Wealthy Gen Z Russian laundered money in luxury properties, claimed ADHD caused offending

On December 4, 2024, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), together with the United Arab Emirates government, the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FinCEN), announced it had exposed a multi-billion global money laundering and illicit financing network run by Russian elites as a service for other Russian elites.

One of the few senior members of this network it was able to arrest was a Gen Z Russian, Semen Kuksov. New reporting by Compliance Corylated in partnership with Ilia Shumanov, a member of Transparency International Russia In Exile (TI Russia)’s board and its dirty money team, describes how Kuksov came to live in the UK to attend top private schools and university.

After his education, Kuksov — allegedly struggling with gambling and drug addiction — drifted into criminal activity. He became involved with the Smart and TGR illicit finance networks and used his connections with other ultra-wealthy Russians and his own wealth to run an underground crypto exchange in London’s exclusive Kensington neighbourhood.

Our reporting further demonstrates when the police caught up with him, his family’s wealth paid for top legal and medical expertise in an attempt convince the court to reduce his sentence.

Brother involved

Kuksov and Andrii Dzektsa led an organised criminal group “concerned with the making of cash transfers”, including international handouts, which is the collection and delivery of laundered money overseas. They operated an enterprise laundering “very large sums of criminally derived cash for a fee”, said Tim Kiely, KC, for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), at their sentencing hearing in February 2024.

Kuksov directed a group of at least nine individuals — including his younger brother Alexander Kuksov and Dzektsa — in a money laundering operation from June 2022 until his arrest on September 27, 2023. By then, he and his associates had been under surveillance for some time. Several of them had been arrested already, including his brother. At this point, Semen had retained a lawyer, Amjid Jabbar, a partner at Stokoe Partnership Solicitors in London, upon whom he frequently called for representation, when his couriers were arrested.

Court documents note law enforcement observing the use of Mercedes Vito vans for cash collections all over England, including Oldham and Newport Pagnell. The group moved large cash sums, one courier was arrested holding £188,154, for example, while another courier was arrested in Dublin with 50,000 euros.

Court transcripts state Alexander Kuksov and Denis Gorinov were arrested on October 19, 2022. Alexander dropped his phone during the arrest and investigators found texts between him and Dzetktsa, who was directing him to make and receive cash deliveries and collections. At the time of his arrest, Gorinov was in possession of £150,580 cash in a bag, and a further £155,650 was found in Alexander’s £1 million Kensington flat. That property was used, alongside Collingwood House, also owned by the Kuksovs, as a counting house for cash.  

It is unclear whether Alexander Kuksov was ultimately charged or stood trial in connection with his brother’s money laundering operation. Alexander was not in custody as of July 9, 2023, when he flew to Dublin to inquire about another associate who had been arrested there, the court transcript showed. The CPS and the NCA did not respond to a request for comment about Alexander.

Extremely wealthy family

According to a transcript of the sentencing hearing, Semen Kuksov went to boarding school in the UK from age 11, before attending Charterhouse School, where he excelled academically. He then enrolled at Queen Mary University of London and graduated in maths and financial accounting.

“He is the ideal middleman for these schemes. He has a good education, is well connected with Russian elites. He has good connections in the UK. Actually, these are two different sides of his identity: the Russian and the second is heʼs a good speaker of English, understanding the context, understanding the criminal world in Russia and the criminal world in the UK. And this gives him, letʼs say, an amazing opportunity to use both sides of these worlds,” said Shumanov, who is also a managing partner at the TriTrace investigative bureau.

Kuksov’s barrister at the sentencing hearing described his client as being the son of an “extremely wealthy” family. Indeed, his father Vladimir Kuksov was the chairman of AKROS, “one of the leading companies in the Russian oilfield service industry and a partner of several sanctioned companies, including Lukoil and Gazprom”, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). He remains Akros’s majority shareholder via Visnoy Limited, a Cypriot company.

Vladimir Kuksov was not part of his son’s money laundering operation. Neither he nor AKROS have been sanctioned.

