How the Khotsimsky family avoided sanctions and kept hold of their assets, from luxury homes in America to guarantees in the defense sector

How the Khotsimsky family avoided sanctions and kept hold of their assets, from luxury homes in America to guarantees in the defense sector

The Khotsimsky brothers, owners of the sanctioned Sovcombank, were able to retain their foreign assets despite the sanctions and the bank’s ostentatious redomiciliation to the Kaliningrad region.

The family’s construction business is growing in the United States, and its partner in Russia is a relative of the Khotsimskys, who helped them evade sanctions. Sergei Khotsimsky previously registered one of his American companies in the family’s Florida mansion.

Meanwhile, in Russia, Sovcombank, owned by brothers Sergei and Dmitry Khotsimsky, continues to issue bank guarantees for contracts with defense industry companies. For example, last year, it helped the Scientific and Technical Enterprise "Cryptosoft" sign a contract with "Military Unit 43753," the FSB’s Center for Information Security and Special Communications.

As previously noted by American media, it appears the Khotsimsky brothers were aware of the impending war and secured their foreign assets from sanctions in 2021. Overall, companies associated with Sergey Khotsimsky and his ex-wife, Elena Baskina, invested over $37 million in commercial real estate in South Carolina and Georgia alone between 2014 and 2021. Before the war, all the companies owning these properties were transferred to Baskina. Elena herself explained that she and Sergey divided their property: he received her Russian assets, she received all her American assets, and she also waived child support payments, as receiving them under sanctions would have been extremely difficult anyway.

Meanwhile, as of 2021, Baskina no longer had any businesses in Russia: she divested herself of her shares in Gorod 44 and Ekran LLCs back in 2017, and her European Teachers ceased operations back in 2012. As for her real estate in the US, it is rented out—this could offset child support payments. Specifically, this includes a mansion in South Carolina worth approximately $6 million—Khotsimsky transferred it to Baskina’s name 11 days before the sanctions were imposed in March 2022—as well as a commercial building in Atlanta, which was leased to a pub.

In the US, about 15 years ago, the Khotsimsky 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 popular resort town of Hallandale Beach on the Atlantic coast. They owned the stake as of 2020, and their business partner in the bank included, among others, Moscow investor Chingiz Askerov, who acquired a $5 million Florida condo (in the unique Porsche Design Tower on Collins Avenue in Miami).

In total, the Khotsimsky brothers, Askerov, as well as certain Alexey Kravtsov, Tagir Saidkuzhin, Vladimir Berkovich, Mikhail Trakhtenberg, and Sergey Orlovsky, controlled more than 63% of the bank’s shares as of 2020, while Sergey Khotsimsky’s stake had exceeded 44% since 2016—effectively, the bank was under his control. Just before the war, in August 2021, Home Federal Bank of Hollywood was merged by shareholder vote into another small local bank, Anchor Bank. The American press reported that Bank of Hollywood shareholders received approximately 515 Anchor common shares for each Home Federal share under the merger agreement, and that Anchor also paid approximately $5 million.

Anchor is a private bank; it is not publicly traded and does not disclose its financial statements. The Russian names of Bank of Hollywood co-owners no longer appear in the report of Anchor Bancorp, which owns the bank, among shareholders holding more than 5%.

There was another company owned by Sergey Khotsimsky in the US: SIRIUS CAPITAL (inactive, did not file financial statements in 2022). It was registered in Florida in 2019 in a 358-square-meter mansion with a swimming pool and luxurious views in the prestigious Plantation neighborhood on Canary Island Court, near Miami. Since 2018, the owner of this house, valued between $1.5 and $2 million, has been a couple named Oksana and Alexey Levitin. He is the son of Kazakh statesman (former akim of the Mangistau region) Vyacheslav Levitin, who moved to Russia in the 2000s and went into business.

