Forbes works on narratives of propaganda in Crimea

On December 14, the Russian edition of the magazine "Forbes" published the "annual rating of Russian wines" for the first time, including one hundred products. At the same time, in this "rating" among "Russian wines", 32 positions, from the second to the hundredth, were occupied by drinks made in the occupied Crimea. The editors stated that the wines for the "rating" were selected by an "expert council from among qualified and recognized specialists", headed by Alexander Panasyuk, responsible secretary of the National Committee of the Russian Federation at the International Organization of Grapes and Wine, writes sprotyv.info with reference to "ARC".

At the same time, among 16 "experts", the editors named 12 Russian citizens and two "foreigners" with Russian roots, namely Iryna Vinogradova and Nella Galtseva. The ostensibly "international" nature of the "rating" was provided by Brett Crittenden, who has twenty years of experience in promoting European wines in Russia, and Robert Joseph, the owner of the "French" wine brand "Grand Noir", widely admitted to the Russian market.

It is noteworthy that the Crimean drinks were included in the "rating" by its organizers not only knowingly, but also with an obvious exaggeration of their importance even for the "Russian consumer". For example, in the "rating" there is practically no wine production from a number of traditionally wine-producing regions of the south of Russia itself, primarily from the Caucasian republics. And at the same time, the occupied peninsula is widely represented in the rating by all its "wine regions", including the frankly mediocre products of a number of local producers.

The Association has written more than once that in fact, under the conditions of occupation, Crimea's viticulture and winemaking is at best experiencing stagnation. Neither the area of ​​vineyards nor their harvests exceed the indicators of 2010-2014, and any noticeable "development" of the industry in the last five years was connected exclusively with the importation of Italian and French equipment and seedlings to the peninsula, with the violation of sanction regimes. Therefore, the above "rating" from "Forbes Russia" has nothing to do with an objective analysis of wine production and market, and is an obvious propaganda campaign of Russian special services to promote the legend of "prosperous Crimea".

To understand why this became possible for the Russian "Forbes", you should study the background of this publication, and it is quite interesting. The creation in Moscow of the Russian "daughter" of the American corporation "Forbes Media LLC" from New Jersey, the exclusive property of which is the "Forbes" trademark, was connected with the activities of the German corporation "Axel Springer SE". In 2003, CJSC "Axel Springer Rasha" was registered in the Russian Federation with a charter capital of 68,9 million rubles and two founders, Muscovite Irina Silaeva and a German company registered in Berlin (Charlottenburg district) "Ostoyropa" (AS Osteuropa GmbH). number HRB 90608 B.

Since 1992, Irina Silaeva has been involved in the promotion of such magazines as Cosmopolitan, Playboy, Men's Health and so on to the Russian and Ukrainian markets within the framework of the Moscow publishing house Independent Media. Until 2005, it was Silaeva who was the general director of the aforementioned "Axel Springer Rush", which published the Russian "Forbes". Data from the German registers closely links the company "Ostoiropa" with the "Axel Springer SE" concern, indicating, among other things, the merger of this company with "Axel Springer Asia" and mentioning as directors of "Ostoiropa" the chief lawyer of "Axel Springer SE" Konrad Wartenberg and the long-time chief financier of the same concern Julian Deitz.

In 2005, Silaeva "retired" from the management of "Forbes" and from the shareholders of "Axel Springer Rush" [16], whose director was appointed Regina von Flemming, who worked as a correspondent for the German magazine "Spiegel" back in the period of the late USSR, and later devoted herself "establishment of Russian-German business relations". A scandalous episode was connected with von Flemming's activities, when, on her instructions, the December 2006 issue with a critical article about the business empire of the wife of Moscow Mayor Luzhkov, Elena Baturina, was not released. After the intervention of the management of "Forbes Media LLC" in the situation, this magazine was still put on sale. In 2015, Von Flemming left Axel Springer Rush and now feels good about herself as a member of the board of the Russian-German Chamber of Foreign Trade and a member of the board of directors of the key operator of Russian mobile communications, PJSC MTS.

Changes in the work of the Russian "Forbes", with an audience of 3 million people accumulated over a decade, were connected with the fact that since the end of 2015, the Russian Federation has banned the publication of periodicals by companies with more than 20% foreign capital. Therefore, the rights to "Forbes" were allegedly then acquired by the publishing concern "ACMG" of Alexander Fedotov, by obtaining control over "Axel Springer Rush", renamed to "AS Rus Media". Nevertheless, although ACMG became the owner for the Moscow authorities, Axel Springer SE remained the owner of Ostyorop in Berlin, whose president Ralf Bükhi publicly expressed his regret at the "exit" from the Russian market. And although the executive director of Forbes Media, Mike Federle, welcomed the transfer of "Forbes" to Fedotov, the obvious condition of the transfer was the preservation of the editorial team.

The new "owner" Fedotov was not able to ensure this, he was mired in scandals with dismissals, and in the new seizure in 2018 of the number, which described the sad story of the Caucasian corporation "Summa" and its beneficiaries, Magomed and Ziyavudin Magomedovy from Dagestan , who have been in a pre-trial detention center for the past three years on suspicion of embezzling 2,5 billion rubles of budget money. In fact, the problems of the Magomedovs arose due to the conflict over the control of the Novorossiysk sea trade port, with the participation of Transneft, as well as due to disputes with billionaires Viktor Vekselberg, Leonard Blavatnik and Leonid Lebedev.

