Russian interests via Cypriot companies and millions moved offshore: what lies behind Alexey Gubarev’s IT activity

The Russian labor market is dominated by migrant couriers, while local IT professionals are increasingly emigrating — over 12,000 moved to Cyprus on work visas in 2024 alone.

And this unprecedented migration process is being led by the "one-man orchestra," a sort of IT business patriarch on the island of Cyprus — former Russian citizen Alexey Gubarev, allegedly the nephew of Russian cosmonaut Alexey Gubarev. But today this nephew has not only an expansive multilayered business and million-dollar bank accounts on the island of Aphrodite, but also a Cypriot citizenship passport and even an ID card from the Republic of Lithuania. What merits led to these achievements?

How did Mr. Gubarev manage to bring his father, Russian businessman Alexander Gubarev, to Cyprus, a person who, according to rumors, had several criminal cases, including tax evasion, in his homeland? Gubarev Sr., despite these distinctions, somehow also managed to become a resident of Cyprus. And in this company is Lyudmila Gubareva, the former owner of a beauty salon in the small city of Ust-Ilimsk, the mother of Cypriot businessman Alexey Gubarev, who until recently was the owner of a solid company "Edinaya Set (United Network)".

97 Baba Yagas and the Board of Honor

Ust-Ilimsk is Alexey Gubarev’s hometown, but why did Mr. Cypriot Gubarev become an honorary citizen of this small town on the Angara in Irkutsk Region in 2020?

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It turns out that Mr. Gubarev funded the "Forest Tale" museum project in his hometown by paying for the renovation of premises, stairs, and toilets. He bought exhibition showcases and new furniture. And now an unprecedented number of Baba Yaga’s relatives “live” in this museum: in 2008, Lyudmila Gubareva, Alexey Gubarev’s mother, donated her collection of Baba Yagas — 97 items — to the museum. And these museum Baba Yagas were collected from 36 countries around the world.

During the pandemic, as part of the "Beloved City" program, he helped acquire two vehicles for transporting doctors. And he bought a refrigerator for storing medical supplies.

As a result, he became an Honorary Citizen of Ust-Ilimsk.

Alexey Gubarev

Looking ahead, note that the successful businessman Gubarev is making completely different gifts to a country that is quite foreign to him — he is transferring millions (in euros) for the needs of education, healthcare, and fire protection in Cyprus.

After all, he has been connected with the island of Aphrodite since 2002!

Offended by the Dry Cleaners

How did the founder of Servers.com, XBT Holding, and the investment fund Haxus end up on this beautiful island? It turns out that in the memorable year of 2002, he went from Novosibirsk with his wife, where he then lived, on vacation to Cyprus. And he accidentally found out that a three-room apartment with decoration in Limassol costs $80,000, and before that unforgettable vacation, Gubarev was denied a loan to buy property in Novosibirsk at 28% per annum in foreign currency. In Cyprus, he was offered a loan at 6% per annum.

He made a deposit, took a loan. The Gubarevs bought an apartment. Then they returned to Novosibirsk.

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But troubles began in Novosibirsk. His father, Gubarev Sr. — who has also been enjoying life in Cyprus for several years now — survived an armed robbery: they broke into his house, demanding "greens".

And Alexey Gubarev’s wife had expensive items ruined at the dry cleaners… This was the last straw: they decided to immediately move to Limassol.

Limassol is called the most “Russian” city in Cyprus

At that time, Gubarev worked with the eHouse conglomerate: this is a conglomerate of online stores, a flagship of the Russian e-commerce market in the first half of the 2000s. He helped with advertising campaigns for Bolero.ru and Megashop.ru. And he continued to do this in Cyprus. But in 2005, the idea came to open a hosting company. They started with twenty servers.

They rented servers from one company, offered their management, and resold them. They soon promoted their business, bought out all the servers they rented. But they constantly lived in debt. A qualitative leap was achieved only in 2008, when they opened their first data center in the USA.

