In May 2025 Nikolai Mikhailiuk voluntarily appeared before the court in Madrid and described himself as Sergey Berezin's driver and personal assistant. He said he had no leading role in JuicyFields and did not know that Berezin was behind the company. Registers, archived web pages and JuicyFields' own documents show a man with three names, a CEO post in a restaurant company Berezin co-owned and, under one of those names, a 24.5 percent stake in JuicyFields.
JuicyFields was a platform on which private individuals invested in the cultivation of medical cannabis. It stopped paying out in July 2022. The man Mikhailiuk said he drove, Sergey Berezin, is named as the mastermind of JuicyFields. Mikhailiuk is a suspect in the Spanish investigation into JuicyFields. He has not been charged or convicted. His most recent known hearing was in May 2025, and a new hearing is due next week. This article sets out what he said and what the documents show.
What he said in Madrid
Mikhailiuk was arrested in Lublin in April 2024. Polish police announced at the time that they had arrested a person in Lublin on a European arrest warrant in the JuicyFields investigation, which the police describe as an investment fraud worth 645 million euros. According to the Central European investigative network VSquare it was Mikhailiuk, one of Berezin's most trusted associates, and he was then transferred to Spain.
In May 2025 he gave a voluntary statement at the Audiencia Nacional, the Spanish court in Madrid where the investigation is being conducted. The law firm Zaballos, which represents victims in the case, has reported what he said:
- that he was Berezin's driver and personal assistant
- that he is not a founder of JuicyFields and does not know who the founders are
- that he did not know Berezin was behind JuicyFields
- that he did not pay salaries and did not manage the platform's groups
- that he has never opened a bank account
Svenskhampa has not seen the record of the hearing. The points above are Zaballos' account. The wording "driver and personal assistant" and the statement that he denied any leading role appear in a later communiqué from the firm.
What the registers show
In January 2022 the KETCH UP burger chain in St Petersburg listed the general director of each of its restaurant companies on its own contact page. The page is preserved in the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive's archive of web pages. For OOO "STUDIYA 101" (OOO is the Russian form of limited company), the restaurant on Vasilyevsky Island, the entry read: "Генеральный директор: Михайлюк Николай Сергеевич" (General director: Mikhailiuk Nikolai Sergeevich). The full name and patronymic match Mikhailiuk's. The entry sits under the link "Реквизиты ресторана" (restaurant details) for the same restaurant and appears when the link is clicked. The chain itself and its trademark are owned by others. Berezin, Briginsky, Markevich and Andzhela Gabrielyan, however, have each owned an eighth of five of the chain's restaurant companies and still hold stakes in three, among them STUDIYA 101.
According to the Russian register, STUDIYA 101 is owned by six people. Three of them are Sergey Berezin, Vitaly Markevich and Yuri Briginsky, with 12.5 percent each. Berezin is named as the mastermind of JuicyFields in the investigation that the German newsroom CORRECTIV published in 2024 in a consortium with several European media outlets. According to the Danish broadcaster DR, Markevich is internationally wanted in the same investigation. Briginsky owns the IT company ITVA, which comes up again below.
The register also shows how long he held the post. He became general director on 4 September 2019 and stayed until the company went into liquidation on 1 April 2022. He then chaired the liquidation commission himself for two weeks. The same spring, the liquidation of the sister company STUDIYA 112 was led by Mikhail Grin. That was three months before JuicyFields stopped paying out. STUDIYA 101 is now being liquidated again, with a new liquidator.
Mikhailiuk also has an earlier link to Igor Romanov, who comes up again in the next section. In December 2017 Mikhailiuk took over as general director of the property company ZAO "NEVA-INVEST" from Igor Antonovich Romanov, and the following year he became its liquidator.
The drone factory
Romanov later became the main owner, holding 74 percent of the drone maker PKTsSN in St Petersburg. His tax number is the same in the records of both companies. According to the Russian investigative outlet Dossier Center, this is probably the factory that Berezin named in court as the recipient of at least half the money. Berezin's statement is reported by Novaya Gazeta. In the autumn of 2024 Vitaly Markevich himself owned 16 percent of PKTsSN, from 5 August to 10 December.
