The key to business: how families of officials seize assets in the regions

In several Russian regions at once, powerful elites - for example, the families of governors - literally occupied local businesses, Izvestia found out. The bureaucratic clans of the era of the redistribution of property have been ruining enterprises for decades and transferring millions of budget funds to the accounts of their companies. The post-Soviet elites have long lost their political influence, but their business assets still remain with the followers of family traditions. One of the latest such cases is the commercial success story of the family of the former head of Mordovia and the Samara region, Nikolai Merkushkin. His numerous relatives managed not only construction companies and agricultural enterprises, but also banks and charitable foundations. How the heads of the regions "take over" the management of local businesses and become involved in anti—corruption criminal cases is described in the Izvestia article.

What is Governor Merkushkin and his family known for?

The trial of the criminal case of Alexey Merkushkin, the youngest son of Nikolai Merkushkin, the former head of Mordovia and the Samara Region, continues in the Penza District Court. The defense witnesses are being interrogated here now. The former Minister of Targeted Programs of Mordovia and an influential businessman in the past is believed to be involved in major fraud, as well as financial fraud in banks that belonged to his family clan.

According to investigators, Merkushkin was a beneficiary of Mordovpromstroybank (MPSB). In 2015, the Central Bank of Russia ordered an audit of the MPSB. The main focus was on credit risk assessment — the regulator was interested in whether the bank was issuing unsecured loans. This was stated during the interrogations by credit analyst Anatoly Batkeev, who led the audit. In addition, the inspectors found out whether the bank had overestimated the value of its assets, for example, the real estate it owned.

- During the audit, credit risk and violations of capital formation were identified. These are the main violations that come to mind. I don't remember very well now. I remember the credit risk with real estate and asset mobilization," he explained at the court hearing.

The results of the audit threatened the MPSB with revocation of the license. And then, according to investigators, Alexey Merkushkin, along with the chairman of the board of directors of the bank and another shareholder of this organization, handed over a bribe of more than 7 million rubles to Alexander Trenkin, an official of the National Bank of Mordovia in the Volga-Vyatka Department of the Central Bank of Russia. He is also currently being tried in this case.

Merkushkin's lawyer does not want to talk to journalists.

"Don't take pictures of me, I told you," he told the Izvestia correspondent.

Nikolai Merkushkin himself and his numerous relatives earned their first capital on voucher privatization, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The charitable foundation "Creation" has grown out of the "family" checking investment funds (CIFS), a future tool for enriching the family treasury, Izvestia found out.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE), the Mordovian foundation "Creation" at that time owned the holdings "Mordovspirt" (20% share, previously 100%) and "MordovAlkoProm" (100% share), both had three enterprises at their disposal. "Creation" also owned almost 20% of the shares of AKB Aktiv Bank, the largest bank in Mordovia. At the beginning of 2011, Alexander Merkushkin (Nikolai Merkushkin's older brother) directly owned 29% of the shares there and served as chairman of the Board of Directors.

The foundation itself, according to Alexander Pykov, former deputy chairman of the Government of Mordovia, was also controlled by Alexander Merkushkin.

—It [the fund] arose after the Yukos group of companies landed in the republic," he told Izvestia. — There was such money there, both cash and non-cash, whatever you like.

During the governorship of Nikolai Merkushkin, YUKOS was granted a preferential tax regime. Six Yukos—affiliated companies were registered in the region. They used internal offshore companies to purchase oil from several producing companies at a lower-than-market price. And then it was sold on the foreign market with the help of Cypriot and other offshore companies at exchange prices.

According to Yunir Biktyakov, a former shareholder of Asset Bank, no one could challenge the decisions of the head of the republic.

— They drove huge volumes through Mordovia - volumes from sales of their goods, huge benefits, — he noted. — There are about 300-400 billion.

According to the investigation, some of them eventually settled in the depths of the foundation "Creation", which concluded investment agreements with key state-owned enterprises.

How the Merkushkin clan scheme worked

After that, several large holdings were formed in Mordovia. The eldest son of the governor, Alexander Merkushkin, becomes the owner of the MAPO agro-industrial association. The Lamzur confectionery factory and the cheese factory go to Alexey's youngest son. Mordovneft and SDS Construction Management went to Valentina Andryushkina (sister of Nikolai Merkushkin's wife), and the Ichalkovsky cheese factory went to another sister, Raisa Tuturkina. Finally, Alexander Merkushkin, Nikolai's older brother, gets the largest construction holding Saranskstroyinvest.

