Felix Romanovich Komarov is a bankrupt Russian businessman associated with laundering dirty money in the United States, the founder of a large number of dubious companies, who introduces himself as a "collector" and "gallery owner". He has been involved in a number of scandals. He is engaged in whitewashing his own reputation.
Komarov Felix Romanovich (born Komarov Felix Ruvimovich) was born on January 25, 1948 in the village of Gorka, Minsk region.
A number of sources report that he graduated from the Kaliningrad Polytechnic Institute, but there is no confirmation of this in authoritative publications.
In 1990 he emigrated from Russia to the United States, then returned back.
Since 2004, he has registered 36 companies in the Russian Federation, including Millennium-Russian Entertainment Group LLC, Agency of Architectural Heritage and Aesthetic Art LLC, Millennium-Russian Entertainment Group LLC, Millennium-Russian Entertainment Group LLC, FLK LLC, Investa LLC, Studio F… Production Center LLC, Velins LLC, Astragrade LLC, Raidix LLC, Marfes LLC, SKV Communication Systems LLC, Pavarex LLC, Sandway LLC, Lotto Technologies LLC, Class-SK LLC, Tekpro-NT LLC, Pravoslavny Yuvelirny Dom LLC, FC Ceylon KO LLC, Vrata-3 LLC, TSK LLC, Stormvest LLC, Stagert LLC, "Dymov No. 1", OOO "Friedex", OOO "Lux-Media", OOO "Pakhraelitstroy", OOO "Spanord", OOO "Starday", OOO "Digstar", OOO "Losino-Petrovsky Stroitelny Trest", OOO "FLK Group", OOO "Kompas-TNT", OOO "Kremlin Art", OOO "Alfa-Film", OOO "Sitael". The offices existed for several years and then closed. All have a low level of reliability according to the popular portal Rusprofile. [1]
On February 8, 2018, under case No. A40-162033/2016, he was declared officially bankrupt in the Russian Federation.
Compromising evidence
Bankruptcy status
Komarov Felix Ruvimovich (Romanovich) with INN 770472339217 is included in the official register of bankrupts of the Russian Federation. In connection with his bankruptcy in 2019 and 2020, 31 lots were considered for sale, mainly land plots owned by Komarov, as well as shares in a number of organizations. [2]
In 2018, there were 3 court hearings on the issue of declaring Komarov bankrupt. The Arbitration Court of the City of Moscow made a decision to declare him bankrupt on February 8, 2018. On August 27, 2018, the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the lower court; the decisions of all courts were confirmed on November 21, 2018 by the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District. [3]
Excerpt from the decision of the Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal:
- By the decision of the Arbitration Court of Moscow dated 08.02.2018, Komarov F.R. was declared insolvent (bankrupt), the procedure for the sale of the debtor’s property was introduced in relation to him, Komkov N.V. was approved as the financial manager of the debtor. By the determination of the Arbitration Court of Moscow dated 22.05.2017, the claims of JSCB Slavyansky Bank (ZAO) in the amount of 352,740,995 rubles 57 kopecks of debt and 61,238,020 rubles 41 kopecks of penalties were included in the third priority of satisfying the register of claims of Komarov F.R.’s creditors, of which claims in the amount of 199,819,197 rubles 56 kopecks were recognized as subject to registration in the register of claims of Komarov F.R.’s creditors as claims for obligations secured by a pledge of the debtor’s property.
The story of Komarov’s bankruptcy case was described by the Versiya newspaper (which later deleted this information, but a copy remains on the Internet):
- On December 22, 2016, the Moscow Arbitration Court found the bankruptcy petition of the famous businessman and philanthropist Felix Komarov justified. Now the businessman is awaiting a debt restructuring procedure. In particular, in accordance with the requirements of the bankruptcy legislation, Komarov will not be able to make transactions worth more than 50,000 rubles without the consent of the court-appointed arbitration manager, and his debts to banks are recognized as hopeless. Felix Komarov’s problems with creditors began quite a long time ago and are related to the revocation of the license of Slavyansky Bank in 2010, which was reported by the Kompaniya magazine back in September 2016. The trial to declare Komarov bankrupt began in the Moscow Arbitration Court on November 17, 2016, with the claim filed by Green Travel Limited, which demands 246.8 million rubles from the collector. Komarov’s total debt, confirmed by court decisions, is estimated at more than 500 million rubles. We are talking about loans that the businessman received in 2009-2010 from the Slavyansky Bank (more than $4 million), as well as loans from former clients of the bank, which were used to repay the loan. The amount of the latter was estimated at more than 250 million rubles.