“In regard to the case against Semen, Vladimir Kuksov’s lawyers said he had ‘no comment to make but notes that he and his adult son have lived separate lives for some years’,” the OCCRP reported last year.

Wealth of support

Nevertheless, according to the transcript of Semen Kuksov’s sentencing hearing, Vladimir Kuksov attended his son’s hearing, where his barrister reported he had a “wealth of support” from his family: his mother, Natalia Ranetovna Alyamova, travelled from Moscow and his uncle from Canada to attend the hearing.

In 2018, father and son were filmed in the UK on a sea-going rowing vessel that AKROS sponsored. Both obtained Maltese passports in 2022 as part of a golden visa scheme, according to OCCRP.

Semen Kuksov also acted as a director at several UK companies where his father was the ultimate beneficial owner. One of those is Collingwood House Investment Limited, which owns Collingwood House in London. Some £387,025 in cash was seized there, along with a safe, and cash-counting machines, according to the court transcript.

Kuksov was also a director at several Russian companies alongside his mother.

Top KC, ADHD and autism plea

Kuksov pleaded guilty to two counts of entering into or becoming concerned in the money laundering arrangement, concerning two amounts of £12,329,460 and 168,950 euros.

His family commissioned a psychiatric report from a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Ali Ajaz. He diagnosed Kuksov with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and claimed he is on the autistic spectrum. Kuksov was also diagnosed with a brain tumour and a pineal cyst, which his barrister, Kieran Vaughn KC, said required monitoring.

Vaughn has defended a member of the Kinahan organised criminal group and his biography on his chambers’ website describes him  as “possibly the best KC of our generation”.

Vaughn also submitted that his client suffered from being isolated at boarding school from an early age and described his father as “a strong disciplinarian type character who ruled the household with an iron rod” and who in some ways “blamed himself” for his son’s troubles.

The barrister suggested Semen Kuksovʼs path to crime was “evolutionary”. It started with an amphetamine addiction, moved to gambling in high-stakes poker games, involved an overdose and then led to money laundering. Kuksov turned to crime for the “dopamine hit”, Vaughn said.

Judge Connell did not buy this argument, however, and said: “Contrary to what people may think, ADHD is not a criminal gene. And one does not lose one’s moral compass because they suffer from ADHD.”

Nevertheless, Connell gave a “significant reduction” for Kuksov’s personal mitigation, reducing the nine-year sentence first to seven and a half years and then giving another 25% discount for his guilty plea. Kuksov was sentenced to five years and seven months on count one and a concurrent sentence of two yearsʼ imprisonment on the second count.

Serious organised crime prevention order

Kiely, the Crown Prosecution Service’s KC discussed scheduling a hearing about imposing a serious crime prevention order (SCPO) on Kuksov, according to the transcript of his sentencing hearing. Such an order could prohibit him from associating with certain individuals, restrict travel, restrict mobile phone use, and put limitations on financial transactions or business activities. A SCPO can last up to five years and can be extended or renewed.

Anton Nusinov, another alleged member of the money laundering organisation identified in the court transcript, was arrested on November 19, 2022, at one of the Kuksov family properties in London. He is currently subject to a SCPO that runs until February 26, 2027, according to NCA data (scroll to the link labelled “the updated list”).

Kuksov is not on that list, however. The SCPO process for Kuksov is ongoing and is yet to be formally approved, said an NCA spokesperson.

The Kuksov family did not respond to a request for comment sent to their barrister. Vaughn, Ajaz, and Jabbar did not respond to detailed emails requesting comment.

Further reporting

This is the third of three articles looking at the Semen Kuksov case written by Rachel Wolcott in collaboration with Ilia Shumanov and support from the Transparency International Russia in Exile dirty money investigation team.

Previous articles:

First article: Golden Youth, the new face of Russian money laundering and sanctions evasion

Second article: The privileged, privately educated Russian who ran a cash-to-crypto MLAAS for other wealthy Russians and drug traffickers