Sergey Khomyakov in Lazure
Throughout the past year, top managers of Russian oil and gas companies, one after another, died under suspicious circumstances. At the end of February 2022, the deputy general director for corporate security of the Unified Settlement Center of Gazprom allegedly committed suicide Alexander Tyulyakov. He was found dead in an annex garage in the guarded corporate settlement of Gazprom Leninsky in the Vyborgsky district of the Leningrad region, a suicide note was found next to the corpse.
Two months later, a 51-year-old vice president of Gazprombank was found dead in an apartment on Universitetsky Prospekt in Moscow. Vladislav Avaev – next to the bodies of his wife and minor daughter. TASS agency citing his source, he reported that, according to the investigation, Avaev himself killed his wife and daughter, and then committed suicide.
Even a year later, there is no clarity about the causes of these deaths, the results of the investigation, or the response of state-owned companies to them. Novaya Gazeta Europe, together with Transparency International – Russia, found out that these top managers worked in structures that, as we assume, are connected with financial fraud on multibillion-dollar contracts with Gazprom, the beneficiaries of which were the family of the deputy chairman of the gas monopoly and his close friends – people from the special services and the military.
Hotel for four
After the start of the NWO in Ukraine, Russia compiled a list of “unfriendly” countries. Basically, it included countries that are part of the NATO defense alliance or whose heads and governments opposed the special operation. Among them is Montenegro, which joined NATO back in 2017. Immediately after the SVO to Ukraine in February 2022, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic condemned him, and a large number of Russians who disagreed with what was happening emigrated to the country itself over the next year.
The absence of a visa regime has made Montenegro one of the most popular destinations for Russian tourists. The holiday season in the country lasts from May to October, at which time you can swim in the Adriatic Sea or in the Bay of Kotor. On the sea coast there is a large municipality of Herceg Novi with many high-class hotels.
One of them is the five-star Lazure Hotel. It is located on the first line in the town of Meljine and consists of two buildings of luxury and regular rooms and apartments, two restaurants, a spa center and a fitness center with a swimming pool. The hotel also has its own marina.
Staying overnight in such a hotel is not cheap: judging by the data of the Booking site for booking accommodation, which left Russia after the SVO for Ukraine, in March a day in a standard double room will cost about 10 thousand rubles, and accommodation in deluxe rooms or apartments can reach up to 30 thousand rubles per night. During the tourist season, prices are even higher: any double room costs from 20 thousand rubles.
The five-star Lazure Hotel, along with the marina and restaurants, belongs to the Montenegrin company Lazure Montenegro, registered in Herceg Novi. This company, in turn, was established by another – Imperio Holdings Limited, which owns 100% of Lazure.
The hotel began to be built in 2015, and after only three years, the construction was completed. The new complex is partially located in the historical buildings of the Lazaret fortress, built in the 18th century. According to the investment agreement, which is at the disposal of Transparency and New Europe, it was Imperio Holdings Limited that coordinated the technical conditions necessary for the construction of the hotel with the Montenegrin authorities in 2015, including obtaining permission from the committees responsible for the preservation of the country’s cultural heritage.
The building of the Infirmary in Meljin (XVIII century) – one of the buildings of the hotel LazureThe hotel does not hide some of its investors. One of them – Valery Pustarnakov — in 2015 brought there his collection of paintings by St. Petersburg realist artists. But the certificate of registration of Imperio Holdings Limited (also in our possession) indicates that the shares in the company are divided among four Russians: Valery Pustarnakov, Igor Kalaida, Sergei Martynov And Fedor Khomyakov. These four people are no longer listed in Lazure’s registration certificate, however, in the previous version of this document, the names of relatives of some of them appeared: for example, Martynov’s daughter, Anna, who is listed there as a manager, and Valery Pustarnakov’s brother, Vyacheslav, who not so long ago rested there, in Montenegro.
Brother Valery Pustarnakov VyacheslavAfter the start of the special operation, the accounts of Imperio Holdings Limited in Montenegro could be blocked on suspicion of money laundering, according to our sources. However, we were unable to document this information. Whether the proposed lockdown affected the Lazure Hotel is not known, but it was closed for a month in 2023. from January 4 to February 9– as stated, to “prepare for the season.”
In 2022, the co-owners of the company Fedor Khomyakov and Valery Pustarnakov, according to our source, could not explain to the financial intelligence of Montenegro the origin of at least 30 million euros, which they transferred to IHL accounts. To find out where the Russians got these suspicious amounts from, Montenegrin financial intelligence could turn to Russia for help through Interpol, says the same source for New Europe and Transparency. It also failed to be documented.
