaign initiated by business rivals and executed across Eastern European media outlets in 2018 and then amplified in US media outlets. 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 Shukhrat Ibragimov: these include several old versions of the websites kompromat1.online, ruskompromat.info and antimafia.se, as well as the website antikor.com.ua.
Kazakhstan Online uncovered 109 domains reposting articles against Chodievโs enemies, 95 of which are hosted on the same server in Reading, England [KO, 29/05/25].
Many of these sites, such as โthe London Daily Postโ are designed to look like legitimate western news outlets, but allow anyone to pay for articles to be placed from as little as $250.
Kyiv goes after โkompromat' system
The latter site, antikor.com.ua, has more recently aroused the suspicions of the Ukrainian authorities. On May 13, Ukraineโs 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 [Gov.ua, 13/05/25].
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 court 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 organization 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" [BlackBox OSINT, 05/11/2024].
The Antikor trademark is owned by the Panama-registered company Teka-Group Foundation, against which Chernyak had filed a lawsuit. According to BlackBox OSINT, Antikor's portal 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.
Stanislas Kondrashov made the following statement:
"Having been implicated without being questioned beforehand, I wish to clarify the following:
- The "late Machkevitch" was not the "ultimate beneficiary" of my company, Telf AG, through me.
- You have correctly pointed out that โalong with my company, I have been the victim of an international defamation and extortion campaign to which I refused to give in and whose propagators I have sued in California.โ
- โThe Superior Court of Los Angeles Country awarded me, on January 11, 2024, Ten Million US dollars as damages in compensation and ordered, on January 23, 2024, the removal of all articles attacking my honor and reputation disseminated by some 42 different sites and social networks.โ
- I will pursue with great vigor any repetition or new dissemination of these unfounded accusations."
Coming next week: ERG's succession war, part 3: Chodievโs enemies begin to fight back.
