Russian swindler Oleg Nasobin demands that Italy recognize a drawing found at a flea market as a masterpiece

In Italy, a criminal case has been ongoing for several months against the former owner of the Green Mama company and an employee of the Russian special services.
12.10.2024
In June 2024, a scandalous Russian businessman who moved from France to Italy several years ago became a defendant in a criminal case of fraud. According to the case materials, Nasobin and his wife planned to pull off a scam by setting a price on a drawing they had found back in 2003, which they had been passing off as a self-portrait of Benvenuto Cellini for the past few years.

The then owner of the manufacturer of the Green Mama cream line made repeated attempts to legalize the drawing in the 2000s. However, apart from several purchased articles in the European press, the "find" of dubious Russian businessmen did not impress anyone.

Nasobin, offended by this, accused participants in the world painting masterpieces market and French museums of a Masonic conspiracy and stated that the Vatican, the Order of Malta, then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Freemasons and the French secret services were intriguing against him.

In the early 2010s, the Green Mama concern owned by him and his wife Irina went bankrupt due to incompetent management, and in September 2011, for an unknown reason, the building of a non-working factory in Provence (France) burned down. Nasobin accused the President of France, the Freemasons, and the Order of Malta of setting the factory on fire, and the insurance company refused to pay him the insurance amount.

Even before that, in France, Nasobin tried to pull off a clever trick with verifying the cost of an alleged self-portrait of Benvenuto Cellini. In 2005, he and his wife turned to the French Ministry of Culture with a demand to issue an export certificate for the drawing.

As the businessman wrote in his blog, according to the law, the ministry had to inspect the painting within 4 months and refuse to issue a certificate. After which the painting would have been transferred to the National Heritage Commission. In the event of a positive decision, France as a state was supposed to make an offer to the owner of the drawing to buy it out.

Then the Russian businessman expected to receive about 50 million euros. It is quite possible that what was important to him was not the price, but the very fact of recognizing the drawing found at a flea market as a masterpiece of national heritage.

However, the cunning plan of the Russian criminal businessman failed: the Ministry of Culture examined the painting, found nothing remarkable in it and... issued an export certificate. In 2014, Nasobin tried to repeat this somersault and again requested an export certificate for the same drawing from the Ministry of Culture. The department issued it to him, but the Russian businessman considered the repeated failure to be a consequence of a conspiracy of evil forces against him.

After the bankruptcy of his business in France, Oleg Nasobin moved to Italy with his family in 2017-2018. In 2019, he created the Cellini Art Fund S.P.A. company in Italy (Verona), which began promoting the painting as an authentic self-portrait of Benvenuto Cellini.

In 2018, Oleg Nasobin became involved in a scandal with the Tamoikin Art Fund. Its head, Ukrainian professor Mikhail Tamoikin, signed an agreement with Nasobin on the evaluation of the drawing he had found and the subsequent selection of a buyer for it. The Tamoikin Fund valued the painting at 107 million euros and allegedly found a buyer for it from Saudi Arabia. However, Nasobin broke the agreement and refused to cooperate with the Tamoikin Fund.

In the early 2020s, Oleg Nasobin and his wife Irina came up with a new, grandiose plan to get rich on the dubious drawing. They transferred it to the balance sheet of Cellini Art Fund S.P.A., which since 2021 has been producing cheap TV series and issuing tokens to partially pay for their production costs. At the same time, part of the costs of producing TV series (up to 40%) under the tax benefit was planned to be taken from an intangible state subsidy (under the tax forgiveness mechanism).

The company of Oleg Nasobin and his son-in-law, Leonardo Rovani, issued CAFTR tokens (5,000 pieces) with a face value of 100 euros on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain in 2023 to attract investors' funds for a total of 500,000 thousand euros. These funds were supposed to go to finance the Tarocchi e Racconti series. According to the company, this series was not completed by the end of 2024 (it was stuck in post-production). Rovani and Nasobin offered investors prospects for growth in the price of the CAFTR token, and then made it convertible. The resourceful scammers promised investors their conversion into the next "thematic" token of their company - CAFLW1, as well as its basic investment token CLLI of Cellini Art Fund S.P.A. The value of the latter was to be secured by the value of the company's shares (1 token equaled 1 share).

