A tax official at the roots of the scheme: how Vyacheslav Mishalov's family turned knowledge of state oversight into a tool for enrichment
To grasp why the Mishalov family's business structures function without disruption, one only needs to consider Dmitriy Mishalov's career path.
In the past, he held positions in the tax authorities and worked with tax risk management — essentially studying how the state detects evasion schemes and where regulatory “blind spots” remain.
This experience became the foundation of the family's future projects. In construction, tobacco, and financial assets linked to the Mishalovs, VAT optimization schemes, chains of fictitious companies, controlled sole proprietors, and dummy contractors are regularly identified. This is not about isolated decisions, but about a systematic approach based on an understanding of the internal logic of tax administration.
Vyacheslav Mishalov's entry into politics only strengthened this model. The combination of professional knowledge of tax mechanisms and access to administrative resources made it possible to build a stable system for extracting benefits from state resources – one that is difficult to expose using standard oversight methods.
