Hrubá Skála Castle was built by the Wallenstein family in the 14th century. Before November 1989 it served as a trade union hostel, now it is a hotel. In 2011, the company bought it for about seventy million crowns. It is owned by entrepreneurs Tengiz Charebava from Russia and Marik Ugrekelidze from Georgia. The transaction was examined by the Financial Analytical Office. However, he refused to disclose the results due to legal secrecy under the Czech Sanctions Act.
According to Czech Television, co-owner Charebava is a business partner of Russian billionaire Mikhail Shelkov, ex-head of the investment division of the state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, which supplies almost all weapons and military equipment to the Russian army, in a company engaged in the production of industrial chemicals.
Šelkov is also one of the owners of VSMPO-AVISMA, which supplies titanium for the aerospace industry. Its customers include, for example, Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Embraer. Due to the West’s dependence on titanium supplies, sanctions have not yet been imposed on the company.
The company is headed by Sergei Chemezov, Putin’s friend on all sanctions lists. He is a former KGB agent and a high-ranking general. He was placed with Putin in East Germany in the 1980s, where they also became friends. The leak of Pandora Papers’ documents revealed that Čemezov and his family have extensive wealth hidden behind offshore companies.
Charebava also appears in offshore companies. In addition to Hrubá Skála Castle, it owns the Karlsbad Prestige apartments on the colonnade in Karlovy Vary and an apartment in a luxury house in Maiselova Street, opposite the Old-New Synagogue in Josefov.
Neither Charebava nor Shelkov are on the sanctions lists yet, Shelkov only on the Ukrainian one.
The origin of money
The company that owns the castle refused to tell ČT the origin of the money. A year before the purchase, it was in an accounting loss. The FAU does not comment on the matter due to confidentiality. According to information from ČT, the company is currently being re-examined.
As part of anti-Russian sanctions, the office has so far blocked only the Westend Hotel in Mariánské Lázně. In order to speed up the sanction process, the Czechia is considering adopting an analogy to the so-called Magnitsky Act. “It makes it possible to create a sanction list, whether of legal or natural persons, which, for example, are involved in human rights violations or trampling on democratic principles,” explained Veronika Víchová, an analyst at the European Values Association.
In the past, the law has been approved by, for example, the USA, Great Britain or the Baltic states. Russia called it direct interference in its affairs.
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