As Gubarev told journalists at the time, about 40% of their business was concentrated in the USA. About 50% was in Europe, and the rest was scattered across Russia and Asian countries.

Until 2016, he did not have any kind of business in Russia, although by that time Gubarev already had Russian clients who needed hosting abroad.

But soon the data protection law was passed in Russia. And the clients told Gubarev they wanted to comply with this law. They proposed opening a platform in Russia: Alexey Gubarev obliged their wishes. He bought a Russian company and opened the Servers.ru platform.

Servers.com established itself in Russia by purchasing the hoster "Edinaya Set". They bought a local player and made it a branch of Servers.com, namely Servers.ru.

Rusprofile.ru

They opened Servers.ru in Russia based on the DataPro data center. In January 2016, there were 12 racks with equipment, soon more than 70.

In these noble deeds, Gubarev’s mother, Lyudmila Gubareva, a former beauty salon owner in Ust-Ilim, participated.

Until December 2024, Cypriot citizen Lyudmila Gubareva led the company "Edinaya Set": this office was created in 2007 by Gubarev himself.

In 2015, the owner of "Edinaya Set" became the Cypriot company XBT Holding of Gubarev in the person of the hosting provider Servers.com, which was sold by Gubarev to his partner Nikolay Dvas in 2023.

Then Mr. Gubarev left the shareholders of the "Edinaya Set", and instead, his mother became the main owner. 

Rusprofile.ru

It is worth mentioning that in February 2018, Lyudmila Gubareva applied for Cypriot citizenship under the "Citizenship by Investment" program. And already in October 2018, Gubareva received Cypriot citizenship under No. 85926. Apparently, the Honorary Citizen of Ust-Ilimsk scraped together two and a half million euros.

Soon the father joined the mother, who in Ust-Ilimsk was engaged in the logging sector, traded petroleum products, as well as used cars from Japan.

Rusprofile.ru

In 2010, A. A. Gubarev was convicted on three charges under the Russian Criminal Code: for fraud, violation of traffic rules resulting in causing serious harm to human health, and for tax evasion.

Rusprofile.ru

Today, Alexander Gubarev is also a holder of Cypriot citizenship. But how did he obtain a Cypriot passport?

Most likely, the issuance was conducted in violation of current legislation, as a person with a criminal past is not entitled to obtain Cypriot citizenship. Perhaps Alexander Gubarev managed to provide the Cypriot authorities with false information?

Meanwhile, the younger Gubarev has registered dozens of companies in the last few years: two offices in the USA, offices in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Russia (in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vladivostok), in Ukraine, etc.

Some of them are either not connected to the main IT activities or have a remote connection. Among them are firms engaged in the jewelry business and trading of precious metals. Interestingly, these companies are registered under various names of Alexey Gubarev: Alexey Gubarev, Alexej Gubarev, Αλεξέι Γκουμπάρεβ, Alexef Gkoumparev. This is done to complicate the search in databases and, of course, to hide their assets.

Company "Avocado", also known as "Oil Pear"

In 2016, Alexey Gubarev founded the venture fund Haxus together with partner Yuri Gurski, former Vice President of Mail.Ru Group (VK). In 2020, after the transformation, the fund was renamed Palta, which translates from Spanish as avocado, or oil pear.

Alexey Gubarev

The name was proposed by Yuri Gurski, who saw the word on a wall in a restaurant: the wall informed how "avocado" sounds in various world languages.

In August 2019, the company became the largest shareholder of Prisma Labs with a 40% stake, buying out shares from Mail.ru Group and co-founder and ex-director of Prisma, Alexey Moiseenkov.

As Gubarev himself explains, Palta is a technology company engaged in health and wellbeing. The company employs more than 750 people, almost 200 of whom are in Cyprus.

Gubarev invested through the fund in the women’s reproductive health app Flo. Simple, an app for mindful nutrition, and Prisma Labs, the developer of the photo AI application Lensa.