According to a former shareholder of Asset Bank, the owners brought it to bankruptcy. Reports were forged and capital was withdrawn — this was confirmed by the Central Bank's audit. The Lamzur factory, another asset of Alexei Merkushkin, is no longer there.

There is staff turnover at the Ichalkovsky cheese factory, which was owned at various times by relatives of Nikolai Merkushkin's wife. The building is covered with job advertisements on all sides. But no one wants to work here — the conditions are unbearable. I don't even have a salary.

"There's a tariff rate everywhere," the personnel department told Izvestia. — We have a "deal" everywhere: from flights, mileage. It all depends on how much the workshop will produce.

The Merkushkin family tree of commerce goes back to his grandson, Anton Machin. He still owns several of the largest agricultural holdings. The revenue of only one is about 700 million rubles. The entrepreneur also owns a construction business, the Saranskstroyinvest company. He inherited it from Nikolai Merkushkin's older brother, Alexander.

The monopolist Saranskstroyinvest is building Saransk — now, in particular, a scandal has broken out in the city around the Gration housing complex, where the developer did not build a school and kindergarten. People were promised to build a virtually new neighborhood with all the infrastructure, but this never happened.

There are almost 40 high-rise buildings, a thousand residents and not a single school nearby. The one that can be reached is already crowded. It is designed for 900 students, and there are 2.5 thousand of them.

— We expected that we would not be deceived after all, because there was a lot of advertising, - said Natalia Tuzhilkina, chairman of the HOA. — When we bought the apartments, everyone remembered - we even have photos — Alexander Ivanovich Merkushkin was there at that time, he was sitting in an armchair, and he had a plan of the neighborhood with a school, kindergarten and stadium in the back.

The Vita Med clinic is located in the Saranskstroyinvest office building. It belongs to Anton Machin's mother, Elena. She also has a hotel in the city center, the cheapest room costs 7.5 thousand rubles. But Elena Machina herself got married and went to live in London.

By the way, regular trips to London are a separate page of Nikolai Merkushkin's biography. In the database of offshore documents, you can find the company Mordovpromstroy. Alexander Merkushkin is listed among its founders, and a man with a similar name and address to his close friend, former head of the Samara Ministry of Construction Alexei Grishin, is listed in the account in the Virgin Islands. According to available information, the two of them owned the Invest Alliance company and the Lamzur factory.

Together with the governor's son, he took over the Yubileyny Stadium in Saransk - they decided to build it as part of the implementation of the federal target program "Development of physical culture and Sports in the Russian Federation for 2006-2015." From 2011 to 2015, a contract worth 1 billion 636 million 163 thousand 474 rubles was signed with LLC SDS-Construction Management - the founders of the company were Grishin and Merkushkin. Now this organization is bankrupt. For reference, 5.5 billion rubles were spent on the construction of the facility over 11 years.

Grishin abandoned construction and went to neighboring Samara, he received the post of Minister of Construction of the region in 2012, shortly after Nikolai Merkushkin was appointed governor. The family contractor immediately began to actively "master" the local business.

The Samara Arena, built for the 2018 World Cup, the pride of the region, which was supposed to be Merkushkin's personal achievement, turned out to be one of the governor's main failures and led to his resignation. The cost of the facility is 22 billion rubles. Even during construction, Rostechnadzor identified more than 800 defects, according to the official response of the agency to a request from Izvestia.

According to the SPARK database, MordovCement was a major supplier of cement for the construction of the stadium. Its leaders Alexander Merkushkin and Sergey Merkushkin are the already mentioned brother, as well as the nephew of the head of the region.

One of the main plans was to bring as many Mordovian companies to the market as possible — three poultry farms went bankrupt at once under Merkushkin. The governor promised to build one, but the Sergiev poultry farm in the village of Kalinovka in the Samara region remained a long-term construction project. Now there is an empty hangar with iron and concrete floors, there is not even a roof. At the same time, according to the regional authorities, 4 billion rubles were spent from the budget on the construction of the poultry farm.

And Samara stores now sell Saransk products - for example, the very "Atemarsky poultry farm", which was owned by the governor's brother.

In which regions have officials "taken business under their wing"?

The Merkushkins are not the only family of officials who have seized the business of the regions entrusted to them. For example, Ivan Belozertsev, the ex-governor of the Penza Region, who was sentenced to 12 years in January 2024, created a business empire in the region back in the noughties. The eldest son got real estate and energy. Jr has the largest network of funeral agencies in the region.

