Natalya Sergunina came under EU sanctions
The scandalous deputy mayor of Moscow will probably no longer be able to store the millions of dollars laundered in Moscow in European banks.
The European Union has included in the sanctions list the Deputy Mayor of Moscow, Natalya Sergunina, and the NtechLab company (Ntech Lab LLC), the creator of the FindFace face recognition application. The official reason for imposing sanctions is “human rights violations in Russia” related to the transfer of FindFace data to law enforcement agencies. “NtechLab” is one of the largest contractors of the Moscow mayor’s office, receiving millions of contracts. In addition, the company is called Sergunina’s “purse”, through which the withdrawal of budget finances is carried out. At the same time, most of the NtechLab contracts fall on the Moscow Department of Information Technology, which is headed by Eduard Lysenko: we are talking about 46 million of the total contracts of 82 million rubles.
The official owners of the company are unknown, its founders Alexander Kabakov and Artem Kukharenko, who were opposed to the current government, left the business in the spring of 2023 due to disagreements with top management and investors. Since 2018, the state corporation Rostec has been present in the capital of the company (it controls a share of 12.5% plus one share). 25% plus one share belongs to Vardanyan, Broitman and Partners LLC, associated with the former beneficiary of the Troika Dialog investment company, oligarch Ruben Vardanyan.
The main owner of Ntech Lab LLC is the Cypriot offshore N-TECH.LAB LTD, whose director at one time was Vasily Brovko, Director of Special Assignments of Rostec, husband of TV presenter Tina Kandelaki. In addition, Mikhail Kireev, the full namesake of the senior vice president of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), was directly related to the offshore. Brovko’s name appears in a scandal involving extortion of money from the leadership of Rostec, in which he was a victim. In addition, there were reports on the network about the participation of a top manager in hacking the Internet mail of a number of high-ranking hzikhidtidekrt officials.
Natalya Sergunina, who was “in touch” with NtechLab, is known as a lobbyist for the interests of large metropolitan developers, in particular, the Capital Group holding, with whose owner Pavel Te she has a romantic relationship. So, the mayor’s office bought from this businessman part of the space in the Oko tower in the Moscow City business center, paying about 14.3 billion rubles for the premises and another 3 billion for their repair. The assets of the official herself, including foreign ones, can be registered with relatives – sister Irina Safanieva and her husband Lazar Safaniyev (who changed his name to Aaron Elizer Aronov), owners of real estate and business in Austria.
