Russian Crime Boss Owns Stake In U.S. Biotech Firm

Weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in early 2022, a North Carolina biotech company that has done work for the Pentagon scrambled to help civilians and soldiers wounded by the war, Matt Egan reported for CNN Business.

Humacyte, which in 2017 was awarded a $3.4 million contract by the US Department of Defense, proudly showcases these efforts in Ukraine on its website and its annual report as proof that its technology works. I Photo: Humacyte Linkedln

Nasdaq-listed North Carolina biotech firm Humacyte, which is developing a platform designed to harness the body’s own ability to heal, believed its technology could make a difference in Ukraine and quickly sent the technology, Human Acellular Vessel (HAV), to Kyiv.

Humacyte is chaired by former Obama Cabinet secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Humacyte, which in 2017 was awarded a $3.4 million contract by the US Department of Defense, proudly showcases these efforts in Ukraine on its website and its annual report as proof that its technology works.

Buried in corporate filings is another relationship that is central to Humacyte: Russian billionaire Gavril Yushvaev is the company’s second-largest individual shareholder.

He has been described by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project as the “head of a Russian criminal gang.”

Born in 1957, Yushvaev served nine years in a Soviet prison camp after being convicted of a violent crime in 1980, said a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.

By contrast, in its 2005 annual report, Wimm-Bill-Dann alerted shareholders to the criminal history of Yushvaev, who at the time was the largest shareholder in the European dairy products company.

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