Mapping Russian threat actors' business networks
Project Live
PROJECT TEAM
Olivia Allison
Secta Research
Olivia Allison has more than 15 years' experience carrying out complex, international investigations and supporting the development of integrity and governance for state-owned companies, international companies, and international financial institutions (IFIs). Her current work focuses on analysis of illicit finance, with a particular emphasis on Russian economic networks benefitting from its war in Ukraine and other sources of corrosive capital.
She has a wide range of financial crime and asset tracing experience from senior leadership roles held in international consulting and investigations firms, including four years at KPMG, where she led the Forensic teams in Ukraine and Kazakhstan while based in Kyiv.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Russia’s use of corporate, financial and legal structures to support covert activity has become an increasingly important aspect of hybrid threats facing the UK, Europe and partner states. Yet the specific business networks and intermediaries linked to individuals affiliated with Russian threat actors remain insufficiently mapped, limiting the ability of policymakers and analysts to understand how these networks operate, where they are concentrated, what risks they pose and how they may be countered. The project will create a database comprised of Russian and global businesses associated with Russian threat actors, comprising of information from both before and after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The research will generate information that can be used by private sector decisionmakers (e.g. banks and companies) for compliance purposes, such as client due diligence, as well as policymakers for identifying gaps in investment screening and sanctions.
It will answer three main research questions: 1) What are the structural characteristics and jurisdictional distribution of corporate networks linked to Russian threat actors?, 2) What patterns emerge in sectoral concentration, jurisdictional distribution and network coordination among these threat actors?, and 3) Which intermediaries and enablers facilitate these networks? What does this reveal about economic and systemic vulnerabilities to Russian hybrid threats?
PUBLICATIONS
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Item description
MEDIA & ENGAGEMENT
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The Kyiv Independent news desk, (14 May 2025), Russian political, corporate interests seize thousands of Ukrainian businesses, assets in occupied Mariupol, research reveals. The Kyiv Independent
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The State-Crime Nexus: Spotlight on Russia, RUSI’s Suspicious Transaction Report Podcast Series, Episode 4, Tena Prelec, 28 April 2023
Watch the recording of the SOC ACE Webinar launching Olivia Allison and David Lewis’ research paper, Looting Mariupol: Russia’s use of illicit finance and economic crime in occupied Ukraine (14 May 2025)
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