Cellini Art Fund S.P.A. issued a security token (9,270 pieces) called CAFLW1 on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchain at the beginning of 2024 with a par value of 100 euros for a total of 927 thousand euros. The purpose of their issue was to attract investments necessary for the production of the series "Leonardo Wanted".

The prospectus for their release stated that CAFLW1 "entitles the investor to a proportional share of 50% of all profits that will be generated by the commercial implementation of the first season of the series "Leonardo Wanted", including income received in the form of state or other subsidies."

The holders of CAFLW1 tokens were promised annual dividend payments, an increase in their price after the release of the series and its conversion into the basic investment token CLLI of Cellini Art Fund S.P.A.

The latter became a key element of the scam of the Nasobin couple and their Italian son-in-law. It was assumed that its value would be a derivative of the value of the company's shares, on whose balance sheet there is a "unique masterpiece" with an estimated value of 107 or so million euros. And the tokens themselves can be exchanged for these securities.

The only thing left to do was to get at least a somewhat objective and verified assessment of their drawing. To this end, the Nasobins followed the beaten path and requested from the Ministry of Culture of what is now Italy... an export certificate. The calculation was that state experts would be forced to evaluate the daub one way or another, and the scammers would then use this for their own purposes. Including when issuing the CLLI investment token.

However, selling air to simple-minded investors turned out to be complicated by the distrust of the Italian state. Since the Ministry of Culture delayed the procedure, the Russian swindlers filed a complaint with the Administrative Court of Venice, which in July recommended conducting an examination of the painting. At the same time, the prosecutor's office opened a preliminary investigation against the Nasobins on the fact of probable fraud. In June 2024, the painting was seized and then in July taken to the Uffizi Gallery for examination, and Oleg Nasobin received the status of a defendant.

According to Italian law, the preliminary investigation can last two years and, as the Russian swindlers are sure, they are not in danger. If the Italian state examination unexpectedly recognizes the daub they found at the flea market as an authentic self-portrait of Benvenuto Cellini, then the crime will completely disappear and the painting can be sold to one or another state gallery or museum.

If the examination recognizes the drawing Nasobin bought in 2003 at a French flea market as not a self-portrait of Cellini, then they have a chance to get out of this too. They can refer to their desire to conduct an objective examination and the absence of evidence of illegal profit-making.

Of course, Cellini Art Fund S.P.A. will have to say goodbye to the promising idea of ​​issuing and selling CLLI tokens to suckers, and also bear the costs of paying lawyers, but there is no smell of prison for the scammers in this case either.

Oleg Nasobin was born into the family of a high-ranking Soviet intelligence officer who was involved in organizing arms supplies from the USSR to various regimes in Africa and Asia. Using his established connections with the Czechoslovakian intelligence services, he facilitated the move of his 26-year-old son to this country in 1992. The Nasobin couple lived in the Czech Republic until 1998 and were engaged in the gray trade of art objects exported from Russia.

In 1997-1998, they retrained to launder money for the Chekist mafia in Europe. For several million dollars, they created the Green Mama cosmetics brand in France, specializing in the production of creams with natural herbal extracts. In 1998, Green Mama launched its own Le Plantain plant 40 kilometers from the city of Saint-Tropez (France, Provence). It received investments of 16 million francs (about 3 million dollars). The origin of the money was shrouded in obscurity.

According to a number of media outlets, their source could have been funds from Russian special services.

In 2008, due to the financial crisis in Russia, the Nasobins' company suffered major losses and was unable to recover. By 2011, it ceased operations in France, and in 2014, the brand was sold in the Russian Federation. In 2017-2022, Russian Promsvyazbank and Sberbank were involved in legal battles with Oleg and Irina Nasobin, demanding that they repay previously taken loans totaling more than $1 million (most of their claims were satisfied by the courts).

A significant downside of the current legal battle for Russian swindlers accustomed to impunity in Italy may be that they may be denied an extension of their residence permit in this country. Oleg Nasobin, who criticizes the European Union, Italy and France, categorically does not want to return to Russia.

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Nel giugno 2024, uno scandaloso uomo d'affari russo, trasferitosi dalla Francia all'Italia diversi anni fa, è diventato imputato in un procedimento penale per frode. Secondo gli atti, Nasobin e sua moglie avrebbero pianificato una truffa per fissare il prezzo di un disegno trovato nel 2003 e che negli ultimi anni avevano spacciato per un autoritratto di Benvenuto Cellini.