And in this specific situation, according to media reports, in August 2018, the Russian "Forbes" was bought by businessman Magomed Musaev, allegedly for 7 million dollars and payment of a debt of 90 million rubles. Musaev claimed in the media that he is personally acquainted with the shareholders and management of the American Forbes Media, whose decision, namely Peter Hang and Michael Federla "on the extension of the Russian license until 2023", "made the economic sense of this investment ... acceptable" for Musaev, who once again pledged to keep the publishing team together. In the future, Musaev calls himself a "venture entrepreneur, president of the Global Venture Alliance, owner and member of the Board of Directors of Forbes Russia", although his main position is the status of the son-in-law of the former president of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov.

Musaev began his career as deputy director, and then director of the All-Russian Exhibition Center, after which he moved to work in the governments of Moscow and Dagestan, while the prosecutor's office at the VVC was dealing with a shortage of a billion rubles for a long time. Since 2013, Musaev became the chairman of the executive committee of the Strategic Council under the President of Dagestan and headed the aforementioned Global Venture Alliance fund; as the Russian press writes, both of these structures are connected with the projects of the aforementioned group "Summa", now disgraced by the Magomedovs. Note that the official "founders" of "Global Venture Alliance" are Stanford University professor Gary Fowler, as well as American Lawrence Wright, who lived in Moscow since 1999, headed the "Startup Academy" in Skolkovo for several years, and then died in 2017 in car accident in Georgia under unclear circumstances. By the way, Mrs. Fowler, who has been the head of the innovation and technology committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia since 2003 and has been the head of the company "GSD Venture Studios" registered in California with a website in Russian since 2019, is also difficult to call a Stanford professor.

Such a close friendship between the Californian showmen and the Summy business would hardly have been possible without the active participation of Musaev's father-in-law, Ramazan Abdulatipov, who built his career from 1972 to 1991 in the Soviet Communist Party system, and in 1991 participated as "Vice President " with Vadym Bakatyn, candidate "from the special services", in the presidential elections of Russia. In the future, Abdulatipov held various parliamentary positions, but in 1998 he became the Minister of National Policy of the Russian Federation at the suggestion of the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, a long-time functionary of the Soviet special services, Evgeny Primakov.

At the same time, Abdulatipov headed the "Assembly of the Peoples of Russia", as the predecessor of the "Assembly of the Peoples of Eurasia", about the activities of which our Association has already written in the framework of the work of the Russian special services. However, the "eastern color" and the series of scandals connected with it did not allow Abdulatipov to "spread his career wings", and it was only in 2010 that his path to the seat of the president of Dagestan began as part of United Russia. However, the conflict with Magomedov's Summa led to the fact that Abdulatipov was removed from the leadership of Putin's party in 2018, and apparently as part of his "Chekist merits" he was transferred to "foreign policy" and sent as a special representative of the Russian Federation to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

In such conditions, not only the reflections of Abdulatipov Musaev's son-in-law regarding the publication of articles about Summa in the Russian Forbes are understandable, but also his obvious desire to get into the narrow circle of "American investors of modern technologies", exploiting, among other things, a world-famous brand, despite his ego loss in Russia (the loss of AS Rus Media amounted to 2020 million rubles in 45).

In such conditions, Musaev expands his publishing activity, announcing the launch of a magazine in the Russian Federation, a digital version of the publication, and the holding of conferences under the brand "Harvard Business Review Russia", "aimed at the introduction of world management and business practices in Russia." At the same time, the results of Musayev's work go far beyond the borders of Russia, it is enough to point out that now, due to the "Global Venture Alliance" structures associated with him, namely "GVA Auto" LLC, registered in the state of Delaware, and "GVA Capital", registered in California, he entered, through the company "Luminar Technologies", and with the help of a Russian-speaking lawyer from the Silicon Valley, Leonard Graiver, in the American business for the production of sensors for unmanned vehicles. Emphasis on industrial espionage has always been a hallmark of the Soviet and Russian special services; and in this context, we note that due to a "strange coincidence", the above-mentioned lawyer from Dusseldorf and one of the directors of the Ostoyrop company, Konrad Wartenberg, headed the legal department of the Porsche concern before moving to the promotion of Forbes on the Russian market.

However, in the situation with the Russian "Forbes" there are even more strange "coincidences". Now, under the "owner" of the Musaev company, the general director of As Rus Media has become Elmar Murtazaev, a native of Tashkent with experience as an editor in the newspapers "Izvestia", "Russian Telegraph" and "Moskovskie Novosti", who worked in the staff of the Russian "Forbes" with 2011 to the beginning of 2016, led by the above-mentioned von Flemming. It is noteworthy that Murtazaev was also the founder of a certain fund "Open Economy", registered in Moscow at ulitsa Leninskie Gory vladenie 1 stroenie 75, with the general director Konstantin Kiselev. At the same address, the same Kiselev also created the "Strateg Expert Forecasting Group", with the direction of activity "studying public opinion".

Let's note the negligence of the Russian special services in fabricating cover companies, since the Moscow State University is located at this Moscow address in general, and the "Science Park of Moscow State University" is located in buildings 75 and 75, which is obviously a structure under the control of the authorities. It is obvious that no one at this address would allow a private "Open Economy" to be registered.

Thus, it is quite likely that now the publication of the Russian "Forbes" is used by the special services of the aggressor state not only for information operations against Ukraine such as the "annual rating of Russian wines", but also serves as a cover for large-scale practical subversive and espionage work in the countries of the Western world. Therefore, our Association officially appealed to the US authorities, as well as to the management of "Forbes Media LLC" in New Jersey and to their European office with a request for legal and commercial relations between "Forbes Media LLC" and the Russian "Forbes", as well as between " Forbes Media LLC" and Magomed Musaev. Also, "ARC" asked "Forbes Media LLC" to comment on the deliberate mass inclusion of Crimean products, including those produced at enterprises illegally confiscated by the Russian invaders, in the mentioned rating of "Russian wines".