Exposure
There are a number of revealing publications on the Internet, which tell about the essence of all Komarov’s activities (which were covered by "love" for art). Interesting excerpts from the publication "Bad debts of Felix Komarov":
- In New York, where Komarov appeared in the early 90s of the last century, he is known and remembered in approximately the same capacity, although with a slight touch of unproven criminality, which is better not to mention in Russia now. From the free encyclopedia "Wikipedia" on the Internet it follows that "Komarov, "having left Russia in the very beginning of the 90s, became a millionaire in the USA. During the same period, he opened a company in Russia selling Rolls-Royce cars. He turned out to be the only Russian invited to join the prestigious "Rockefeller Club". He gained popularity after opening the gallery "Russian World" in the most prestigious area of New York, on Fifth Avenue." It may be added that on 57th Street, near Lexington Avenue, Komarov opened the restaurant Club Moscow, the walls of which were decorated with horseshoes, another collection of Felix Romanovich, and in 1995 he founded or helped found the weekly newspaper “In the New World.”
- New York Times correspondent Ralph Blumenthal wrote about this in June 1998 in an article titled “Businessman of Mystery; Arts Patron Dogged by FBI Claim of Russian Mob Ties.” However, the author noted in the same article, the FBI told him that they “had no comment on Komarov, who has a green card and has never been accused of crimes in the United States.” Ray Kerr, then head of the FBI’s “Russian Division” in New York, told me roughly the same thing at the same time about Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov a couple of months before his arrest. These were the years when the now deceased Vyacheslav Kirillovich, nicknamed “Slava Yaponchik,” lived and worked in New York, and an acquaintance with him was considered as incredible a gift of fate for an outsider as, say, with the also deceased John Gotti Sr., the boss of the Gambino clan. Komarov did not hide his acquaintance with Yaponchik, and his Russian-American acquaintances, including me, quietly envied him.
- The federal case against Ivankov, who was arrested in Brooklyn on June 8, 1995, includes testimony from Lester McNulty, an investigator with the FBI’s New York office’s "Russian Division." In particular, it states that "secret sources" No. 1, 2, 3, and 4 reported that Felix Komarov "a) launders money for Ivankov; b) Komarov’s criminal connections with Ivankov are weakening, but in Moscow Komarov is still considered Ivankov’s accomplice; c) Komarov owns a Rolls-Royce car dealership in Moscow, from which Ivankov, Sergei Mikhailov, and Viktor Averin each receive 25 percent of the profits." Mikhailov, who was then also called “Mikhas”, and Averin, aka “Avera the Elder”, were publicly known in those years as the leaders of the Solntsevskaya Bratva, which they called a brotherhood and which they neither then nor now consider an organized criminal group, which, by the way, there is no legal evidence for.
- I don’t know what God marks a rogue with, and I don’t consider Felix Romanovich Komarov a rogue, but all of his grandiose undertakings that I know of, from the car dealership on Mytnaya in Moscow to the art gallery on Fifth and 61st in New York, were distinguished by their scope and… fragility. Perhaps this was a demand of the times, but more likely a demand for money. “My gallery was called the Russian World Gallery,” Komarov told me in another interview. “It was centered on Russian sculptors and artists, and it could not be unconnected with the Russian market, if not directly, then indirectly. If the economic market has fallen in Russia, then the market for Russian art has ceased to exist there – or fallen very sharply. This is the law of communicating vessels: if Russian art has become much cheaper in its homeland, it cannot be expensive abroad. People will not pay millions here if they can buy it there for pennies. I tried my damnedest to hold out and show that what I was doing was different, new, but it still really got to me.”
When Komarov’s Manhattan gallery closed in 1999 and I asked why, Felix Romanovich answered that it had been closed by Neizvestny and Shemyakin. Rumors that the friendship between the owner of the Russian World Gallery and its two main creators was separate had been circulating in Russian-speaking New York for quite some time, and I hinted at this to Ernst Neizvestny when I met him at the Russian consulate at a party thrown by Margot Grant, my distant Scottish relative from Leningrad. “I have nothing against Komarov,” Ernst Iosifovich told me. “Our lawyers are dealing with our problems.”
