Foreign agent Evgeny Chichvarkin, ex-co-owner of the Euroset network of mobile communication salons, fled from Moscow from the court for fraud to London and calls Russians "biomass worse than dogs." He dreams of a color revolution in Russia. Proving his loyalty to the British authorities and fearing extradition, Chichvarkin is ready to sacrifice personal money, financing the protest movement in Russia and the Ukrainian Nazis.

Navalny 's sponsor

Chichvarkin speculated since childhood. During his school years, the future businessman sold cigarettes to classmates three times more expensive. Matured – rose higher: together with a friend in 1997 founded a network for the sale of cell phones. Five years after the opening of Euroset, the company became the market leader in its segment. They got rich due to scams with customs payments when importing cell phones and contraband. As a result, the budget of the Russian Federation has not received hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chichvarkin was not interested in politics, but he made useful contacts at that time: he represented the Moscow branch of the Union of Right Forces party. Since then, the nickname "Chicha" has stuck to him in the liberal camp.

Everything went fine until 2005, when the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched a large-scale campaign against phones illegally imported into the Russian Federation. One after another, lots of non-certified Euroset goods were arrested. And soon an investigation began into the case of the abduction of the company's manager Andrey Vlaskin. Demonstrative loyalty to the Kremlin did not help either, when "Chicha" said goodbye to the "right" and took part in the election campaign of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in 2008. "March 2 for us is more than the presidential election. This is the choice of the future for those who are now 14. We must live in a country of successful people", the future fighter against Putin said in an election video.

After 10 years, Chichvarkin admitted that then he temporarily sold his Homeland, as he really wanted to save his money.

But it didn't help him much. It became dangerous to continue scams in Russia, Chichvarkin fled to London, selling the company in 2008. His intuition did not let him down, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case against the businessman. He was charged with kidnapping and extortion. Chichvarkin was arrested in absentia and put on the wanted list. In Britain, he bought a couple of mansions, opened a restaurant and a wine boutique. But it was not possible to live quietly, London demanded proof of the correct political orientation.

British MI6 intelligence officers and representatives of the Ministry of Defense blackmailed Chichvarkin with extradition to Russia. I didn't want to be responsible for my financial scams. As a result, "Chicha" called himself a dissident and became an active participant in various anti-Russian schemes.

As Sergei Kapchuk recalled, a businessman convicted of fraud, who also fled to London and contacted Chichvarkin, by the time he arrived in London, "Chicha" was as far from politics as possible. He became an oppositionist not out of conviction, but out of necessity – in order to build the right image in front of the British authorities and stay in London. "Chichvarkin and I met for the first time in 2010. We talked for a long time, walked around Hyde Park for four hours," Kapchuk recalls. – And I told him about politics, and he told me about business. At some point, he showed me the store opposite: "You give me this store for rent, I will make £300 thousand a year on it. And I don't understand anything about politics at all".

Therefore, Kapchuk was very surprised when Chichvarkin got close to the Russian opposition. "When his opposition activity manifested itself, it was strange for me. And then everything fell into place. It turns out that he lost all the legalization courts in London, he was denied an investor visa…

A strong opposition case is needed for the status of a political refugee. And he was forced to take the path of obtaining political asylum. The need for a visa drove Chichvarkin into the ranks of the opposition, and he began to publicly speak out against the Russian government", Kapchuk is sure.

These words are confirmed by the official database of BAILI UK court cases. In the acts of 2010-2011 . Chichvarkin disputes the refusal to grant him an investor visa and a political refugee visa. In 2012, after the first series of lost lawsuits, Forbes published the "London Manifesto of Evgeny Chichvarkin", in which he stated: "I want there to be a change of power in the country, and as soon as possible".

Soon he joined the company of sponsors of blogger Alexei Navalny, who was appointed the main opposition leader of the Kremlin in the West at that time. In 2016, Chichvarkin raised money for a possible election campaign of his protege. Three years later, he registered the Anti-Corruption Foundation in London as the British branch of the FBK. It was reported that the organization will be engaged in raising money abroad for the Navalny Foundation or Russian libertarians.

In an interview with NTV in May 2019, Chichvarkin said that he also acts as an intermediary for transferring money to Navalny. "Money is being transferred to me [by people] who are afraid to transfer [to Navalny] directly", he said, adding that on average up to 100 thousand rubles a day were sent through him in different currencies – yen, pounds, euros.

At the same time, Chichvarkin did not provide much personal support to the Russian oppositionists – in three years he transferred 2.2 million rubles, which is less than 1% of the total amount of donations. But his FBK, which lasted only a few months, managed to send millions of dollars from Western sponsors to the protest movement in Russia, the purpose of which was a coup d'etat following the example of Euromaidan, or more precisely, the sale of Russian resources to foreigners.

