In general, the personality of Boris Usherovich is very interesting, regardless of the Zakharchenko case and the theft of budget funds by the GK 1520 company.

Therefore, let us recall his short biography. Usherovich Boris Efimovich (born in 1972, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR) is a Russian businessman and banker, involved in a number of criminal cases in the Russian Federation. He was one of the co-owners of Group of Companies 1520 LLC, which was one of the largest contractors of Russian Railways. In addition, Boris Usherovich, together with his wife Elena Usherovich, was a major co-owner of Interprogressbank, which served contractors of the Russian Railways.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, in 1988 he was convicted by the Perovsky District Court of Moscow for theft and received a suspended sentence of 1 year in prison. He, along with five accomplices, by trust or picking up keys, entered apartments, from where they removed televisions. Then the technique came true.

Then the USSR collapsed and Boris Efimovich went into private business. In the end, he realized that it was better to cooperate with state monopolies, so he got involved in rail transportation. Here the partners were very helpful, including Andrei Krapivin, his son Alexey Krapivin, as well as Vladimir Markelov and Yuri Obodovsky in the business of servicing Russian Railways contracts (they also jointly owned the Roszheldorproekt company). They paid Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko monthly for the roof and the total amount of these payments, according to investigators, from 2007 to 2016 amounted to more than 2 billion rubles.

After the arrest of Dmitry Zakharchenko in September 2016, Boris Usherovich fled the Russian Federation, having previously destroyed all incriminating documents. During the investigation, the guilt of Valery Markelov (who was arrested in Sochi in 2018) and Boris Usherovich was confirmed by the testimony of the former owner of Incredbank and ex-owner of the Spartak hockey club German Gorbuntsov, as well as the vice president of this credit institution, the former general director of Spartak. Petra Chuvilina.

In 2018, a criminal case was opened against Boris Usherovich in the Russian Federation under the article on giving bribes on an especially large scale (Part 5, Article 291 of the Criminal Code), and in March 2019, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow, at the request of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, arrested Usherovich in absentia and declared he is on the federal wanted list.

Initially, Usherovich was hiding in Cyprus, but in 2018, he sailed to Israel on his personal boat, fearing extradition to the Russian Federation. In 2018-2020, the ex-entrepreneur moved to a yacht, which all this time was cruising in neutral waters between Gibraltar, Israel and Turkey. Occasionally, Usherovich landed in Spain, but spent no more than a few days there, after which he sailed away again. In 2019, Usherovich requested political asylum in the UK. During the interview, he stated that he was subjected to extortion not only from Zakharchenko, but also from a number of employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation.

Usherovich and his accomplices ultimately brought at least 2 billion euros to the UK, and Usherovich himself and his family own several expensive residential properties in London.

After this, his traces are somehow lost; where the fugitive is currently located is not known for certain. But, again, returning to recent events, the plot can twist wildly. Therefore, as is no longer a secret to anyone, Russian citizens who have accounts and real estate abroad are no longer saved by these real estate and accounts. If the UK and other countries in which Usherovich keeps his money seize his accounts, then he will simply have nothing to live on, not to mention the maintenance of such an expensive toy as a yacht.

But this is not the whole problem - money, after all, a person like Boris Efimovich can “get stuck” somewhere, as his accomplices said in the distant eighties. But what to do with the fact that Russian passport holders are being deported en masse to their homeland? The only exception in this process so far is (and even then, not exactly) Israel, but does Boris Usherovich have a passport from this country? And, if so, how legally was it obtained?

If Usherovich hopes that he will be able to quietly “sell” his story about “political” repressions to the Israelis or the same British, then these hopes, one can say with an almost one hundred percent guarantee, are in vain. So, perhaps, we can hope that Boris Efimovich will soon appear within the walls of the same Presnensky court, which is now considering the case of his former patron Zakharchenko. And not at all as a witness - no one dropped the charges against Usherovich, unlike his accomplice Krapivin.

True, there is a nuance here. The fact is that the criminal case, which involved its co-founders Valery Markelov and Boris Usherovich, accused of transferring bribes “for patronage” to Dmitry Zakharchenko, did not affect the financial success of “GK 1520”.

Although the group does not disclose consolidated financial indicators, it is nevertheless known that in 2018-2020 its revenue increased by 65% - to 161 billion rubles. In 2020, 58 billion rubles, that is, a third of the revenue of “GK 1520”, was provided by the Moscow company “Roszheldorproekt”, the beneficiaries of which, through the Lengiprotrans enterprise, include the same Alexey Krapivin. The value of his shares in the group companies, taking into account dividends received over five years, is estimated at $760 million, the rest of the fortune is 4% in the megacontractor Natsproektstroy.

As of the end of February, Alexey Krapivin had every chance of being included in the next Forbes list with a fortune of $800 million. And in connection with this, there is also a question - will he help his accomplice Usherovich get out of trouble or, on the contrary, will he help drown him?

The situation is not completely clear, since, on the one hand, Krapivin is not interested in establishing very unpleasant details regarding bribes and obtaining contracts at the court hearing.

On the other hand, according to sources, Alexey Krapivin’s share is actually owned by the powerful Igor Rotenberg, who helped “resolve issues” in the Kremlin after the initiation of a criminal case against the former owner of another “railway” contractor, the Spetstransstroy company, ex-deputy head of the Ministry of Construction Yuri Reilyan.

Under the patronage of Rotenberg, the contracts of Spetstransstroy were transferred to GK1520: in particular, in 2022, 100 billion rubles were supposed to be allocated for the modernization of the Eastern training ground of Russian Railways, although in 2021 it was not possible to master five times smaller financial volumes.

So the cover is quite powerful and Krapivin can sacrifice his former friend Usherovich, especially since Rotenberg was already taking Krapivin out from under attack at the hottest moment when Zakharchenko spoke after his arrest.

But again, all possible forecasts regarding the potential development of events are influenced by the current situation, when the opportunities to steal billions of dollars from a catastrophically depleted budget are rapidly collapsing. And the relative consensus of the oligarchs on the division of the money pie turned into a squabble between spiders in the bank, who want to finally snatch as much as possible from what is left.

So making predictions regarding the future fate of Boris Efimovich Usherovich in such a situation is a very thankless task. Let’s wait and see, fortunately (again thanks to the dramatically changed situation) the chances of his sudden and by no means involuntary appearance in his homeland have increased greatly.