However, Russian government agencies have not yet responded in any way to the requests of the international organization. The reason may lie in the fact that all the owners of the Montenegrin company are united by belonging to the national treasure – the state company Gazprom.
The strongest friendship
Sergey Khomyakov has been with Gazprom since 2007 and currently holds the position of Deputy Chairman of the Management Board and Head of the Corporate Security Service. A native of the Republic of Karelia, Khomyakov is considered “Miller’s right hand” and a representative of the Leningrad-Karelian clan of Gazprom, which also includes several former and current employees of the FSB of the Leningrad Region and Karelia, among them, for example, the Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev.
“I will add what you do not know, but in time you will find out. Student teams are also the strongest friendship. 45 years have passed, and we still communicate, ”- boasted Sergei Khomyakov at a meeting with students of the Polytechnic University. Sergei Khomyakov graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute (LETI) in 1976, and later received a PhD in Economics. The same university, however, a year earlier, graduated and Valery Golubev – Former Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom, who was responsible for the domestic market and left his post in 2019. Since 1979 Golubev served in the Leningrad KGB, then, in 1991, he moved to work in the administration of St. Petersburg, and from there to Gazprom, where he first headed the company’s subsidiaries, and in 2006 became a member of the board.
Khomyakov, according to sources from Transparency and New Europe, also served in the KGB of the Republic of Karelia, which may explain the gap in his public biography from 1976 to 2002.
Khomyakov mentioned this period of work in his investigation “Getters” and the publication “Project”, calling Khomyakov a former FSB officer. Perhaps it was during his service that he met Nikolai Patrushev, who, since 1974, was also an employee of the KGB of the Leningrad Region, and in 1992 was transferred to Khomyakov’s native republic to the post of Minister of Security.
In 2017, at Gazprom in St. Petersburg, Patrushev’s hometown, appeared own volleyball club “Zenith”. It is noteworthy that by this time Gazprom already had one Zenit – this was the name taken by the team from Kazan, which at the time of the creation of the twin club was already playing in the volleyball super league. The Supervisory Board of St. Petersburg “Zenith” was headed by the head of the security service of the company, already known to us, Sergey Khomyakov, and the All-Russian Volleyball Federation became the sponsor of the club along with Gazprom.
Specialists with many years of experience
Since 2003, Khomyakov, a former KGB officer, has been involved in Gazprom both in the general security of the corporation and its subsidiaries, and in organizing and verifying the certification of the state-owned company and organizations cooperating with it. There are several companies that provide services for the provision of certified software, but only one of them, which is a certification authority, is included in the so-called Gazprom Certification Authority Network (CCA).
The CMS is, in fact, a part of the structure of Gazprom, which has access to secure corporate information and the company’s system. The CMS includes centers that have received permission from the Gazprom Corporate Certification Center to work with its electronic signature and keys to it. Basically, enterprises from the structure of Gazprom have the right to do this, but among them there is one commercial trusted center – Gazinformservice Certification Center LLC.
In the public domain there is no list of requirements that the center must meet in order to get into the CSC. However, in order to obtain state accreditation, according to the Federal Law “On Electronic Signature”, cons_doc_LAW_112701/606f47cb390e18423146cdb18f7ee51f8ea06194/” target=”_blank”>, you must have at least 1 billion rubles of your own funds or 500 million rubles if you have branches in at least three-quarters of Russian regions.
The Gazinformservice Certification Center (GIS), which is part of the Gazprom STC, is officially accredited by the Ministry of Digital Development and operates according to license from the FSB of Russia. Thanks to this license, it can develop, produce and distribute cryptographic tools, encrypt information, and maintain information and telecommunications systems.
The GIS certification center was established in 2011 by Gazinformservice LLC, but now 90% of the authorized capital of the certification center belongs to Valery Pustarnakov, the same owner of a part of the Montenegrin company Lazure Montenegro.
Also, according to sources from Transparency and New Europe, Fyodor Khomyakov, the 45-year-old son of the head of Gazprom’s security service, works at Gazinformservice. This is also confirmed by the fact that the telephone number of Khomyakov Jr. is recorded with his contacts: for example, “Gis Fedor Sergeevich.” As we know, he holds the position of financial director in the company.