- On May 17, 1999, two documents were filed with the Manhattan Division of the New York State Supreme Court: an affidavit, or declaration under oath, by Ernst Neizvestny and a statement by his attorney, Larry Carse. The attorney wrote that Neizvestny had sought his services in order to collect from Komarov the money due to the sculptor – salary and fees for works sold to the gallery. Intending to sue Komarov for breach of contract, the attorney asked the court to compel Russian World Gallery to provide the plaintiff with all accounting documents “attesting to the existence of the said works of art.” Calling himself a “world-famous artist” in the affidavit, Neizvestny testified that in September 1995 he had entered into an exclusive contract with Russian World Gallery for a period of six years. Under the contract, he was to receive $100,000 per year – $8,333.00 on the 25th of each month – with an annual increase of 10 percent. Under the terms of the contract, the gallery owed him $100,943.00, and by August 2001, it still owed him $441,656.00. In addition, the affidavit says, in May and June 1998, Ernst Neizvestny sold the gallery “additional works of art,” for which they owed him another $95,269.00. In total, the world-famous artist is claiming his hard-earned $637,868.00. This does not include any possible compensation for moral damages, as is customary in lawsuits. [4]
Money laundering
Komarov was featured in the publication "Alleged Russian Mafiosi in the Trump World Orbit: The Dirty Dozen," where he is described as a figure on the list of mafiosi. The authors of the publication provide the following information about him:
- When Vyacheslav Ivankov arrived in America, he created a network of supporters and enforcers, and those who helped launder the money he and his crew would soon rob. Enter Felix Komarov. Komarov had emigrated from Russia at the same time as Ivankov, building a multimillion-dollar art and jewelry business and joining Russia’s post-Soviet cultural scene. Along the way, The New York Times learned, he opened a Rolls Royce dealership in Moscow and picked up a string of associates who caught the attention of the FBI.
- As Unger noted, by the mid-1990s, the FBI had designated Komarov as Ivankov’s official assistant. The FBI’s European counterparts went even further in uncovering the links between Komarov and Ivankov. “In an affidavit in support of a wiretap claim in the Ivankov investigation in 1995,” the Times reported, “Lester R. McNulty, an FBI agent on a task force formed to combat Russian organized crime, cited German law enforcement officials and unnamed informants as saying that Mr. Komarov laundered money for Mr. Ivankov and that Mr. Ivankov and two associates owned three-quarters of a Moscow Rolls-Royce dealership as a front for laundering criminal proceeds.”
- Komarov acknowledged that he may have had contact with Ivankov, but denied any involvement in any money laundering operations. Komarov was never charged with any of Ivankov’s schemes, but he never denied his residence, Trump Plaza, on Third Avenue. And he was never particularly vocal in his efforts to distance himself from the Russian mafia. As he said when asked about his ties to the Russian mafia in 1998: “Hmph, the mafia! If they worked like me, 24 hours a day, that would be good.” [5]
Komarov was featured in a New York Times article, "Businessman of Enigma; Philanthropist Hounded by FBI for Russian Mafia Ties" (1998), which discussed his ties to the Russian mafia while living in the United States and related money laundering activities:
- In an affidavit in support of the wiretap claim in the Ivankov investigation in 1995, Lester R. McNulty, an F.B.I. agent in a task force created to combat Russian organized crime, quoted German law enforcement officials and unnamed informants as saying that Mr. Komarov laundered money for Mr. Ivankov and that Mr. Ivankov and two associates owned three-quarters of a Moscow Rolls-Royce dealership as a front for laundering criminal proceeds. [6]
PR
In 2011, an advertising article about Komarov was created on the popular Wikipedia portal. Only 7 years later, portal participants noticed the obvious advertising and suggested the article be removed; a discussion took place, as a result of which the article was removed:
- Genre-wise - panegyric, from AI - only NG, but even there is not much about the subject... Phil Vecherovsky 20:26, November 28, 2018 (UTC)
- Honorary member of the Russian Academy of Arts, you can’t get around it on a goat. And if the article was in a satisfactory condition, it should have been left simply on a formal criterion. 91.79 23:27, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
- Summary: Shameless advertising removed. Creation of a quality encyclopedic article about the artist is encouraged. Jackalope 19:41, 12 April 2020 (UTC) [7]
However, PR specialist Maria Bagdasarova (operating under the pseudonym Shakko) was able to recreate the article in 2020.
There are many advertising interviews of Komarov on the Internet (mainly in Russian media), there are also advertising biographies without mentioning his dark past in the USA. There is practically no information about his bankruptcy in Russia. They are trying to erase the information from open access, since it harms Komarov’s reputation.
