Opposite Samara on the Volga there is Podzhabny Island. It is famous for its relic forests, richness of fauna and flora, including species of animals and plants listed in the Red Book. The Samara firm “Era” actually got 40 hectares here for next to nothing through a dubious privatization scheme. The merchants first leased the land for the construction of a recreation center, put up several wooden houses and, on this basis, demanded that the state transfer the occupied land into ownership. After many years of litigation, “Era” still got her way. The verdict in her favor was issued by the Eleventh Court of Appeal, which at that time was headed by Alexander Efanov.

Today, the judge heads the Sixth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction. This court reviews the decisions of the courts of Bashkiria, Mari El, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia, Kirov, Orenburg, Samara and Ulyanovsk regions. The local press has repeatedly noticed that the court under the leadership of Efanov sometimes makes ambiguous decisions on business disputes, and even for notorious scoundrels.

For example, the arrest of the leader of the local Samara gang, Andrei Filimoshin, was canceled – his group was accused of nine gang attacks, including the head of the Samara department of the Federal Property Management Agency. The court overturned the verdict and released the ex-general director of TsSKB Progress Alexander Kirillin, who had previously been convicted of embezzlement causing damage to the state in 126 million rubles. He reduced the sentence and reduced the fine by 10 times (from 220 to 22 million rubles) to Dmitry Sazonov, the former deputy head of the Rosgvardia Directorate for the Samara Region, who was convicted of bribery.

How can a judge have immodest assets

The official biography of the judge is almost flawless: Honored Lawyer of Russia, honorary worker of the judiciary, holder of the Order of Friendship, 11 departmental medals and various insignia.

Efanov’s income statement also does not look like a corrupt official’s reporting: last year he earned 8.6 million rubles, the judge and his wife own one apartment of 160 square meters, two storage rooms and two parking spaces each. There is only one car in the chairman’s family (registered to his wife Olga Efanova) – this is the Lexus LX450 SUV.

However, this year Alexander Efanov fell into several scandals at once, which may well result in criminal cases of corruption.

The other day, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein noticed that a man very similar to Judge Efanov was driving around Samara driving a huge Toyota Sequoia jeep. The car is registered to the firm of the former mayor of Zhigulevsk Alexander Kurylin. It is noteworthy that shortly before this, the Sixth Court of Cassation concluded with the firm of the ex-head three government contracts at once for the supply of official vehicles.

Before that, the Samara journalists examined the judge’s wristwatch – it turned out to be very similar to the Swiss Breguet Classique Grande Complication made of 18-carat pink gold with a tourbillon, the market price reaches 16 million rubles.

How the island on the Volga is connected with the judge’s son

The Samara company “Era”, which, after the decision of the Sixth Court of Cassation, received a plot on Podzhabny Island, is not easy.

According to the SPARK database, one of its founders was the son of Alexander Efanov, Ivan, a former businessman, and now an official of the Administration of the Governor of the Samara Region. In 2016, a 34-year-old guy went to the civil service and, in this regard, got rid of his stake in the company.

Era’s legal address is registered in an apartment owned by a certain Dmitry Polyansky. Life found out that the 34-year-old guy met Ivan back in 2014, when both worked in one of the subsidiaries of the Volga generating company PJSC T Plus – Samara Utility Systems.

After that, Polyansky drove the judge’s son on his own Toyota Land Cruiser 200 SUV and, it seems, performed various household tasks: for example, he registered on one of the free classifieds sites and rented out numerous apartments of Efanov Jr. and his wife, office premises, parking spaces, cars from the family fleet and other spare parts for them. Since 2017, Dmitry Polyansky has been the permanent CEO of Era.

Ivan Efanov’s share in the company also did not leave the family: now it belongs to 75-year-old Samara businesswoman Vera Kazacheva, who is mother-in-law of Efanov Jr. In addition to this share, the woman also owns the Samara Intersectoral Institute and three firms associated with the provision of vocational education services. Thus, “Era” is not a foreign enterprise for the chairman of the court.