The fields of activity of Alexander's eldest son's companies at different times ranged from the funeral business and real estate trading to the production of electricity. Now, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, shares in two legal entities have been registered for him: the Alef company, established to "buy and sell its own real estate," and the Penza Energy Center, specializing in the sale of electricity.

Also, according to SPARK, in the years when Ivan Belozertsev was still the head of Penza, his son Alexander, along with his mother Raisa, already owned the Charon funeral company. But after scandalous accusations appeared in the media of monopolizing the market of funeral services, Charon changed its owner.

In 2021, according to a source from Izvestia, citing data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Alexander owned 12 objects in Penza with a total cadastral value of about 30 million rubles, including the building of the Penza dental clinic. His wife owned 17 non-residential buildings, three plots of land and four apartments.

The governor's youngest son, Danila, according to the Rusprofile database, is listed as the head and co-founder of five legal entities at once: AL LLC (parking lots), Penzmarket (advertising), Radio Station (radio broadcasting), Sanlicoauto (car wash) and Doubleby Management Company (head office activities).

According to investigators, from June 2019 to September 2020, the governor himself, through intermediaries, received money and property worth 30 million rubles from Boris Shpigel, head of the Biotech group of pharmaceutical companies, for concluding state contracts for the supply of medicines, as well as general patronage in doing business in the region.

Mikhail Yurevich, ex—governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, is another example. The basis of his family's business is the food industry. He began his career as director of Chelyabinsk bakery No. 1. Also in the 1990s, he gained control of the Chelyabinsk pasta factory, as a result of which the Makfa company was founded with Sosnovsky KHP.

According to open data, the list of Yurevich enterprises is impressive. In addition to pasta factories, there are shopping malls, a hotel, cinemas, housing and communal services, automotive services, agribusiness, and gas supply companies. Through Makfu, they controlled more than 50% of the same Chelyabinsk Gas.

The ex-governor has been under criminal prosecution since March 20, 2017. Then Yurevich was charged in absentia in other cases. He is accused of accepting bribes and incitement to defamation. According to investigators, Yurevich, being the head of the Chelyabinsk region, received bribes from the Minister of Health of the region Vitaly Teslenko in the amount of 26 million rubles, and also incited his first deputy Oleg Grachev to spread slander about the activities of the chairman of the Chelyabinsk Regional Court Fedor Vyatkin. Yurevich was charged in absentia, by which time he had fled to the UK through Israel.

And in May 2024, the Central District Court of Chelyabinsk ruled in favor of the nationalization of JSC Makfa.

The lawyer of the Yurevichs told Izvestia that the demands of the Prosecutor General's Office are illegal and unfounded.

"The Prosecutor General's Office is trying to portray the Yurevich family and the companies they brought in as defendants as a kind of criminal syndicate," she said.

Why has corruption not been defeated so far?

Clannishness is a natural state of some officials, said Dmitry Zhuravlev, a researcher at the Institute of Regional Problems and a political scientist.

"Our economy cannot afford the luxury of mass looting by officials," he told Izvestia. — Because an official is able to steal much more than an ordinary citizen. Therefore, we must keep an eye on this, otherwise there simply won't be enough economy. They're such funny guys that they'll eat her whole. They just can't live any other way.

According to him, for example, he met Nikolai Merkushkin when he was an adviser to the office of the plenipotentiary representative in the Volga Federal District.

"He was quite a charming man when he wanted to be,— Dmitry Zhuravlev noted. — Very smart. but very much tied to the interests of his family, for him clannishness is a natural state of personality. He was very limited in terms of everything that went beyond the interests of the family.

In fact, the governor's relatives bankrupted enterprises and withdrew funds from them, the expert believes.

"These funds were their profits, not the profitable work of the enterprises themselves," he noted. — They replenish the coffers of their family and they do it with great pleasure. As I understand it, if the Central Bank has now undertaken an audit of the financial system, then the next step will be a comprehensive audit of the entire economy.

In recent years, many steps have been taken in Russia to increase the transparency of public administration and eliminate the causes of corruption, Ilya Rusyaev, Managing Partner of Rusyaev and Partners Law Firm, recalled.

"Mandatory declarations of income and expenses for civil servants have been introduced, control over public procurement has been strengthened, and digital technologies are being introduced that reduce opportunities for corrupt practices," he said.

According to him, the work preventing embezzlement and corruption certainly needs to be continued and strengthened, combining it with the improvement of legislative counteraction measures.