Fedor Khomyakov and Elena TreskovaGazinformservice is not only a trusted center of Gazprom, but also concludes government contracts through auctions with the same Gazprom and its subsidiaries – Orenburggaztrans, Gazprom Dobycha Urengoy, Gazprom Mezhregiongaz and others. True, the company often wins contracts for significant amounts as the only supplier. Judging by the descriptions of public procurement, Gazinformservice installs security software and is engaged in system maintenance and quality control. In just five years – from 2014 to 2019 – Gazinformservice Gazinformservice, as stated on site, was founded by “specialists in information technology and information security, with many years of experience in this field.” Among them is Valery Pustarnakov, who is also on the list of beneficiaries of the Montenegrin company Lazure Montenegro, he was previously listed on the Gazinformservice website, where Khomyakov Jr. works as a general director.
LLC TSO also has state contracts, and only with Gazprom and enterprises that provide services to Gazprom, for example, with JSC Giprogaztsentr. All these contracts were concluded with TCO LLC as the sole supplier, that is, no competition was held before the decision was made, despite the fact that under these contracts TCO did not always supply unique products: for example, were purchased annual licenses for antivirus “Kaspersky”. From 2017 to 2019, the company, owned by Kalaida and Pustarnakov, earned more than two billion rubles from the supply of information security equipment to Gazprom.
The same Pustarnakov in 2007 established another company – the Ural Center for Security Systems (UCSB). The services it provides are similar to those offered by other companies in this field – technologies for protecting information security and maintaining such systems. The Moscow office of the UCSB is located in the Federation Tower in Moscow City, while the main offices are in Yekaterinburg. Surprisingly, the UCSB calls Gazinforminvest, which belongs to the same person as the center, its official dealer.
The Ural Center concludes contracts both with government agencies, for example, with the MFC or the FSB in the Sverdlovsk Region, and with Gazprom.
For several years of such cooperation with the state corporation, the UTSSB earned more than two billion rubles: the center was the only supplier for regional enterprises “Gazprom” and the parent organization.
But this is not the last company linking the Montenegrin Lazure Montenegro with the Russian energy giant. The Research and Testing Institute for Integrated Security Systems (NII SOKB) cooperates with Gazprom on information security issues. The institute’s flagship product is its own SafePhone platform for managing and securing the enterprise’s mobile ecosystem. The research institute has also created another program, SafeOperator, which automates pre-shift and post-shift medical examinations and monitoring the condition of employees. This company also has a license from the FSB to work with encrypted information, and it is allowed to manufacture and sell “special technical equipment designed to secretly obtain information.”
The Research Institute of the SOKB is headed by a native of Kharkov and a native of the Research Institute of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Igor Kalaida, the one whose name is also among the owners of the Montenegrin Lazure Montenegro. Judging according to the website of the research institute, Gazprom is almost their main customer: the institute ensured the security of the information system both for the head office and for other enterprises of the state company, and even for Gazprom Telecom. Research Institute SOKB can examine the customer’s facilities, analyze threats to its security, implement and maintain systems. The institute also certifies other companies. On government contracts concluded with Gazprom from 2014 to 2017, the research institute earned more than two billion rubles, and it received almost all government contracts as the only supplier.
NII SOKB is registered and located in the south-west of Moscow in the 9 Acrov business center, where, among other things, several offices of Gazprom Neft are located, in which the company’s structures are responsible for digital solutions and corporate and regional sales. Another company is registered there, in which Igor Kalaida is a co-founder – Alliance Real Estate LLC. Another founder is Sergey Martynov. During registration, they indicated the rental of real estate as the main activity, adding as additional activities the already familiar Kalaida work with computers and equipment.
Company structureMartynov has a daughter, Anna, who is mentioned in the documents of the Montenegrin company Lazure Montenegro as its manager. The girl’s page on VKontakte also states that since 2015 she has been working with IHL (Imperio Holdings Limited). In the same place, Anna jokingly wrote that she had served in the Russian Embassy in Pakistan as the daughter of an intelligence officer. Most likely, her father Sergey Martynov, like Sergey Khomyakov, used to be an employee of the special services. Martynov also partially owns SIS Group LLC, located at the same address and similarly working in the field of computer security. He shares the company with several co-founders, including Sergey Grudanov, who is its CEO, and among the partners of SIS Group (SIS Group) indicated already familiar to us “Gazinformservis”.
Family contract
On February 25, 2022, a day after the start of the special operation, the body of Gazprom top manager Alexander Tyulakov was found in one of the houses of the “Gazprom” village of Leninsky in the Leningrad Region. In the state-owned company, Tyuliakov, like Sergey Khomyakov, was responsible for security – however, already in the Unified Settlement Center, which is considered the treasury of Gazprom. There, the deceased served as deputy head.
According to investigators, Tyulyakov killed himself, but his suicide was not the first among the top managers of oil and gas companies: before that, Leonid Shulman from Gazprom Invest had died in the same village.
