Embezzlement of 162 million rubles and FSB patronage: The Prosecutor General’s Office secured the seizure of the assets of Freedom Holding founder Timur Turlov
As part of the lawsuit by the Prosecutor General’s Office against the founder and CEO of the financial group Freedom Holding Corp., Timur Turlov, Moscow’s Tverskoy Court imposed interim measures on the businessman’s Russian assets and those of his structures. This follows from the court’s case file.
A total of 10 enforcement documents were issued. Among the defendants, in addition to Turlov, are Arkady Shchukin and several legal entities: V-Empirical Holding Corp., Freedom Holding Corp., and Freedom Finance Europe Ltd. Freedom Holding insists that the holding company and Turlov do not conduct activities in Russia and have no assets in the country.
It is worth noting that only in 2025, the Basmanny Court sentenced Moscow investor Sergei Kuleshov to three years’ suspended imprisonment. He was found to be an accomplice in the embezzlement of 162 million rubles from the financial company W-Empirical Holding Corp., which also appears in the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office lawsuit. As part of the sentence in 2025, a civil claim by W-Empirical Holding Corp. was satisfied, and the amount seized in Kuleshov’s accounts was transferred to W-Empirical Holding Corp.
In 2024, Kuleshov’s representatives said that they had audio recordings of negotiations by Freedom Finance deputy head of security Eliseev, in which he speaks about patronage for the holding and its leadership at the very top of Directorate “K” of the FSB of the Russian Federation (then headed by General Ivan Tkachev).
