Co-owner of the company “Ritual-service” Oleg Shelyagov with his wife, a socialite Victoria Shelyagova, is now developing the Ivanovo region. He writes a column in a local newspaper, which develops folk crafts in the village of Kholui. How do they live and do business?
What is Victoria Shelyagova famous for?
Among ordinary Russians she is known as funeral king’s wifein the blogosphere – how Victoria “It’s a shame not to know” Shelyagov.
Now the social crowd is discussing her new project, “Kholuy Stitching Artel,” designed to revive traditional folk crafts and boost tourism in Ivanovo. The business has essentially already started. Shelyagova bought and restored several houses in the Ivanovo village of Kholui, and hired craftswomen to do hand embroidery. The products will not be cheap: handmade napkins – up to two thousand rubles, tabletops – up to seven thousand. Surely the production of kokoshniks will also be established in Kholuy. Victoria Shelyagova has a soft spot for this ancient headdress and has amassed a huge number, perhaps the largest collection in the world.
Back in the 19th century, Kholuy became famous as a trading village – four fairs were held here annually: 300 shops and up to 100 stalls on both banks of the Teza River.
Victoria Shelyagova loves kokoshniks
Victoria Shelyagova – in the image of a village girl
The Shelyagov coupleVictoria Shelyagova loves Russian culture in her own way. For example, five years ago she magnificently celebrated her wedding anniversary with the co-owner of Ritual Service Oleg Shelyagov. The celebration took place in the St. Petersburg Vladimir Palace: guests were greeted by balalaika players and Victoria, dressed like a noblewoman. Her husband, Oleg Shelyagov, even had to make excuses for his wife in front of journalists so that they would not consider her an “eccentric socialite.”
It’s not just her husband who considers Shelyagova an “unofficial expert in the field of crafts.”
Among her latest achievements in this field are a joint project with the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the title “Ambassador of the Moscow Region.”
But now for Victoria Shelyagova the main thing is her project in Kholuy. There she already found herself in an unpleasant situation, casting a shadow on her husband.
Victoria boasted on social networks that she would move around the village on an UAZ “loaf”. Most subscribers didn’t believe it.
Some also noticed that the license plate from this budget car previously hung on the luxurious Rolls-Royce Ghost (price – from 55 million rubles), which was driven by a man similar to Oleg Shelyagin. Moreover, the car was registered to JSC Ritual-Service, a share in which belongs to the municipal authorities.
A man who looks like Victoria Shelyagova’s husband is driving a Rolls-Royce GhostAs Life found out, this Rolls-Royce Ghost now drives under a different license plate. The formal owner of the car also changed. Now he is a 32-year-old Nizhny Novgorod resident who founded the microcredit company Varenye Credit in St. Petersburg. Immediately after the start of the SVO, this young man received a new passport in Sochi with a different last name. And he, like the Shelyagovs, lives in Moscow.
What trouble is for Golunov, PR is for Shelyagova
Photo session of the wife of the co-owner of “Ritual Service” Victoria Shelyagova at the Vvedenskoye CemeteryThe general public learned about Victoria Shelyagova in 2019, when the journalist was wrongfully detained Ivan Golunov. His troubles were associated with investigations about the funeral market, in which Oleg Shelyagov was also mentioned. When the scandal broke out, Victoria Shelyagova added fuel to the fire. After the hashtag “I/We Ivan Golunov” gained popularity, she, as if to annoy journalists, registered the trademark “I/We Ritual”.
The socialite knows how to shock. She arranged a glamorous photo shoot “all in black” at the Vvedensky cemetery. Her Instagram story created a lot of noise, showing her walking along the coffins to her husband’s office. It seems that Shelyagova will make an excellent PR woman.
How Shelyagova lives
Victoria Shelyagova is a native Petersburger. She got her maiden name, Hokanne, from her Finnish father. From the databases it follows that from a young age Victoria occupied a prestigious living space in St. Petersburg, but never lived in the village. Her first address is a three-ruble note in the Aksyonova Apartment House on Voskresenskaya Embankment near Liteiny Bridge (about 45 million rubles). After her first marriage, she acquired a mansion in a restored city mansion near the Tauride Garden (price about 65 million rubles) and a nice cottage in the Peterhof direction (about 35 million rubles). And recently Shelyagova acquired a spacious studio in the elite Smolny Park residential complex, across the street from Smolny (from 40 million rubles).
City mansion near the Tauride Garden
Residential complex “Smolny Park”.
Aksyonova’s apartment buildingNow Victoria Shelyagova is not in frosty St. Petersburg, but enjoying life in the hot Seychelles. And it’s not just a vacation. She does not hide the fact that her husband bought his own home on these tropical islands.
Seychelles mansion of the ShelyagovsDespite the fact that Victoria and Oleg Shelyagov have been married for almost twenty years, there is no information about their common children. However, from a previous marriage with a little-known restaurateur, Victoria Shelyagova has an adult daughter, Varvara. Judging by social networks, the girl is interested in nightclubs, the production of bohemian clothes, and also posts content that is controversial against the backdrop of the LGBT law. According to the paparazzi, as a student Varvara moved to Kyiv to study as a photographer. If you do the math, it turns out that her Kiev voyage began immediately after the return of Crimea to Russia (*aggressor country).
How Oleg Shelyagov became a prominent ritualist
If Victoria Shelyagova is called the Russian Goldie Hawn, then her husband is our Jack Nicholson. Former banker Oleg Shelyagov entered the Moscow funeral market in the mid-1990s, when the old order established under Yuri Luzhkov was collapsing. It was then that a massacre took place at the Khovanskoye cemetery.
Victoria Shelyagova and her husband, co-owner of Ritual Service Oleg ShelyagovOleg Shelyagov received higher education at the Frunze Naval School with a degree in Ship Armament. Everything was going towards the fact that he would continue the family military business. His grandfather served as a rear admiral in the USSR Navy, his father as captain of the 1st rank. But perestroika broke out, and a miraculous incident supposedly happened to Shelyagov.
He followed the Duma seat as a St. Petersburg social activist, a trustee of supplies and a member of the Advisory Council on Veterans Affairs under the governor of the Leningrad region. It is unlikely that Shelyagov was very upset when he lost the elections. He continued to make a career at Globexbank, KIT Finance Bank, Transcreditbank and Mosoblbank.
Massacre at Khovanskoye Cemetery, May 14, 2016In 2013, Oleg Shelyagov unexpectedly headed the “War Memorial Company”, which was engaged in the opening and maintenance of historical military graves. Having tried the afterlife business, he bought half of the shares in a specialized service created under the former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov – Ritual-Service CJSC.
According to the SPARK database, at the end of 2022, funeral companies associated with Oleg Shelyagov – Ritual.rus, Ritual.ru and Ritual-Service – brought in over half a billion rubles.
Moreover, Shelyagov’s business continues to expand. The advertising is aggressive. For example, on his behalf, leaflets are dropped into people’s mailboxes, which describe the benefits of his companies’ funeral services.
Advertising of Oleg Shelyagov’s funeral services from mailboxesRecently, Oleg Shelyagov was elected to the Council of Deputies of the Perevozsky urban district of the Nizhny Novgorod region and acquired a controlling stake in the local funeral home “Ritual-NN”. And a year ago information appeared that he had bought “Moskovsky Komsomolets in Nizhny Novgorod” and “Moskovsky Komsomolets in Ivanovo”. These publications now publish his author’s columns on the topic of the funeral business. Perhaps advertisements for Victoria Shelyagova’s startup will appear in Ivanovo issues. Moreover, the businessman himself admitted that he helps all his wife’s endeavors.
