As media have found out, the owners of the sanctioned Sovcombank, brothers Sergey and Dmitry Khotimsky, may have managed to retain their foreign assets despite sanctions and the bank’s demonstrative redomiciliation to Russia’s Kaliningrad Region. In the United States, the family is developing a construction business, partnered in Russia with a relative of the Khotimskys who allegedly helped them move assets out of reach of sanctions. In the family’s Florida mansion, Sergey Khotimsky previously registered one of his American companies.
At the same time, in Russia, Sovcombank — owned by brothers Sergey and Dmitry Khotimsky — continues to issue bank guarantees for contracts involving enterprises of the military-industrial complex. For example, last year the bank helped the Scientific and Technical Enterprise “Cryptosoft” sign a contract with “Military Unit 43753,” which is the Center for Information Security and Special Communications of Russia’s FSB.
As previously noted by American media, it appears that the Khotimsky brothers were aware of the impending war and therefore secured their foreign assets against sanctions as early as 2021. Overall, companies linked to Sergey Khotimsky and his former wife Elena Baskina invested more than $37 million in commercial real estate in the U.S. states of South Carolina and Georgia between 2014 and 2021. On the eve of the war, all companies owning these properties were transferred to Baskina.
Elena herself explained that she and Sergey divided their assets: he received her Russian assets, while she received all the American ones. In addition, she waived child support payments, noting that receiving them under sanctions would have been extremely difficult anyway. By 2021, Baskina no longer had any business in Russia: she had disposed of her stakes in Gorod 44 LLC and Ekran LLC back in 2017, and her company European Teachers had ceased operations as early as 2012. As for U.S. real estate, it is rented out and may compensate for the lack of alimony. This includes a mansion worth approximately $6 million in South Carolina — transferred to Baskina just 11 days before sanctions were imposed in March 2022 — as well as a commercial building in Atlanta previously leased by a pub.
About 15 years ago, the Khotimsky brothers also acquired a stake in Home Bancgroup, which owned Home Federal Bank of Hollywood in Florida. The bank was small, with only one office, but was located in the resort city of Hallandale Beach on the Atlantic coast. Their stake was still held as of 2020, and among their business partners in the bank was Moscow investor Chingiz Askerov, who purchased a $5 million condo in Florida in the iconic Porsche Design Tower on Collins Avenue in Miami.
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As of 2020, the Khotimsky brothers, Askerov, and individuals named Aleksey Kravtsov, Tagir Saidkuzhin, Vladimir Berkovich, Mikhail Trakhtenberg, and Sergey Orlovsky together controlled more than 63% of the bank’s shares. Sergey Khotimsky’s stake alone exceeded 44% from 2016, meaning the bank was effectively under his control. Shortly before the war, in August 2021, Home Federal Bank of Hollywood was merged into another small local bank, Anchor Bank, by shareholder decision. The U.S. press reported that under the merger agreement, shareholders of Bank of Hollywood received approximately 515 common shares of Anchor for each Home Federal share, and Anchor also paid about $5 million.
Anchor is a private bank, not listed on the stock exchange, and does not disclose financial statements. In the report of Anchor Bancorp, which owns the bank, the Russian surnames of former Bank of Hollywood shareholders no longer appear among those holding stakes of more than 5%.
There was also another U.S. company owned by Sergey Khotimsky — SIRIUS CAPITAL (inactive and did not file reports in 2022). It was registered in Florida in 2019 at a residential cottage (358 square meters) with a swimming pool and luxury views in the prestigious Plantation area on Canary Island Court near Miami. Since 2018, the owners of this house, valued at $1.5–2 million, have been Oksana and Aleksey Levitin.
Aleksey Levitin is the son of Kazakhstani state official Vyacheslav Levitin, former akim (governor) of the Mangystau Region, who moved to Russia in the 2000s and went into business. He is currently president of the major Kaliningrad developer Tuta Group, and previously founded around two dozen companies, mainly in the Kaliningrad Region, Moscow, and the Moscow Region. Among them was the developer VSI-Capital, which completed the Molodezhny residential complex in the Odintsovo District, but suddenly encountered financial difficulties in 2016–2018, went bankrupt, and was liquidated in 2024.
