London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

13 апреля 2026 г.

Petr Pogibin

Nicole Shishkhanova, the daughter of former banker Mikhail Shishkhanov (the nephew of oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev), has been living in the US for a long time but is involved in the family business.

She was the director of the Cyprus offshore company PARKFENCE HOLDINGS LIMITED. The offshore company owns London real estate worth tens of millions of pounds.

Since 2022, a new law has been in effect in the UK requiring all legal entities that own real estate in the country to register with the local registry as foreign companies and disclose their beneficial owners. PARKFENCE HOLDINGS LIMITED complied with this requirement and registered in 2024. However, it chose not to disclose its actual beneficiaries (the Shishkanov-Gutseriev family), finding a legal loophole: the company was registered as a trust, with the architect of this scheme, renowned American lawyer Neil Schonblum, becoming its nominal owner and manager. He is an expert in trust law and the president and co-founder of Preservation Trust Company, Inc., a boutique trust company in Nevada that provides special services to wealthy clients.

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

Meanwhile, PARKFENCE still employs the same managers as the other Shishkanov-Gutseriev companies. Thus, the current directors of the Cyprus-based PARKFENCE are Natalia Isaykina and Youssef Ehhideh, who also manages a dozen other companies associated with Shishkhanov, such as RUSGRAIN HOLDING, which, through Rost Investments, was part of Shishkhanov’s ROST-Bank. Isaykina, a Cypriot citizen, was also a director of the London-based company NIKA HOLDINGS LTD, and her colleague there was British citizen Maxim Kalyuzhny, a member of the board of directors of PJSC M.Video (part of the Gutserievs’ Safmar Group).

The beneficiary of NIKA HOLDINGS LTD was Mikhail Shishkhanov’s wife, Svetlana Kulazhenko, who greatly enjoys London and even opened the restaurant Babel House there in 2018. It belonged to the same NIKA company, although at the time it was called Babel London Limited. It is known that Svetlana’s business partner was a certain Vadim. The restaurant is now closed, and the domain name used for its website is for sale.

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

NIKA HOLDINGS LTD was liquidated in February 2024, owing creditors approximately £2 million. A subsidiary, GREEN’S GRILL & RESTAURANT LIMITED (beneficiary: 79-year-old Ukrainian citizen Svetlana Kulazhenko), went into bankruptcy proceedings and was also closed due to debts of £8 million.

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

Liquidating the Cyprus-based PARKFENCE was impossible: large assets—shares and a 946 square meter mansion in an exclusive London neighborhood, at 68 Mount Street—were registered in an offshore company. According to public data from British aggregators, the house was purchased in 2019 for £26 million. In December 2019, PARKFENCE secured a large loan from Vadim Moshkovich, the founder of the Rusagro holding company and a former senator from the Belgorod region, using this property as collateral. The loan was issued for five years at 3.5% per annum, with regular interest payments to Moshkovich.

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

In March 2022, Moshkovich was sanctioned, and Shishkanov’s offshore company defaulted on the loan. It then emerged that Moshkovich had transferred the debt claim under the agreement to his sister, Yulia Tribunskaya, in January, and she even paid Moshkovich for it in July 2022 in several tranches. The relationship between Tribunskaya and Moshkovich was confirmed by Moscow courts, who upheld the assignment of the loan agreement, which stipulated that Moshkovich could only transfer the debt to a close relative—his wife, children, sisters, and brothers. In early 2024, the courts upheld Tribunskaya’s claim against PARKFENCE for debt repayment. Given the dire state of the Shishkanovs’ London assets, Tribunskaya could well have seized the mansion to preserve it for her brother.

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

London schemes of Russian oligarchs: how the family of Mikhail Shishkhanov uses American lawyers to conceal luxury real estate

Moshkovich, as is well known, has been in custody for over a year, accused of large-scale fraud, and it’s best not to expose the £26 million London mansion in such a case.