Dossier Center concluded in December 2025 that more than 40 million euros of the JuicyFields money probably went to PKTsSN. The factory's assets grew from under 80 million rubles at the end of 2023 to almost 4.1 billion a year later. According to Dossier, that corresponds to around 43 million euros being invested in the factory in a single year. According to the same source, Markevich often travelled abroad during the JuicyFields years and was even registered at the Russian House in Berlin, as CORRECTIV reported as early as 2024. Dossier also says that Markevich went into hiding in Russia when the investigation began. In autumn 2025 he is said to have appeared on the TV channel Rossiya during the Zapad-2025 military exercise, explaining how "their" drones hack Starlink systems and use them for their own purposes.
On 8 November 2024 CORRECTIV and several European media outlets published an investigation linking a drone factory whose website bore the Russian defence ministry's emblem to the JuicyFields circle. In April that year pkcsn.ru showed drones, the slogan "ПОБЕДА БУДЕТ ЗА НАМИ" ("Victory will be ours") and the defence ministry flag. When the site was archived on 6 December all of that was gone, replaced by a page about freight from China, created a week after the investigation was published. Four days later, on 10 December, Markevich ceased to be a co-owner.
Technical traces also lead to Yuri Briginsky's IT company ITVA. The website pkcsn.ru sits on the same servers as ITVA's own software products. So does the website of Igor Romanov's housing project Okhta River, where UK "PARNAS" is listed as the developer. One of ITVA's own domains, avitva.ru, redirects visitors to the Okhta River site. Svenskhampa documented this on 8 October 2026.
ITVA itself also recruited staff for the drone factory's building at 16 Domostroitelnaya Street. Between January 2024 and February 2025 the company, which Briginsky owns and runs, advertised on hh.ru for, among others, a programmer for the Ardupilot autopilot and staff for drone production. One ad describes the workplace as a production company with 80 employees. ITVA itself had five or six employees. Vitaly Markevich's company OOO "SPETS PO" in the same building advertised in May 2025 for staff to assemble drone components and in September 2026 for a metrologist with experience of military standards.
The mothers
The drone factory PKTsSN has its premises at 16 Domostroitelnaya Street in St Petersburg. The same address has been used by several companies registered to mothers and other relatives of the men in this article.
On 26 July 2022, two weeks after JuicyFields stopped paying out, an older company, OOO "MEGA-STROY", acquired two new owners. One of them was Elena Mikhailiuk, Nikolai's mother. MEGA-STROY is a property rental company. On 4 August Igor Romanov, the drone factory's main owner, became general director, and three weeks later the company moved into the drone building. At the turn of the year Romanov stepped down and Elena Mikhailiuk took over.
The property company OOO "PROMINVEST", set up at the same address in October 2021, is owned by four people, each holding a quarter. Two of them are Andzhela Gabrielyan and Olga Markevich. Gabrielyan is the mother of Artur Potapov, whom the new owners of the plastics recycling company Recyclix described in 2017 as Berezin's right hand. Olga Markevich is the mother of Vitaly Markevich. The relationships appear in housing register extracts that Recyclix's new owners published on recyclix.com the same year, in which both women are registered at the same flat as their sons. Svenskhampa does not link to the files because they contain passport details. The other two owners of PROMINVEST are Natalya Briginskaya, a relative of Yuri Briginsky, and Mikhail Grin, a former general director of one of the KETCH UP companies.
From 20 April to September 2022 the same four people owned 20 percent each of Igor Romanov's construction company OOO "STROY-SERVIS". The day after they joined the company, Olga Markevich and Natalya Briginskaya each registered a sole proprietorship, both on the same day and with the same activity codes. Elena Mikhailiuk did the same on 22 July 2022, four days before she and the other new owner took over MEGA-STROY.
The mothers are not suspected of anything in the JuicyFields investigation.
The funds
In February 2026 a closed investment fund, ZPIF "Rodolit", became sole owner of PKTsSN, and since September 2026 the owners have been concealed in the register. Two of the network's other companies went the same way. Mikhail Grin's OOO "GRIF" and Igor Romanov's OOO "KRONSHTADT" were taken over in 2025 by the fund "Garant Kapital Invest" and given the same liquidator, a professional insolvency administrator. In November 2025 she also became general director of the mothers' property company PROMINVEST. Both funds are managed by companies owned by the same person. Artur Potapov now has a fund of his own too. On 9 September 2026 he set up the personal fund "Orion", managed by OOO "RK NASLEDIE". That management company was owned by the same person until June 2026 and has offices in the same building as the other two fund managers. Since February 2026 Potapov and Vitaly Markevich have also owned half each of the private security company OOO "ChOO SHERIF OKHRANA" in Bugry outside St Petersburg.