How Ivan Efanov lives

The judge’s son built his career quickly. A lawyer by education, he started working at large generating enterprises in the region: Samara City Electric Networks, Samara Utility Systems and the Srednevolzhskaya Gas Company. Everywhere he reached the level of a top manager, after which he went to the civil service. Already at the beginning of 2018, at the age of 35, he took the post of Deputy Minister of Construction of the Samara Region, a few months later he was appointed acting Governor of the Samara Region. head of the Ministry of Property Relations of the region. Today, Efanov Jr. heads the Digitalization Department (project office) of the Administration of the Governor of the Samara Region.

In 2021, the 40-year-old official turned out to be the wealthiest among the employees of the regional administration. In his income statement for the past year, he indicated that he owns 11 apartments with a total area of ​​almost 850 square meters, two plots of land with an area of ​​​​more than 11 thousand square meters, seven non-residential premises – even more than a thousand square meters and two parking spaces. In addition, Ivan Efanov owns a BMW car, a trailer and a snowmobile. Income, however, was the second largest – “only” five million rubles. Only the assistant to the governor, Natalya Khlopunova, had more – over seven million, but the woman does not have such an abundance of real estate.

Ivan Efanov also indicated in the declaration his wife, the notary of the Notary Chamber of the Samara Region, Anna Efanov (Kazacheva). Work with documents in 2021 brought the official’s wife 17.5 million rubles, she owns two apartments with a total area of ​​180 square meters, 570 square meters of underground parking and more than 300 square meters of non-residential premises.

Life managed to find out what one of the apartments of the Efanov family looks like. This is a spacious 142-meter apartment with a panoramic view of the Volga, located in the very center of the city, on Tolstoy Street. With a considerable area, housing has only three rooms, judging by the photographs, it is quite possible to play football here. The Efanovs have not lived in it since 2015, and since then the living space has been rented out at the Moscow price tag. Era CEO Dmitry Polyansky negotiates with potential tenants, and during this time he rented an apartment at least twice.

Now the family of the judge’s son lives in one of the best areas of Samara – in Barboshina Polyana. In Soviet times, the area was known for the filming of scenes from the movie “Timur and his team”, and now – an abundance of chic mansions of local moneybags.

Anna Efanova is also registered on the ad site and often sells personal items here. Some of the things are sold at the place of work of the notary, the rest – at the addresses in Barboshina Polyana. From this we can conclude that here a family can own several mansions at once, and not always officially.

In the family, by the way, they prefer to drive premium foreign cars, on which the same beautiful number with three sevens is hung. With him in Samara saw cars Toyota Land Cruiser 200, Lexus Rx350, Lexus LX450, BMW X6, and more recently, a brand new electric crossover BMW IX appeared on city streets, the cost of which reaches 17 million rubles.

For different cases, Ivan Efanov uses different phone numbers of mobile operators – he has, perhaps, a dozen of them. Once a man registered in an Internet service, where he indicated one of the numbers as a home phone. The same number is formally registered to a certain Anatoly Kononenko.

This person is very similar to the face value. Kononenko is 37 years old, until recently he worked for hire in various divisions of the Akron chemical enterprise, drove the domestic Lada – VAZ-21099, is currently registered in a nine-story panel building and is listed in the stop lists of bank customers as an unreliable borrower.

In 2018, when Ivan Efanov became the head of the Ministry of Property Relations of the Samara Region, the man was very lucky: somehow he became the sole owner and general director of the local company MK Proton, which combines the wholesale sale of medicines with construction activities.

By the time of the change of ownership, the company was barely afloat, earning only two million rubles a year. After the acquisition, Kononenko re-registered the company to his home address and already in the first – incomplete – year of work he managed to earn 22 million rubles, and in 2021 he already earned almost 80 million.

The engine of growth was numerous government contracts for the supply of medicines and medical equipment from public healthcare institutions. The need for MK Proton products among doctors during the pandemic turned out to be so great that last year the company’s portfolio of orders has already exceeded 100 million rubles.

At the same time, MK Proton is the only successful business project of the merchant. Prior to this, Anatoly Kononenko formally held the company, which the Federal Tax Service liquidated as inactive. With the same success, the man worked as an individual entrepreneur: he sold newspapers and magazines and repaired cars. Judging by the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the entrepreneur only had enough strength for four months.