After the death of Tyulakov (Tyulyakov) “New Newspaper” referring to Fontanka.ru, she reported that on the eve of his death, he was seen “heavily beaten.” “Under what circumstances a top manager of Gazprom could have been beaten remains a mystery,” the journalists stated. However, sources from New Europe and Transparency link Tyulakov’s death to problems with the Montenegrin company Imperio, but his name does not appear anywhere in the company’s documents.
Tulyakov’s career path is similar to the one that Sergei Khomyakov went through: although the deceased was not a native Petersburger, his whole life was connected with this city. Like many members of the security services, Tyulyakov left the special services: he graduated from the Academy of the FSB, served in the troops and bodies of the KGB and the FSB for more than 20 years. Since 1999, Tyulyakov began working at the current Gazprom Transgaz St. Petersburg, where in 2009 he took the position of Deputy General Director, and then Deputy for Corporate Protection and Personnel Management.
Tyulyakov has been working in the Unified Settlement Center since its inception, the Gazprom Treasury as an independent body appeared in 2015. Until 2019, the ERC was headed by Evgeny Dulin, then he was replaced by a certain Denis Boldyrev, but all this time Tyulyakov was responsible for security at the center.
The ERC, where one of the dead top managers worked, also turned out to be connected with the deputy chairman of Gazprom, Khomyakov. The main “security guard” Sergei Khomyakov has two children. The eldest son’s name is Fedor, and his son is again Sergey. The Khomyakov family seems to have a tradition of calling men by these names. Khomyakov Sr. also has a younger daughter, Daria, who is registered with one of the family’s apartments in St. Petersburg. In the mid-2010s, Daria got married and changed her last name, becoming Boldyreva.
How did you manage to find out “New Europe” and “Transparency”, Daria And Denis Boldyrevy got married in 2013. Nothing is known about Denis himself: there are no photographs of him on the net, or at least a biography with indications of places of work before Boldyrev came to the ERC as first deputy director immediately after the center was created.
Purchases of the Unified Settlement Center, which is headed by Khomyakov’s son-in-law, have been classified in recent years. It is still not clear why the state-owned company Gazprom needs a separate settlement center – not all of Gazprom’s state purchases are carried out through it, but only some, and the SRC itself does not specify the scope of its activities in any way. Moreover, all state contracts, the customer of which was the ERC, were concluded under the procurement procedure from a single supplier. In many of them, the subject of procurement is rather vague – for example, “provision of remote consulting services” worth half a million rubles. “New Europe” and “Transparency” managed to find out the winner in one of (one of) procurement with hidden data: it turned out to be Gazinformservice already known to us. It is possible that companies associated with the Khomyakov family also won in other purchases, but it is impossible to establish this for sure.
In addition, it is known that the ERC, which is headed by Denis Boldyrev, concludes state contracts with the GIS UC owned by Gazinformservice, which is owned by friends of the Khomyakov family. Again, it is impossible to find out the exact amount of the concluded contracts, since the center does not always disclose suppliers. At the same time, at least a billion rubles pass through the SRC every year.
Novaya Gazeta Europe contacted Denis Boldyrev, who, in response to all questions about the Imperio and Lazure Montenegro companies, the death of Alexander Tyulakov and his marriage to Daria Khomyakova, repeated “no”, and then completely hung up.
Khomyakov Sr. not only arranged the lives of former colleagues and business partners, but also took care of the future of his children. His daughter Daria, according to the data we have, worked or still works at Gazprombank – information about her is also not in the public domain. Vice President of Gazprombank Vladislav Avaev committed suicide two months after Tyulakov’s suicide.
Khomyakov’s son Fedor also not only holds the position of financial director of Gazinformservice, which cooperates with Gazprom, but is the founder or co-owner of several companies – Datajail and Science-Service-Medicine.
“Datajail” Khomyakov Jr., like other companies associated with the Khomyakov family, provides information security services. The organization is headed by Sergei Likhomanenko from St. Petersburg, and he also cooperates with Gazinformservice and even receives awards for good work at the end of the year. An even more interesting story is connected with another company, where Fedor Khomyakov is also a co-founder, Nauka-Service-Medicine.
Excursion to medicine
Science-Service-Medicine was established back in 1993, when Khomyakov Jr. was only 16 years old. In 2002, four people were its owners: the current deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom, Sergei Khomyakov, Alexei Vlasov, Andrei Pimenov and Igor Polikarpov. By age, these men are quite close – they are from 60 to 70 years old, and they are all Petersburgers. In 2009, after Sergey Khomyakov became the head of Gazprom’s security service, he transferred his 25% stake in the company to his son Fedor.