In September 2025, Vyacheslav Levitin himself was declared bankrupt; creditors are demanding over 1 billion rubles from him, including 568 million rubles claimed by Trust Bank and 105 million rubles by VTB Bank. The bankruptcy trustee identified several apartments and land plots in the Kaliningrad Region that Levitin hastily sold prior to bankruptcy, though this is unlikely to cover the full claims.
Among the assets of Vyacheslav and Aleksey Levitin in Russia was Novodom Dubna LLC (liquidated in 2017). In 2018, when purchasing tickets for the Football World Cup in Moscow, “American citizen” Oksana Levitina reportedly used the phone number and email domain of this company, according to data leaks. The same phone number was linked to another company owned by Aleksey Levitin — Institute of Integrated Municipal Development LLC (village of Rzhavki, Solnechnogorsk District) — and to the construction company PSK LLC, owned by Eduard Makushin, registered in the same village.
Until 2022–2023, Levitin Jr. also held stakes in SZ Novodom (developer of a residential complex in Rzhavki) and MSK-Stroy; until October 2020 he owned 100% of EMS LLC (now registered to the same Eduard Makushin); and until October 2018 he was a shareholder in Technomontazh LLC. Currently, SZ Novodom is registered to Lyudmila Babich and Ilya Stanislavsky — individuals closely connected to the Levitin and Khotimsky families. Stanislavsky is a relative of the Khotimskys on their mother’s side (Evgenia Stanislavskaya).
The Babich family has maintained close ties with the Khotimskys and Baskins for many years, including on social media, suggesting possible family connections. Stanislavsky previously helped the Khotimsky brothers evade sanctions in early 2022, when Sovcombank transferred its investment company Septem Capital to him in anticipation of sanctions. This maneuver failed: both the bank and the company were sanctioned. In April 2022, Septem Capital was transferred back to Sovcombank.
Oksana Levitina is a native of Chechnya. In the 2000s, together with Sergey Khotimsky’s first wife Elena Baskina, she co-owned the Moscow company European Teachers.
The Khotimsky, Baskin, and Levitin families are very close: they hosted parties together, visited one another, and regularly exchanged greetings on social media. Dmitry Khotimsky’s wife Anna Mitrus and the brothers’ mother Evgenia Stanislavskaya frequently congratulated the Levitins and their children online, as did Tamara Baskina, Sergey Khotimsky’s former mother-in-law. However, after META services were effectively banned in Russia, both the American-based Levitins and their Russian associates largely abandoned their social media accounts.
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Meanwhile, Aleksey Levitin continues the family business in Florida. Around a dozen companies are registered in his name, including NOVODOM LLC, NOVODOM 3310 LLC, NOVODOM TRADE LLC, NOVODOM GC LLC, and others. According to public data, they are involved in design, interior decoration, and construction of residential and other properties. In particular, in 2021 and 2023, one of these firms imported wooden furniture and fittings from Italy, totaling about 8 tons.
Notably, in 2018–2019 Levitin Jr. also conducted business in the U.S. with Igor Shkolnik through their joint company Sila United LLC. The 45-year-old Shkolnik is the son of former Kazakh Minister of Energy Vladimir Shkolnik. As mentioned, Levitin Sr. was also a Kazakh official in the 1990s. Igor Shkolnik was involved in the oil business and for several years owned the Orsk Oil Refinery in Russia before returning it to Russneft, owned by Mikhail Gutseriev.
As for Sergey Khotimsky’s former wife Elena Baskina, in 2025 she filed two applications in the U.S. to sponsor foreign workers for the position of financial consultant at the offices of 752 North Highland LLC in New York and Atlanta. One of these positions has long been held by her brother Vasily Baskin, who previously worked at Sovcombank and later served as director of the Khotimskys’ and Aleksey Fisun’s Cypriot offshore company Komana Holdings Limited (later renamed Sovcombank Securities Limited, and then Komeo Investments Limited). The identity of the second visa beneficiary remains unknown.
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