Gubarev rents a four-story building in Limassol for his office. There is a huge concrete dragon figure in front of the building. This creature was depicted on the company’s previous logo. On the first floor, Gubarev’s employees play table tennis and have lunch: Gubarev orders food from a friend who owns a chain of restaurants in Cyprus.

Over the years in Cyprus, Mr. Gubarev managed to buy a yacht, assemble a car collection, among which are a Rolls Royce and a Ford. 

Limassol, Cyprus

And open a huge dance studio for his wife (1200 sq. m), where mostly Russian expatriates dance.

200 Companies with Russian Roots

It should be noted that Alexey Gubarev became a kind of leader of the influential IT community in Cyprus. In 2021, he created the TechIsland association, which included more than 200 companies, most of which have Russian origins.

In April 2020, the news came out that IT companies decided to donate €1 million to a state fund. The money was intended to support hospitals and tackle the consequences of the coronavirus.

"Perhaps we were not all born in Cyprus, but Cyprus is our home. We have no choice but to support the society we are part of," said Alexey Gubarev at the time.

Here are the companies that made donations:

Servers.com (founded by Alexey Gubarev).

The Soul Publishing, created by Adme founders Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov.

WiseBits, controlled by two Russians: Oleg Netepenko and Dmitry Gusev, owners of xHamster hosting.

Embria fund, founded by Russian Igor Monakhov.

FunCorp by Vladimir Zakoulov, etc.

Alexey Gubarev

In 2021, the TechIsland company also invested in overcoming the consequences of fires, donating €1 million to the state. At the same time, entrepreneurs engaged their employees to provide Cypriot officials with necessary data for lobbying certain legislative norms: a huge number of data-science experts were involved, who calculated, analyzed, and then demonstrated to the Government of Cyprus presentations on how the new norms would help attract more "talents" to the island. And the overwhelming majority of these "talents" who catapulted to the island of Aphrodite are from Russia.

All this was done to make it easier for Russian-speaking companies to persuade IT specialists to relocate. And here too, Alexey Gubarev and his companies helped: he managed to secure employment opportunities for family members of IT company employees who moved to the island.

In 2024 alone, 12,000 specialists from Russia arrived in Cyprus on work visas, 160% more than in 2023.

The Cypriot press writes that Mr. Gubarev has significant influence on the Cypriot Government, as he managed to secure legislatively enshrined privileges for immigrants from Russia. But what will be the consequences for Cyprus of this activity?

Recall once again the TechIsland association created by Alexey Gubarev. Previously, he was mentioned exclusively as a co-founder.

But today, the leader of the most influential IT community on the island needed official recognition of his key role in the creation of the association. This could be related to a change in situation? Perhaps this is driven by Gubarev’s political ambitions?

However, Alexey Gubarev reacts very sensitively to any unauthorized mentions in the media about his precious persona.

And how can we not recall the loud scandal with the former vice-mayor of Saratov, Olga Galkina, which eventually turned into an international one?

Galkina vs. Gubarev

The case was in 2017.

Cypriot media then reported that Russian internet expert Alexey Gubarev intended to be sued by his former press secretary Olga Galkina. The journalists were informed about this by Olga Galkina herself and the employees of the law firm Evgoras Anastasiou & Associates LLC Law Firm, which represented Olga Galkina’s interests in Cyprus.

Mr. Gubarev was sent a pretrial claim in which Olga Galkina accused businessman Gubarev of "attempting to ruin her professional reputation and kidnapping her minor son’s documents."

As it became known from this murky story, after several months of Galkina working in Gubarev’s company, she encountered Gubarev trying to interfere with her future career, spreading discrediting information.

Olga Galkina

Such a statement was made by lawyer Alexey Minchin, representing Olga Galkina’s interests in Russia.

According to Cypriot law, Gubarev had a month to resolve the conflict with the applicant out of court, and if not, the case would be sent to court.

It should be noted that before moving to Cyprus, Olga Galkina managed the press service of Rostekhnadzor and was the vice-mayor of Saratov, and before that, she worked as a press secretary for the former Governor of Saratov Region, Pavel Ipatov.