Science-Service-Medicine is part of the so-called Troll group of companies, but the domain belonging to it is inactive and leads to project page on the game “Minecraft”.
Judging by the date of the news on the company’s website, it has not been updated since at least the end of 2013 – then NSM announced work on the site, which, apparently, is still being done.
Perhaps the four men were interested in the medical business because of the education and activities of their wives. At least two – Andrei Pimenov and Igor Polikarpov – are married to women who studied at medical schools. According to information from their personal VKontakte pages, Elena Pimenova Graduated from St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University (SPbGPMA), and Tatyana Polikarpova — First St. Petersburg State Medical University named after I. P. Pavlov (PSPbGMU). Pimenova now even has her own podology center, PodoProf, registered to the NSM-Clinic company, whose name is similar to the same Science-Service-Medicine LLC, once opened by her husband together with Sergey Khomyakov.
Elena PimenovaNauka-Service-Medicine, founded by Khomyakov, allegedly distributes equipment for cardiology, neonatology and intensive care. At the same legal address where Nauka-Service-Medicine is registered, there is another company, NS-Medicine. It, unlike the twin company, really works. NS-Medicine belongs to the same people as Science-Service-Medicine, with the exception of Fedor Khomyakov: he is no longer among the co-owners of the company. “NS-Medicine” is headed by the son of the brother of its owner Igor Polikarpov – Sergey. The company received government contracts from subsidiaries of Gazprom until 2018, but its official website posted positive reviews from Gazprom branches, also dated 2019 and 2021.
The structure of Khomyakov companiesOn the supply of medical equipment and consumables, NS-Medicine did not earn much compared to other enterprises owned by close people of Sergei Khomyakov: the total amount of government contracts concluded by it is at least 208 million rubles. “NS-Medicine” presented and on the platform for electronic trading of Gazprombank. In 2004, the Nauka-Service-Medicine company founded another company, Stroyreanimatsia, which also sells medical devices and equipment. Then, Elena Pimenova and Tatyana Polikarpova, already familiar to us, joined the number of co-owners of the company, and by 2015 Andrey Pimenov himself, who once founded Science-Service-Medicine, was among them. In a little more than ten years, Stroyreanimatsia has concluded about 400 government contracts for a total amount of almost four billion rubles.
However, unlike other companies, it did not cooperate with Gazprom, preferring government contracts with budget organizations: maternity hospitals, clinics and city hospitals.
However, if we calculate the sum of all government contracts concluded by Gazprom with companies close to Sergey Khomyakov, we get a little more than six billion rubles – even without taking into account the proceeds of Stroyreanimatsia, which at least did not conclude contracts with the state company directly. TSO alone, allegedly created specifically for such contracts, earned about a billion rubles from them in one year.
Final Sale
When the financial intelligence of Montenegro demanded an explanation from the co-owner of Imperio Holdings Limited and the Lazure hotel Fyodor Khomyakov about the origin of the funds transferred to the company’s accounts, he referred specifically to Nauka-Service-Medicine LLC and some “profit on the Russian stock exchange.” Then Khomyakov Jr. was able to document only transfers in the amount of 211 thousand euros from personal accounts, which turned out to be his personal income for four years of work, from 2013 to 2017, and 500 thousand euros from Nauka-Service-Medicine LLC. But these amounts were only a small part of the money that the Montenegrin special services had questions about: in just a few years, Fedor Khomyakov transferred 15 million euros to foreign accounts of Imperio Holdings Limited.
Obviously, Khomyakov’s answer did not suit financial intelligence, therefore, according to our source, the company’s accounts were frozen until he could explain the origin of the transferred funds. “Science-Service-Medicine”, the share of which Khomyakov Sr. once transferred to his son, indeed, could not earn so much money even in a few years: the company’s profit in recent years did not exceed several tens of millions of rubles, and the sum of all its assets is only close to to 100 million rubles.
At the end of 2021, Lazure Montenegro, according to the company’s documents, for some reason began to sell the apartments it owns. About the same in December 2022 told former hotel manager Anna Martynova, daughter Sergei Martynov. The girl explained that in addition to the hotel, Lazure Montenegro had its own furniture store, which furnished the apartments. “Only one of the 58 apartments was sold unfurnished (only with a kitchen and a wardrobe), all other buyers, if at the beginning they had ambitious plans to furnish everything on their own, then then inevitably surrendered to our salon. Well, partly it was made just for inspiration, ”she wrote.
Furniture showroom in Lazur