Three names
The registers show what Mikhailiuk did under his own name. JuicyFields' leadership included a person called Alex Vaimer. He appeared in the company's internal ownership list, dated 11 April 2022, as a co-founder with 24.5 percent of both Juicy Grow GmbH in Berlin and JuicyFields AG in Switzerland. On paper, a nominee was listed as the owner. That information became public in July 2022, shortly after the collapse. No outsider knew who Alex Vaimer was.
Svenskhampa has seen four pieces of evidence that point to Mikhailiuk:
| Evidence | What it shows |
|---|---|
| A message from a source with inside knowledge of JuicyFields' leadership, April 2023 | The source lists the real names behind the company's pseudonyms: "Paul" is Sergey Berezin, "Vasily" is Vitaly Markevich, "Vaimer" is Nikolai Mikhailiuk |
| A compilation on Berezin's circle seen by Svenskhampa | Names Nikolai Sergeevich Mikhailiuk "aka Alex Vaimer", with a date of birth and passport and permit numbers that match his documents |
| A video from March 2022 | The people around Mikhailiuk repeatedly address him as "Alex" |
| The phone number | The number JuicyFields gave as its own in 2020 appears in an agreement from September 2022 as the contact number for "Mr. Alex Vaimer", see below |
Svenskhampa does not publish the documents. They contain information that is not relevant to the investigation.
The third name is older. In 2018 and 2019 the Prague-based crypto project Miracle Tele sold tokens to build a blockchain-based mobile network. According to the consortium's investigation, part of the same group that was behind JuicyFields was also behind Miracle Tele. The project's website listed an "Ilya Bolshakov" with the title CBDO, chief business development officer. A 2020 post on the blogging platform Steemit reports that the project's CEO had accused Bolshakov of taking money out of the project. The portrait of Bolshakov shows Nikolai Mikhailiuk, the same man Svenskhampa previously showed at a wedding in Crimea in June 2022.
At Miracle Tele he was head of business development. At JuicyFields, Alex Vaimer had the email address bizdev@juicyfields.io. Bizdev is short for business development.
The phone number ties the threads together. When JuicyFields presented itself to investors in 2020, the company's contact details were at the bottom of its home page: "Torellstraße 4, 10243 Berlin, Friedrichshain +49 163 228 0740". Two years later, in the agreement from September 2022, the same mobile number appears as the contact number for "Mr. Alex Vaimer". The number that thousands of investors had been given as JuicyFields' official contact was thus later given as Alex Vaimer's.
One claim points the other way. In July 2022 word spread in a victims' group that Alex Vaimer's real name was Andreij Poroshenko. Svenskhampa has found no evidence for that, and the man in the picture that was circulated does not resemble Mikhailiuk. The date of birth given, 27 January 1983, is, however, the same as in the false passport in the name of Paul Bergholts that Berezin used, according to El Mundo. This may suggest that someone in the group wanted the victims to believe that the man behind the name Alex Vaimer was "Paul", that is, Berezin.
The video
Svenskhampa has seen a series of photographs and two videos taken with the same phone between February and May 2022, the last months before JuicyFields stopped paying out. The phone's metadata gives the date and time. The location is not recorded and can be established for only some of the images. Nikolai Mikhailiuk appears in several of them.
One of the videos was recorded on 18 March 2022 in what appears to be a hotel bar. Mikhailiuk sits in an armchair with a bundle of euro banknotes in his hands. He counts them and laughs. The people around him, who are not in shot, address him by one name: "Alex". The name is called out seven times in just under half a minute, starting at 0:23.
Several people with insight into Berezin's circle have independently told Svenskhampa that the men spent a large part of their own cuts on parties and escorts. Of the money raised as a whole, however, a large part went elsewhere. According to Berezin's own statement in court, at least half of the 645 million was transferred to a military drone factory in St Petersburg, probably the one Svenskhampa has previously investigated.
In the weeks that followed Mikhailiuk appears in restaurants, in shops and on trips.
The wedding in Crimea
In June 2022, four months after Russia invaded Ukraine and only weeks before JuicyFields stopped paying out, a wedding was held at a five-star hotel on the southern coast of Crimea. Svenskhampa has investigated the wedding using photographs with intact metadata. Among the guests were Vitaly Markevich, in the front row, and Nikolai Mikhailiuk, who called himself Ilya Bolshakov in the crypto project Miracle Tele.