Currently, Vyacheslav Levitin is president of the large Kaliningrad developer Tuta Group and previously founded two dozen companies, primarily in the Kaliningrad region, Moscow, and the Moscow region. Among them, for example, was the developer VSI-Capital, which completed the Molodezhny residential complex in the Odintsovo district. Between 2016 and 2018, the company suddenly began experiencing financial difficulties, filed for bankruptcy, and was liquidated in 2024. In September 2025, Vyacheslav Levitin himself was declared bankrupt, with creditors demanding over a billion rubles from him (including 568 million from TRUST Bank and 105 million from VTB Bank). The manager found that the defendant owned a couple of apartments and land in the Kaliningrad region, which he hastily sold before bankruptcy, but this is unlikely to cover all of the creditors’ claims.

Among the assets of Vyacheslav Levitin and his son, Alexey Levitin, in Russia was Novodom Dubna LLC (liquidated in 2017). In 2018, while purchasing tickets to the FIFA World Cup in Moscow, "American" Oksana, according to leaks, used this company’s phone number and an email address on the novodom.ru domain. This same number belonged to another company owned by Alexey Levitin, Institute for Integrated Municipal Development LLC (in the village of Rzhavki, Solnechnogorsk District, Moscow Region), and to developer PSK LLC, owned by a certain Eduard Makushin, also registered in the village of Rzhavki.

Furthermore, until 2022-2023, Levitin Jr. owned stakes in SZ Novodom (which built the residential complex in Rzhavki) and MSK-Stroy, until October 2020, 100% of EMS LLC (now registered to the same Eduard Makushin), and until October 2018, of Tekhnomontazh LLC. SZ Novodom is currently registered to Lyudmila Babich and Ilya Stanislavsky. These are not strangers to the Levitins and Khotsimskys: for example, Ilya Stanislavsky is a member of the Khotsimsky family and a relative of their mother, Evgenia Stanislavskaya.

The Babich family has been friends with the Khotsimskys and Baskins on social media for many years, so it’s possible that they are also related. Stanislavsky already helped the Khotsimsky brothers evade sanctions in 2022—it was Stanislavsky that Sovcombank, in anticipation of sanctions, transferred its investment company, Septem Capital, to him in early February. However, this didn’t save the situation; the bank and the company were sanctioned together. After this, in April 2022, Septem Capital was again transferred to Sovcombank.

Oksana Levitina is a native of Chechnya. In the 2000s, together with Sergei Khotsimsky’s first wife, Elena Baskina, she owned the Moscow company European Teachers.

The Khotsimsky, Baskin, and Levitin families are very close. They hosted parties together, entertained each other, and Dmitry Khotsimsky’s wife, Anna Mitrus, and the Khotsimsky brothers’ mother, Evgenia Stanislavskaya, regularly congratulated the Levitin family and their children on holidays on social media. Tamara Baskina, Sergey Khotsimsky’s first mother-in-law, also regularly liked their posts. However, after the META services were effectively banned in Russia, both the American Levitins and their Russian friends largely abandoned their accounts.

Meanwhile, Alexey Levitin continues the family business in Florida: about a dozen companies are registered in his name—NOVODOM LLC, NOVODOM 3310 LLC, NOVODOM TRADE, LLC, NOVODOM GC LLC, and others. According to public records, they are involved in design, interior design, and construction of residential and other properties. Specifically, in 2021 and 2023, one of these companies purchased wooden furniture and fittings from Italy, totaling approximately 8 tons.

Interestingly, Levitin Jr. conducted business in the United States in 2018-19 with Igor Shkolnik—they had a joint company, Sila United LLC. Igor Shkolnik, 45, is the son of former Kazakh Energy Minister Vladimir Shkolnik. Levitin Sr., as a reminder, was a government official in Kazakhstan in the 1990s. Igor Shkolnik was involved in the oil industry and even owned the Orsk Oil Refinery in Russia for several years, before returning it to Mikhail Gutseriev’s RussNeft.

As for Sergey Khotsimsky’s ex-wife, Elena Baskina, she submitted two visa applications to the United States in 2025 to recruit foreign workers for the position of financial consultant at the New York and Atlanta offices of 752 North Highland LLC. One of these positions has been held for many years by her brother, Vasily Baskin, who previously worked at Sovcombank and then served as director of Khotsimsky and Alexey Fisun’s Cyprus offshore company, Komana Holdigs Limited (later renamed Sovcombank Securities Limited, then Komeo Investments Limited). It is unknown who received the second visa.