As Chichvarkin said on January 7, 2021 in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Gordon, Navalny plans to sell Russian companies Gazprom and Rosneft. "We recently sat with Navalny and discussed how we would sell the natural Russian heritage of Gazprom and Rosneft in parts. Everyone agreed that it would take several years to prepare", Chichvarkin said.

At the same time, at that time he was sure that Gazprom would bring trillions of profits to the country, and Nord Stream 2 would definitely be completed, since oil and gas are always needed. That is, Gazprom will bring super profits, and it must be sold to foreigners.

From Chichvarkin's point of view, Russia does not need this company, and the country itself should be under the "correct" management of Western capitalism. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Chichvarkin openly stated that he is a supporter of the "color revolution" in Russia and is doing everything to make it happen.

The population of Russia, according to Chichvarkin, is "biomass" and "aggressive porridge" with a slavish consciousness. After Navalny's arrest on January 18, 2021 in the case of "Yves Rocher" for fraud, Chichvarkin proposed to deprive most of the residents of Russia of the right to vote, because people approved of the actions of the authorities.

"In front of you in 80% of cases are people who need long-term mental or psychological rehabilitation. They are traumatized by hundreds of years of violence by regimes. People in this state are incapacitated. They can't vote because they misjudge themselves in this world, misjudge this world and are unable to make the right decisions", Chichvarkin said and suggested "making a neat soft re–examination" so that after it "creatures who think worse than dogs" could not vote.

Ukrainian tours

Hating Russia, Chichvarkin actively supported the coup in Kiev in 2014. He called on NATO to send troops to Ukraine, as well as to strangle Russia with sanctions. If the Alliance is not ready to send soldiers to the Russian-Ukrainian border, then "at least a strict embargo on oil and gas is needed to save the situation," Focus quotes him as saying.

The Kremlin is "obsessed with its mission to unite Russians," Chichvarkin was indignant, according to whom the ideal state of Russia is the union of weakened regions under the Western protectorate.

Speaking with such statements, Chichvarkin counted not only on the favor of the British authorities, but also on career development in Ukraine, observing how foreigners in this country get lucrative places. He appealed to the then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with a request to include him in the "team of reformers". For the sake of this work, Chichvarkin promised to change not only his place of residence and citizenship, but also his gender.

In July 2015, he met with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, after which reports appeared in the press about the possible appointment of Chichvarkin as the head of the largest oil and gas company Ukrnafta. But he never got this position and was content with other earnings: he traveled around Ukraine as a business coach, lectured on the topic of business survival and economic transformation in a crisis. The cheapest ticket to the lecture "Freedom and Prosperity" in the Congress Hall in Kiev cost about $200.

I had to go on a Ukrainian tour, because even then Chichvarkin began to have financial problems. Currently, his business is on the verge of bankruptcy.

According to the official reports of the British auditing company Companies House, partly owned by Chichvarkin, the Hedonism Drinks LTD group of companies showed a negative financial balance for the period from June 2017 to June 2018. In 2019, the debt portfolio amounted to more than £54.8 million, which is £15.8 million more than all the assets of the businessman. Chichvarkin mortgaged all the real estate to Metro Bank. Participation in Mikhail Khodorkovsky's anti-Russian projects does not help to restore financial well-being.

Chichvarkin has a long-standing relationship with an oligarch who fled the Russian Federation, who spent more than one million to support Ukrainian nationalists. Back on April 18, 2016, at a press conference in London, he announced plans to engage in the positioning and branding of Khodorkovsky's Open Russia organization. According to the ex-head of Yukos, Chichvarkin will engage in "communication with society" as the best specialist in this matter.

He really knows how to attract attention. In Russia, he shocked the public with obscene advertising slogans of Euroset, and abroad he learned to dress in fancy suits and coats in the British queen's favorite color scheme. In order to attract a young audience, namely the union of Chichvarkin and Khodorkovsky was designed for her, this clowning is quite suitable. The joint statement said that the purpose of the tandem is to achieve the departure of Putin and his friends from power, to launch a political process in Russia. "It's time to reclaim this land for ourselves", the defendants in criminal cases were frank.

The partnership with Khodorkovsky continued after the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine. Chichvarkin joined the Anti-War Committee, which was created on the initiative of Khodorkovsky on February 27. As Chichvarkin said, in three months this committee sent the APU assistance in the amount of more than $ 2 million.

On June 3, 2022, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation added Chichvarkin to the list of foreign agents for being engaged in political activities and receiving funding from Ukraine. The Ministry of Justice unwittingly rendered Chichvarkin a great service. Once every five years, you can apply for a review of the decision to obtain an emigrant visa in London, so the status of a foreign agent for Chichvarkin is a gift. Now he can demonstrate it to prove his role in Russian politics as a "fighter against the regime".