The man who told the court in Madrid he was Berezin's driver was therefore at the wedding in Crimea with Vitaly Markevich, whom DR and CORRECTIV name as one of the principals of JuicyFields, only weeks before the money stopped coming back to investors.
He attended together with Daria Platonova, a model and blogger from Stavropol. She has appeared on Russian television, including Channel One's "Давай поженимся" ("Let's Get Married") in January 2022 and "Богиня свиданий" ("Goddess of Dating") on the channel Subbota! in autumn 2023. She is not suspected of anything in the JuicyFields investigation.
Statement against document
| What Mikhailiuk said, according to Zaballos | What the documents show |
|---|---|
| He was Berezin's driver and assistant | He was listed as general director of STUDIYA 101, a company co-owned by Berezin, Markevich and Briginsky |
| He has no leading or founding role in JuicyFields | Alex Vaimer appeared in the company's ownership list of April 2022 as a co-founder with 24.5 percent. Four pieces of evidence link Alex Vaimer to Mikhailiuk |
| He does not know who the founders are | As Alex Vaimer he was himself listed as one of them |
| He did not know Berezin was behind JuicyFields | He was listed as CEO of a restaurant company Berezin co-owned, and under the name Ilya Bolshakov he had worked on an earlier project the consortium links to the same group |
| He did not make payments or manage the groups | "Alex Vaimer", signing as COO, writes in an email that 125,000 has been sent and negotiates payments intended for the South African partner, see the next section |
| He has never opened a bank account | According to information seen by Svenskhampa he opened accounts for JuicyFields' German and Dutch companies, see the next section |
The Swedish lawyer Lars Olofsson, who represents around 2,200 JuicyFields victims, recognises the pattern:
"The JuicyFields scam follows the same model and arrangements as many other scams. The interesting thing is that when everything is exposed and everyone knows it was a scam, all of a sudden everyone who has been involved and seen says: I know nothing and I'm not responsible for anything."
June to September 2022
Svenskhampa has seen screenshots of emails and messages from JuicyFields' final weeks. On 21 June 2022, JuicyFields' South African partner Willem van der Merwe writes to "Robert Laibach" and "Alex Vaimer", at the address bizdev@juicyfields.io, demanding immediate payment of two invoices. The same day "Alex Vaimer", signing as COO, replies to van der Merwe and Stefan Graf von Luxburg that 125,000 has been sent. He writes in the first person that he can pay in South African rand and discusses having the Geneva asset manager Fidurhône open an account for the Danish company Jansen Grow ApS. Jansen Grow had been set up a month earlier, and in August 2022, after payouts had stopped, it was listed as the owner of juicyfields.io.
A week later, on 28 June 2022, "Alex Vaimer" asks Friedrich Graf von Luxburg in a Telegram chat (according to Cannareporter possibly Stefan's brother) whether he is ready to receive a payment in USDT, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, "for Mr Willem". He then writes "2115500 usdt sent". Luxburg replies "Arrived". JuicyFields itself published the screenshots on its website after the collapse. According to the blockchain, exactly 2,115,500 USDT left the company's payment wallet the same day. On the same website, in September 2022, Alex Vaimer was listed among the company's "owners and operators".
After JuicyFields stopped paying out on 11 July 2022, Alex Vaimer wrote a long post in the company's internal Telegram group "JUICYFIELDS TEAM". It opens "Hello team! A little bit about how it really was" and blames the collapse on "Friedrich Graf", his fund and the company's South African partner. The post was shared in the victims' groups. His Telegram account @vaimeral still bore the name "Alex Vaimer" at the time, as an archived copy from 28 July 2022 shows. The name and photo have since been removed.
In September 2022, two and a half months after the payouts stopped, a joint venture agreement was signed between JuicyFields' German company Juicy Grow GmbH and SDR Corp. According to the agreement, the contact person on the JuicyFields side is "Mr. Alex Vaimer", with the email address Private@juicyholdings.com.
According to information seen by Svenskhampa, it was Mikhailiuk who, together with Markevich, managed JuicyFields' bank accounts and crypto wallets. He is also said to have made smaller payments himself, including for containers, and to have opened accounts for JuicyFields' German and Dutch companies, Juicy Grow GmbH and Juicy Holdings BV.
Legal position
Mikhailiuk is a suspect (investigado) in the Spanish investigation at the Audiencia Nacional. He has not been charged. No one in JuicyFields' leadership has been convicted. The Dominican Republic ordered Berezin's extradition to Spain in September 2024.
