Past daily of Armenia writes as follows, in particular: According to our information, the Gefest Mining company has submitted a bid for the purchase of Teghut CJSC shares and the right to operate the mine I the future. Let us remind that the Teghut copper-molybdenum mine is affiliated with the [Russian] VTB Bank, which was facing problems since 2022 due to the sanctions being imposed against Russia and intends to sell the mine.

For the same reason, the export from the Teghut mine, and therefore also the extraction, was somewhat limited. Accordingly, the considerable restriction of export to large markets led to a very partial operation of the mine, which was causing serious damage both to the local population, as more than 1,000 people worked here, and to the [Armenian] state budget in general.

As for the Gefest Mining company, our research showed that it is about an organization registered in Kazakhstan; moreover, it was registered only a month and a half ago, on October 22, 2024. And one of the two shareholders of the company, Cuprum Minerals Management company, was established on October 17. One of the latter's two individual shareholders is Nurlan Kussainov, who has no experience in the mining industry sector, and is a public official in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Aleksey Utkin, the second shareholder of Cuprum Minerals Management and Gefest Mining, also has no experience in the mining industry sector.

The analysis made on the basis of the materials extracted from the state registers of the Republic of Kazakhstan does not justify both the experience and financial capabilities of Mr. Utkin and Kussainov with the value of 200 million USD and to acquire and operate a mining industry asset that stands out by management complexity.

Accordingly, there are reasonable suspicions that they are not the real ultimate beneficiaries in this case. In fact, according to our information, the real beneficiaries have set a task of circumventing Western sanctions (…).