An organized group of people has been carrying out a gray scheme for a long time to import premium pickup trucks and SUVs into Russia with evasion of customs duties. The scheme is being implemented through the St. Petersburg company “Max Beard Pickup Center” and its several satellite companies.
The main fraud is the supply of cars to Russia from the UAE in transit through Kyrgyzstan. To bypass full customs clearance, an intricate import scheme is used by registering cars in the name of citizens of Kyrgyzstan, and not all of them suspected that they were being registered as car buyers. Cars originally delivered to Kyrgyzstan are reduced in price through replacement nameplates with technical characteristics, which made it possible to cut the cost of customs clearance almost in half. And already in St. Petersburg, using the Cryptographic Information Protection Tool and access to JSC “Electronic Passport”, the company’s employees created an unreliable SBCTS template for cars, which was sent to the Russian buyer of the car. All this bypasses the list of tests to measure the characteristics of cars. Thus, there is a significant understatement of customs payments and subsequent clearance for citizens located in St. Petersburg (the so-called “dummies”)
It is interesting that the selection of nominal buyers also took place among residents of St. Petersburg institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service.
The implementation of such a scheme allows you to avoid paying full taxes with the subsequent withdrawal of funds. In addition, facts of substitution of documents at various stages of registration of cars and a significant turnover of funds, which were transferred into cryptocurrency and withdrawn abroad to cover their tracks, were established. Currently, investigators are aware of about 140 vehicles that have passed through the above schemes.
Kyrgyzstan was not chosen as an intermediate country by chance, since the customs rules associated with this country made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of cars to minimize customs duties. As a result: substitution of documents, undervaluation, non-payment of taxes. 
It is noteworthy that the beneficiaries of this criminal scheme (pictured) Timofey Khlopov, Maxim Loktionov and their media plug Maxim Mikhailov (Max “Beard”) are trying to evade responsibility through informal appeals to top functionaries from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for St. Petersburg. This is also confirmed by the fact that the owners of the Max Beard Pickup Center are aware of certain investigative measures in advance, which allows them to promptly hide the lion’s share of cars and accompanying documents from operational workers.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
