This company was registered in September 2010 by Trade Invest System LTD, an offshore company in Belize. In 2011, Sigmateli became a shareholder in a company in the Bahamas. Later, the real beneficiaries hid behind screen companies and intermediaries in Cyprus. In 2018, Sigmateli became a property of the Cypriot company Axecorp Trading LTD. However, according to official Cypriot records, the final beneficiary of this company was Oxana Childescu, Vladimir Plahotniuc's ex-wife. Connections with Plahotniuc were visible since its founding. In 2010-2011, he lent the company 20 million euros, an amount he never reported in his revenue statements.
From 2014 to 2020, Sigmateli was run by C.Argyrou & Associates Secretarial, a Cypriot law firm that managed several companies connected to Mr. Plahotniuc. Among them, Asirapal Enterprises and Finpar Victoria - the current and former partner of Finpar Invest SRL (the oldest company of the Plahotniuc family). Another one is Investar Investments SRL, which in spring 2017 took over a luxurious, 2,000-square-meter villa in an elite residential district of Chisinau; it was called "White House" due to its resemblance with the official residence of US presidents. At that time, the Cypriot company was represented by Iurii Luncasu, a close friend and confident ally of Mr. Plahotniuc. Luncasu was found dead with a gunshot in his head in August 2019, leaving a handwritten note that claimed he procured the villa in 2017, “as an investor.”
In June 2011, Sigmateli took possession of another villa, in the French town of Sciez. From 2008 to 2011, this building’s direct owners had been Vladimir Plahotniuc and Oxana Childescu, according to official papers. Also in France, Sigmateli owned a cottage, in Les Houches, a small village at the foot of the Mont Blanc. In 2012, when the company obtained formal approvals for renovation and extension of the cottage, it was now-former Moldovan Parliament speaker Andrian Candu who represented Sigmateli before the French authorities.
In the same year 2011, Sigmateli acquired a villa in Romania. It is located in the Pipera district in northern Bucharest. Before embracing a political career, the Romanian villa had been a personal property of Mr. Plahotniuc.
In the summer of 2020, one year after the departure of Vladimir Plahotniuc from Moldova, Sigmateli changed both its owner and administrator. Lendary LTD, a Cypriot firm, became the new owner and Yury Leonidovich Sysoev, a Bulgarian national, took over as the administrator.