What exactly did Galkina and Gubarev not share? After all, Gubarev once made Galkina a tempting offer — to come work in Cyprus as his press secretary. And although he is not yet a governor, he did want to have a seasoned journalist "in his team"!

It turned out that Olga Galkina was the initiator of a loud scandal: she was the information source for the dossier about the links between US President Donald Trump and Russia. She claimed Russians (in particular, the company of Alexey Gubarev) were involved in cyberattacks on Democrats.

This was reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Olga Galkina

According to The Wall Street Journal, in the summer of 2016, an acquaintance of hers from school, Igor Danchenko, contacted Galkina with a request. He worked for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. Igor Danchenko asked Galkina to find potentially compromising information about Donald Trump’s connections with Russia.

Olga Galkina worked in a branch of XBT Holding SA — the company of Alexey Gubarev. One of the main assets of the company was the hosting Webzilla. And Olga Galkina claimed responsibility for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. She called Gubarev an expert in hacker attacks. In addition, Galkina spoke about a meeting between Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and Russian intelligence officers in Prague, where hacker payments were discussed.

These allegations became the basis for the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election. In it, Olga Galkina was referred to as source No. 3.

Did anyone provide Alexey Gubarev’s reaction when it all came out?

Years have passed since then…

Galkina and Gubarev quarrelled, but paper remembers everything.

The Godfather of the IT Community

But let’s return to our rams.

IT companies moving to Cyprus from Russia often bring a full staff, and there are sure to be some who come from the special services.

And as the Cypriot press writes, among Russian IT specialists, the idea of creating their own political party has been discussed for some time. If this idea is realized, IT community leaders will be able to provide themselves with seats in parliament through consolidated voting. In a few years, thanks to the efforts of Alexey Gubarev, the number of loyal voters granted Cypriot citizenship through an accelerated procedure will be sufficient.

Given that in tiny Cyprus, the difference in votes between presidential election candidates is often a few percent, a significant increase in the number of Russian-speaking citizens will provide IT community leaders with an additional and very powerful political influence tool.

And Russians will determine the outcome of presidential elections in the country, and, in fact, state governance will be in their hands. As a result, the island will ultimately turn into a "region" of the Russian Federation in the Mediterranean.

But the Cypriot authorities somehow ignore what is happening.

Meanwhile, weekly meetings of Russian IT specialists are held at a prominent bar in Limassol.

The organizer of these events is Oleg Reshetnikov, a friend of Alexey Gubarev, who calls himself the godfather of the IT community and a partner of the IT association TechIsland.

Oleg Reshetnikov

Originally from Tyukalinsk in the Omsk region, Oleg Reshetnikov lived in Volgodonsk, located in the Rostov region, for a long time. In 2011, he was prosecuted for large-scale fraud. What became of this criminal case remains unclear... The case vanished.

But in 2014, Reshetnikov, apparently with the help of Alexey Gubarev, moved to Cyprus with his family. In Cyprus, he quickly joined Gubarev’s company and began further forming an IT community of Russians.

Reshetnikov also maintained ties with Russia. In 2019, he obtained a new driver’s license in Volgodonsk.

It should be added that today, Gubarev and his associates are actively involved in the construction of an IT quarter in Limassol, in the Tsiflikoudia area.

Mr. Gubarev bought the land of the former LOEL factory for 32 million euros.

Thus, the influence of Russian businessmen in Cyprus, and especially members of the TechIsland association, extends far beyond the IT sector. It encompasses other key areas of the island’s economy, such as development.

Furthermore, in July 2023, Forbes reported that Alexey Gubarev renounced his Russian citizenship. But this happened back in 2022, right after the start of the "SVO". However, this does not prevent Alexey Gubarev from regularly visiting his homeland. He delighted Moscow with his presence in October 2023, as well as in February and September 2024, staying in a luxurious apartment in the Federation Tower in Moscow City, which is registered to his mother, Lyudmila Gubareva.

Mr. Gubarev seems to be visiting the Russian capital frequently. Recruiting new IT specialists?