The Post and Courier reposted this
🚨NEW INVESTIGATION🚨 I worked on a freelance project with Tony Bartelme (The Post and Courier), Thad Moore (Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and Irina Dolinina (IStories Media) on sanctioned Russian banker Sergey Khotimskiy's property holdings in the American states of Georgia and South Carolina. The US government sanctioned Khotimskiy and the bank he co-founded, Sovcombank, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We found that Khotimskiy finalized the transfer of as much as $40 million in residential and commercial properties to his ex-wife before the sanctions were put in place. But the investigation tells a bigger story about corporate secrecy and how hard it is to know who your neighbor (or landlord) really is. While Khotimskiy owned luxury residential homes in South Carolina near Hilton Head in his name, his properties in Atlanta were held by limited liability companies. The state of Georgia, like almost all American states, doesn't require such companies to declare who their owners are. So, it was no simple matter to determine whether or not Khotimskiy still owned lucrative commercial properties, some of which had major American firms as tenants. Now that the Trump administration shelved a landmark corporate transparency law that would have required companies to identify their owners, authorities may still be flying blind without reliable information on who owns what. Give it a read (links below)