According to the law firm Zaballos, which represents victims in the case, Mikhailiuk and Berezin are to be questioned again in October 2026. At the previous hearing, the firm says, they added nothing new.
Right of reply
On 7 October 2026 Svenskhampa contacted Nikolai Mikhailiuk and his defence lawyer, Luis Chabaneix in Madrid, with the central points of this article and a deadline of 12:00 on 9 October. They had not replied at the time of publication.
On 8 October 2026 Artur Potapov was sent questions about the information concerning him, with the same deadline, which gave him less than a day. He had not replied at the time of publication. Because the deadline was short, any reply received after publication will be added afterwards.
On 7 October 2026 Daria Platonova was informed that she is named and pictured in this article, with a deadline of 12:00 Moscow time on 9 October. She had not replied at the time of publication.
Anyone who appears in this article and wishes to respond can contact the editors via Ownership and transparency. Replies are published in full.
Sources
- Polish police, CBZC: Udział CBZC w sprawie oszustwa inwestycyjnego JuicyFields, 12 April 2024
- VSquare: Marijuana Cowboys, 1 May 2025
- Zaballos Abogados: Comunicado nº 37, 23 May 2025, and Comunicado nº 38, 6 June 2025
- Zaballos Abogados, Telegram channel @juicyfieldsiospanish: post 174, 7 October 2026
- KETCH UP contact page, archived 25 January 2022
- Russian company register via datanewton: OOO KETCH-AP, OOO STUDIYA 101, ZAO NEVA-INVEST, OOO MEGA-STROY, OOO PROMINVEST, OOO STROY-SERVIS, OOO KRONSHTADT and OOO RK NASLEDIE
- Russian company register via datanewton, person records: Nikolai Mikhailiuk, Elena Mikhailiuk, Igor Romanov, Vitaly Markevich, Mikhail Grin, Andzhela Gabrielyan, Artur Potapov and the owner of the fund managers
- Russian company register via companium: OOO STUDIYA 101, history and ZAO NEVA-INVEST, history
- Russian company register via prima-inform: OOO PKTsSN
- Russian company register via rusprofile: OOO ChOO SHERIF OKHRANA and sole proprietorships 322784700124695, 322784700124424 and 322784700217819
- Investfunds: ZPIF Garant Kapital Invest
- DR: Mistænkt for milliardbedrag går frit rundt: Politiet kan ikke få bagmænd udleveret fra Rusland, 12 November 2024
- Dossier Center, Telegram: post 414, 15 December 2025
- pkcsn.ru, archived 15 April 2024 and archived 6 December 2024
- Okhta River: contact page
- hh.ru, job ads from ITVA: Программист Ardupilot БПЛА, March 2024, Начальник отдела кадров, November 2024, Сборщик БПЛА, December 2024, and Формовщик-сборщик (на производство БПЛА), February 2025
- hh.ru, job ads from OOO SPETS PO: Формовщик-сборщик (на производство БПЛА), May 2025, and Инженер-метролог, September 2026
- recyclix.com, archived 21 May 2017
- juicyfields.io, archived 29 March 2020
- Cannareporter: Juicy Fields: between the tragic and the unbelievable, 22 July 2022
- CORRECTIV: Gier, Mordaufträge und der russische Geheimdienst, 8 November 2024
- miracletele.com, team page, archived 24 February 2019
- Steemit: MiracleTele: путь от любви до ненависти, 13 February 2020
- El Mundo: Juicy Fields: el cerebro de la mayor estafa europea de los últimos años, Sergei Berezin, ya está en una cárcel española, 12 December 2024
- Novaya Gazeta: Дроны в конопляном «Сочном поле», 3 December 2025
- Pobeda26: Ставропольская модель стала невестой на шоу «Давай поженимся», 28 January 2022
- Bloknot Stavropol: «Я обычно все монетизирую»: модель из Ставрополя снялась в федеральном шоу, 31 October 2023
- Danish company register via datapublica: Jansen Grow ApS, CVR 43303503
- juicyfields.io, contact page, archived 15 August 2022
- juicyfields.io, screenshot of the Telegram chat of 28 June 2022, archived 25 September 2023
- Etherscan: transaction 0x9c4c14cb, 28 June 2022
- juicyfields.io, bank details page, archived 25 September 2022
- Telegram, the account @vaimeral, archived 28 July 2022
- President of the Dominican Republic: Decreto 500-24, September 2024 (extradition of Sergey Berezin, diligencias previas 57/2022)