Identifying Russian Oligarch Assets – Vladyslav Huntyk, Signal My Oligarch

This is texturing TV. Hey guys. Thanks for the throw.

We're here with Vlad Huntik. Who's CEO for Signal my oligarch. They're doing some work with the Ukrainian government on cybersecurity as we all know, it's a bit of a Hot Topic these days wide welcome to show.

Yeah, thank you for watching. So what exactly are you guys doing in Ukraine these days? What's the challenges and what do you need from other folks?

Well, we're talking like what we actually need I would I would describe this with the most famous hashtag that we are pushing right now is the arm, Ukraine. Because if we're talking about things that we need to win this war, obviously we need more heavy weapon. on the other side, we as a signal my oligars trying to fight for in this war and fight for democracy in a bit different way by using our skills.

That's actually why we created signal my oligar app because now Western governments trying to find increase oligarchs assets. And I actually have a partner. So we we are kind of co-founder of the sigma oligar.

And if and the partner he has the decades experience in financial industry in during the conversation. He told me that that it's a very easy to hide an asset in Europe. Let's say by just simply registering it on, you know on daughter and his family member or offshore company and so on.

And he was talking about how we can. Help to reveal those assets and yeah decided to to create this bridge between people just an average person who probably you know, working on the real estate or a crew member of the boat that belongs to all the car and they know that you know, this boat is belongs to the specific oligar. So we are trying to be a bridge between those people and trust and governments to help them find those assets because they are mostly looking for direct ownership.

So if the property or any assets directly belong to the oligar, but if it's belongs to a family member it becomes a bit more Tricky to find and locate that and we are trying to help in this area basically. Also a lot of Shadow companies that seem to own a lot of these assets. So can you help people track that as well what we are right now, we are trying to Target mostly like a bank accounts like boats real estate.

So we have And any other possible assets, so basically we're trying to cover all possible areas. But you know some assets is more hard to find and to know about them some assets are more easy to find like real estate. So you can be a neighbor of the oligar family in Italy I'd say and you actually can know that this you know, the daughter of the oligar live there so you can potentially know that this is their asset and it can be free if you know, it can be freeze by the government.

Will you be able to map the relationships between different oligarchs and members of their families because it seems like a lot of these people operate in their own kind of semi organized criminal model essentially. Yeah, we don't have any relationship with any of them. We just have a list of those people.

And the the thing that we are trying to achieve is of course is the freeze the assets but as well as the push more pressure on the Putin environment because oligars is the closest environment that he have and the more pressure. We'll put on them the more pressure they will transfer on his shoulders. And yeah, that's that's what we're trying to achieve and what we are actually trying to do more closely is the corporate with the government is the oligars and for us this does it's obviously that most of their assets was gained by, you know by some unfriendly actions.

What was the hard part about building this app and it's kind of curious to me that maybe why didn't we see something like this before? Um, I think that why we don't, you know didn't see anything like that before because that was no. Need for that like that was sanctions on the Russia as a as a country or as a economy object, but when the war begins, you know more attention, but Western governments start paying more attention for the this is for the Putin's environment, which is the only are the most challenging part was to create it as soon as possible because doesn't make any sense.

If you if you would finish this app, you know in one year or something like that. So the most challenging part was even not to find the team. It's actually was one of the most easiest challenges that we face during the development because Whether he was switching out to you know developers designers and other team members there was more than happy to to help and they regret to you know for the over fees and worked a lot of hours over time to basically create this app from the ground in two and a half months.

Well, did you guys use any particular Frameworks for building the app where there are things like agile devil devops, or did you just kind of rush to get it done? Oh, that's that's more Tech stuff that I think I'm not that was that much focused. My part of the corporation was most the you know design and marketing and the development part was handled by by the other co-founder.

So I actually don't know which language actually we even used to build the the app. We definitely use the Frameworks. I don't remember the language.

Do you think that this application concept could be applied in other areas where there's clearly some sort of criminal oligarch type thing whether it's cyber security ransomware folks or other countries that are run by Olive Garden. Do you think that you know, we'll use this model again elsewhere. Well, I think that's okay.

This could be a huge potential right now. Yeah, our focus is to to help Ukraine mostly but yeah, if this is we'll go well why not because the challenging part here is the verification because anyone can you know, send something? And after the report, the challenging part is the verification.

So on our end at least as soon as somebody sent us a report, we are doing a manual like review of that report. So we are checking we don't have you know access to some databases which governments have but on all and we are trying to do whatever you know, what are we want and can to prequality to prequalification for the report at least, you know, check the photo to see if it's not a selfie or something or if the Geo occasion is not somewhere near the Pacific Ocean, you know stuff like that. So we're doing this frequentification only dance and in the report to the government and then they're doing their work because they have more ways to check the you know, the ownership and so on.

So yeah, I think this approach Could be taken and improved in the future and it can potentially can be used by other countries. To cooperate with you know with citizens with you know, any people that are living specific country to find something. Yeah.

What do you need from it professionals right now? Do you need more developers to work on the project? You need people to work on the back end.

I mean, where are you guys as we kind of sit at the moment? Yeah, I think we pretty much covered in regards of development. What we desperately looking right now is for exposure.

So yeah, that's why you know, we are we have a TTR team that are connecting every possible media that can be interested in the app and did not just in the Apple also in the topic that we are trying to cover here. So the challenging part right now is not development is to get our app. On as many is as possible because the more people will know that it's exists.

Then the higher chance that somebody who really knowing information about the oligarch asset can install our use of app version. If if this person don't want to install the app and Report the asset All right. So, I guess instead of seeing something and saying something now, we want people to see something and download an app and then say something through the app.

Hey Vlad. Thanks for being on the show. Yeah, thank you.

All right you guys back to you guys in the studio?