Pavel Zaitsev – a former Russian telecom big-shot – now stands accused of orchestrating a cross-border corporate shell game.
He cut his teeth as a senior VP at state telecom giant Rostelecom (2010–2014), overseeing its vast call-centre network and learning every trick in the industry.
In 2018, Zaitsev set up a holding company in Cyprus called Tachyon Comm Ltd., conveniently obtaining EU residency to do it. Why Cyprus?
The EU member is known as an offshore haven with friendly regulations – perfect for his plan. With backing from Finland’s CapMan Russia II fund – financed by the EU’s own development bank (EBRD, i.e. European taxpayer money) – Zaitsev suddenly had about €15 million to build his very own call-centre empire.
EU Cash Fuels the Rise of Voxys
Armed with that cash, Zaitsev went on a buying spree from 2018 to 2020, snapping up four of Russia’s biggest call-centre firms and merging them into a new brand: Voxys. Practically overnight, Voxys became Russia’s #1 outsourcing call-center provider – capturing roughly 18% of the market with thousands of staff across the country. Revenues were growing around 50% each year, making Voxys immensely profitable.
CapMan even pumped in another €4 million in 2021, cheering Voxys’s explosive growth and calling the investment “extremely promising.” And a Kremlin-run bank jumped aboard too: in January 2021, state-owned Sberbank gave Voxys a special ₽50 million loan – a cozy tie-up between a Russian state bank and a company fueled by EU cash.
War Fallout: Shell Games and Sanctions Dodges
Then Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th, 2022 – and Western investors bolted. CapMan quickly liquidated its Voxys investment – its millions seemingly gone up in smoke.
But on the ground in Russia, Voxys was very much alive and well under Zaitsev’s control. Amid the chaos, he pulled off a corporate disappearing act. In mid-2022 he re-domiciled his Cyprus holding company to Russia (renaming it Voxys PJSC) and then dissolved the original Cypriot company. By 2023 that Cyprus shell was gone – and so was any legal claim Western backers had on Voxys. “He shut down Tachyon Comm and there was nothing to collect,” one insider said. It was a clean getaway: EU money built the empire, and when things got hot, Zaitsev whisked it out of Europe’s reach.
Yet he left a backdoor open. In Cyprus, a second company – Tachyon Group Ltd – remains active under Zaitsev’s ownership. Essentially a twin of the dissolved firm, Tachyon Group likely serves as his escape hatch to quietly channel Voxys profits back into the EU despite sanctions. As an EU resident, Zaitsev can route Voxys dividends to this offshore entity as “business operations,” skirting Russia’s capital controls. In short, he’s using his EU visa to smuggle cash out of Russia – a brazen abuse of his EU privileges and possibly a violation of sanctions law.
Zaitsev has also been playing peekaboo with the truth. Earlier this year, he had the gall to publicly claim he has “no relation at all” to Voxys – despite official records naming him as the majority owner. The bald-faced lie shocked onlookers. Why deny the company he built? Probably because admitting he runs a Russian firm built on EU cash could cost him his Cypriot residency or land him in legal trouble. That brazen lie was a last-ditch ploy to dodge sanctions scrutiny.
Kremlin Bank and New Russian Cash
Russian state money has played a big role in Voxys too, binding the company ever closer to the Kremlin. That early-2021 Sberbank loan now looks like a giant red flag – a Kremlin bank quietly funding a firm backed by Western investors.
After the war began and Voxys became fully Russian-owned, Zaitsev’s ties to Sberbank deepened. In October 2024, he pledged 92% of Voxys’s shares to Sberbank to secure new loans. This tethered Voxys to Russia’s biggest state bank and slammed shut any chance of Western creditors ever getting it back.