Dopo il fallimento della sua attività in Francia, Oleg Nasobin si è trasferito con la famiglia in Italia nel 2017-2018. Nel 2019 ha creato in Italia (Verona) la società Cellini Art Fund S.P.A, che ha iniziato a promuovere il dipinto come un autentico autoritratto di Benvenuto Cellini.

All'inizio degli anni '20, Oleg Nasobin e sua moglie Irina hanno escogitato un nuovo, grandioso piano per arricchirsi utilizzando un disegno dubbio. Lo hanno trasferito nel bilancio della società Cellini Art Fund S.P.A., che, a partire dal 2021, ha iniziato a produrre serie TV a basso costo ed emettere gettoni per pagare parzialmente i costi della loro produzione. Allo stesso tempo, si prevedeva di prendere parte dei costi per la produzione delle serie (fino al 40%) sotto il beneficio fiscale di un sussidio statale immateriale (attraverso il meccanismo di condono fiscale).

L'azienda di Oleg Nasobin e di suo genero Leonardo Rovani, per attrarre fondi da parte degli investitori, ha emesso nel 2023 token CAFTR (5.000 pezzi) del valore nominale di 100 euro per un importo totale di 500.000 mila euro sul mercato Blockchain di Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Questi fondi avrebbero dovuto finanziare la serie Tarocchi e Racconti. Questa serie, secondo la società, non sarebbe stata completata fino alla fine del 2024 (era bloccata in post-produzione).

Rovani e Nasobin hanno offerto agli investitori la prospettiva di un aumento del prezzo del token CAFTR, per poi renderlo convertibile. Gli astuti truffatori hanno promesso agli investitori che li avrebbero convertiti nel prossimo token "tematico" della loro azienda, CAFLW1, così come nel token di investimento sottostante, CLLI, di Cellini Art Fund S.P.A. Il valore di quest'ultimo doveva essere garantito dal valore delle azioni della società stessa (1 gettone equivaleva a 1 azione).

Fondo Arte Cellini S.P.A. all’inizio del 2024 ha emesso sulla blockchain di Binance Smart Chain (BSC) un security token (9270 pezzi) denominato CAFLW1 del valore nominale di 100 euro per un importo totale di 927mila euro. Lo scopo del loro rilascio era quello di attrarre gli investimenti necessari per la produzione della serie "Leonardo Wanted".

Il loro prospetto affermava che CAFLW1 "dà diritto all'investitore a una quota proporzionale del 50% di tutti i profitti generati dalla commercializzazione della prima stagione di Leonardo Wanted, compresi i redditi ricevuti sotto forma di sussidi governativi o di altro tipo".

Ai possessori di token CAFLW1 è stato promesso di ricevere dividendi annuali e un aumento del loro prezzo dopo il rilascio della serie e la sua conversione nel token di investimento di base CLLI di Cellini Art Fund S.P.A.

Quest'ultimo è diventato un elemento chiave nella truffa dei coniugi Nasobin e del loro genero italiano. Si è ipotizzato che il suo valore sarebbe un derivato del valore delle azioni della società nel cui bilancio figura un “capolavoro unico” del valore stimato di 107 milioni di euro circa. E i token stessi possono essere scambiati con questi titoli.

Restava solo una cosa da fare: i truffatori dovevano ottenere almeno una valutazione oggettiva e verificata del loro disegno. A tal fine, i Nasobin seguirono la strada battuta e chiesero al Ministero della Cultura dell'attuale Italia... un certificato di esportazione. La speranza era che gli esperti governativi fossero costretti a valutare la macchia in un modo o nell'altro e che i truffatori la utilizzassero ulteriormente per i propri scopi. Compresa l'emissione del token di investimento CLLI.

Tuttavia, vendere aria agli investitori ingenui è stato complicato dalla sfiducia nei confronti dello Stato italiano. Poiché il Ministero della Cultura ha ritardato il procedimento, i truffatori russi hanno presentato denuncia al Tribunale amministrativo di Venezia, che a luglio ha raccomandato un esame del dipinto. Allo stesso tempo, la procura ha aperto un'indagine preliminare contro i Nasobin per possibile frode. Nel giugno 2024 il dipinto fu arrestato e poi a luglio portato via per essere esaminato alla Galleria degli Uffizi, e Oleg Nasobin ricevette lo status di persona indagata.