Russian Mafia in US (Astra) Space?
By: Sergey Kenzorov
Tags: Space, Space Exploration, Bussiness, Russian Mafia, Space Technology

On April 17, 2019, Ziyavudin Magomedov, who owns Caspian VC and Summa Group, is scheduled to face trial in two bankruptcy cases of Summa Group’s subsidiaries. Reminder: according to Magomedov and William Shor, Summa Group owns an equity stake in a space startup Astra Space (ex-Ventions), through Caspian VC.

In his speech back in 2017, the Russian billionaire said that technology imports to Russia are the main investment strategy of Caspian VC and that Roscosmos should be a commercial beneficiary of Astra Space

Founded in January 2005 by Adam London and Amit Mehra under the name Ventions, Astra Space engaged in the production of LPRE for ultralight class missiles on fuel LOX, RP-1, H2O2 with a burden of 45 to 2268 kg.

In September 2016, the company changed its name to Astra Space Inc. In the document on changing the type and name of the company, the registrar is the former NASA Chris Kemp CTO, he is also the CEO in a subsidiary in California from January 2017. In the same period, Magomedov’s Caspian VC acquired a stake in the company.

Astra Space is involved in two projects:

SALVO is a two-stage booster developed by Ventions for DARPA that was used as a test sample for a larger ALASA booster. At the end of 2015, the ALASA project was frozen after two unsuccessful ground tests. Astra is a two-stage, ultra-light class launch vehicle for lifting payloads weighing from 20 to 40 kg into low Earth orbit (250–750 km), in the future, capacity is planned to be increased to 100 kg. Presumably, the technology used in Astra booster has been developed in the framework of the Salvo project. In February 2018 ground tests of the engine were conducted.

Currently, Astra Space’s announced investors remain to be LightSpeed Innovations, NASA, the Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense. Also, it’s unclear who owns the Caspian VC’s equity stake in Astra Space.

Magomedov Ziyavudin

Ziyavudin Magomedov invested ~$100m in Hyperloop founded by Elon Musk, and was excluded from the company’s board after having been arrested in March 2018. Summa Group’s owner and his brother Magomed are involved in organization of a gang, embezzlement of 2.5 billion rubles (about $38 million at the current exchange rate) from the Russian Federation budget and withdrawal of some of these assets abroad, investigators claim. Magomed Magomedov is also charged with illegal weapon possession. The brothers have been detained along with ex-CEO of Intex construction company Arthur Maksidov.

At the same time, it was discovered that Ziyavudin Magomedov and his brother had been additionally charged with stealing 300m rubles ($4.6m) during the construction of a highway in South Siberia in September 2014.

We remind you that at the end of January 2018, Ziyavudin Magomedov appeared in the Kremlin Report to U.S. Congress — a list of officials and entrepreneurs who the U.S. administration found to be close to the current Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To top it all off, the Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny revealed a corrupt connection between Magomedov Ziyavudin Gadzhievich and the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov. According to statements, Magomedov paid for renting the world’s largest sailing yacht Maltese Falcon to celebrate the honeymoon of civil servant Dmitry Peskov.

Also, Ziyavudin Magomedov is the owner of MMA brand Fight Nights and sponsor of Dagestan fighters.