Consul Prime, which began operating in late 2022, provides services in 23 countries including Germany, Britain, Israel, Serbia and the UAE, Verstka reported in a joint investigation with the commercial investigations bureau TriTrace Investigations. The company assists with passports, powers of attorney and certificates, and its main selling point is faster access to a consulate than the standard electronic queue.
Consul Prime staff confirmed to reporters that consulates reserve separate time slots for the company that are unavailable for independent booking. One manager said the service runs its own booking system that is not connected to the public portal.
A Verstka journalist posing as a client found that in Germany the company charges 99 euros for expedited booking of a passport application. One client in Germany faced a queue of about 1,500 applications when booking independently; after turning to Consul Prime, he was offered an appointment within days.
Prices are higher elsewhere. Help with renouncing Russian citizenship costs about 3,346 euros in London, 3,031 euros in Switzerland and 2,300 euros in Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. In Kazakhstan the same service costs 139 euros.
According to Verstka, the business was founded by Yefim Malkin, a former senator from Chukotka, and entrepreneur Mikhail Livergand, both of whom worked for years with Abramovich's structures. The main legal entity behind Consul Prime, LLC Center Service, was founded by Malkin in December 2021; the business passed to Livergand in September 2022.
In 2023, Livergand and his partner Darya Zhurova gained control of a company linked to the Foreign Ministry: their LLC Center Service received 90% of UPDK-Hines, later renamed Consul Center. The state-run Main UPDK, the Foreign Ministry's property management agency, retained the remaining 10%.
Consul Prime clients in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland sign contracts with entities registered in the UAE, Docs Management L.L.C. and Konsul Prime DMCC, according to the company's privacy policy. The owner of Docs Management L.L.C. is unknown, but Comfort Care Travel L.L.C., the Dubai representative office of Malkin's Russian company Medical Tourism Technologies, is registered at the same Dubai address.
Between July 2023 and now, 49% stakes in Center Service and Center Service Digital went to 53-year-old Darya Zhurova. Livergand retained controlling stakes in both firms. Verstka's journalists describe Zhurova as the first co-founder not linked to Abramovich and suggest she may be a nominee.
Center Service Digital's business is valued at 1.17 billion rubles, according to its financial statements, which Meduza reviewed.
Creating commercial intermediaries at consulates required changes to the law. Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Ivanov introduced the corresponding amendments to the Consular Statute in the State Duma in 2022, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later tasked him with overseeing the reform.
The journalists established that in 2019 Ivanov bought from Malkin a 202-square-meter apartment in an elite building in Starokonyushenny Lane in Moscow and a non-residential premises of about 157 square meters in the same building. Verstka estimated the value of the property at the time of the deal at no less than 200 million rubles.
Ivanov's official income for 2019 reached 146 million rubles, mainly from the sale of another apartment. The official who later presented the bill on creating commercial intermediaries at consulates had earlier completed a large transaction with the man who founded one of those services.
The Russian Foreign Ministry does not conceal its official cooperation with the service. On the website of Russia's consulate general in Geneva, Consul Prime is named the sole authorized partner of foreign missions in the area of document preparation. The ministry says the service helps shorten waiting times and ease the workload on consulate staff.
Russian emigrants, meanwhile, discuss in chats and on forums that access to consulates has become harder since the service appeared. In Israel, according to accounts from members of local Russian-speaking communities, the wait for a free appointment sometimes stretches to almost a year.
Since February 2026, data on the founders of Consul Prime's Russian legal entities is no longer disclosed in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. But according to Verstka, even the information still publicly available makes clear that Consul Prime is not a state company and formally does not even depend on the state, and that it has more ties to Roman Abramovich than to the Russian Foreign Ministry. That does not stop the service from presenting itself as the ministry's sole partner, collecting Russians' data and charging for exclusive access to consular services.