Russian State Duma’s Deputy Chairman Aleksandr Babakov Bypasses Sanctions with Help from French Citizen

Aleksandr Babakov, a member of Russia’s State Duma and deputy chairman of the Russian parliament, continues to successfully evade Western sanctions by using a network of European intermediaries who are not subject to sanctions.

This is stated in a CYBINT investigation by the international intelligence community InformNapalm, based on the #BabakovLeaks data leak by the 256 Cyber Assault Division.

Having retained his seat following Russia’s so-called parliamentary elections, Aleksandr Babakov remains one of the Kremlin’s key figures in conducting hybrid operations and maintaining influence networks abroad. Western countries have known him since 2014 as the organizer of a €9.4 million loan to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front party through a bank in Prague.

Despite the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the European Union, and their allies imposing strict sanctions on Babakov and his son Mikhail, regulators have not fully blocked their activities abroad. The influential Russian official exploited his family’s longstanding roots and property holdings in France.

A key link in the sanctions evasion scheme was French citizen Geoffroy Marie Gonzague Doly, who has been part of the Russian politician’s inner circle for more than a decade. He became involved in Babakov’s network through a Moscow-based front organization, the Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “Institute for Research on Issues of International Integration.”

According to the leaked documents, in April 2015, the organization asked the Russian Embassy in Vienna to issue a visa to the 20-year-old Frenchman as a “research intern.” Babakov later personally contacted Russia’s ambassador to France, Aleksey Meshkov, requesting a three-year multiple-entry visa for Doly.

Over the course of a decade, the French “researcher” became an integral part of Babakov and his son Mikhail’s inner circle. Official documents list him as a “consultant,” while the parliamentary secretariat of the deputy chairman of Russia’s State Duma handled his affairs directly.

Doly’s joint trips and diplomatic missions have taken him to dozens of countries. In February 2023, for example, Russia’s ambassador to Dakar, Dmitry Kurakov, officially requested entry visas for Mikhail Babakov and the French consultant to join a Russian parliamentary delegation to The Gambia led by Nikolai Novichkov.

Beyond diplomatic logistics, Doly acts as a business and financial intermediary for the Babakov family. To facilitate travel and asset management, he obtained Serbian citizenship in 2021 and later signed employment contracts with the Belgrade-based consulting firm BLK-SKY d.o.o., headed by Babakov associate Pavel Polikarpov.

In Russia, the French citizen holds stakes in civilian companies, including a 10% share in Altacap LLC, co-owned with Babakov associate Sergey Mozhayev. Corporate records also link him to business projects in Chengdu, China.

Passenger manifests for 2023 show that Doly regularly traveled with Mikhail Babakov through major international hubs in Moscow, Cairo, Addis Ababa, Istanbul, Delhi, and Shanghai. A single Moscow-based travel agency arranged all these trips, along with the deputy’s aides Pavel Polikarpov and Evgeny Zobnin.

InformNapalm analysts emphasize that Geoffroy Doly’s case exposes a serious “blind spot” in the West’s sanctions monitoring system. Holding an EU passport, these administrative intermediaries allow sanctioned Russian elites to easily manage assets and exert influence in Europe beyond regulators’ reach.