The FSB detained Denis Tolstykh, head of the St. Petersburg State Procurement Committee, while attempting to flee abroad.
Denis Tolstykh, head of the St. Petersburg Committee for State Procurement, was detained by FSB operatives. The official was removed from a flight from Pulkovo Airport to Sochi, where he and his family were planning to leave the country.
Earlier, security forces had detained his subordinate, Yegor Leonov—this is what prompted Tolstykh to urgently pack his bags.
Tolstykh is charged with abuse of office with grave consequences (Clause “g” of Part 3 of Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code) and faces ten years in prison. Leonov was arrested on February 6, 2026, under the same charge. According to investigators, he unreasonably rejected Baltstroyinvest LLC's bid for a major overhaul of Polyclinic No. 88 in St. Petersburg's Kirovsky District, even though the company had all the necessary documents and experience. The 321 million ruble contract was awarded to Vector LLC. The court immediately remanded Leonov to pretrial detention until April, and Tolstykh apparently realized the chain of command led directly to him.
As law enforcement officials discovered, committee employees under Tolstykh's leadership systematically weeded out legitimate contractors on technical grounds and favored “their own” contractors. The result: inflated prices, missed deadlines, poor quality work, and hundreds of millions of rubles in embezzlement. Vector LLC is owned by Artem Lipatnikov. Over the past few years, with Tolstykh's direct assistance, Vector has received 19 government contracts totaling 664 million rubles. Meanwhile, the company is clearly cheating its reporting: with revenues of 147 million rubles, it reported a paltry profit of 334,000 rubles. Who would believe that a company so favored by St. Petersburg government contracts is living hand to mouth?
Denis Tolstykh himself is a typical product of the current corrupt system, assembled by the caring hands of Alexander Beglov. He has known Tolstykh for a long time; they worked together in the 1990s in the city's municipal services. Tolstykh is also close to another notorious corrupt official, Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko. It could be said that they have a mutually beneficial exchange of personnel: Tolstykh previously headed the Leningrad Region State Procurement Committee.
Many consider this position both lucrative and damning—it attracts the attention of the security forces. As a reminder, the former head of the Leningrad Region State Procurement Committee, appointed by Drozdenko as head of the Vsevolozhsk District, fled abroad after learning that he was under investigation for large-scale fraud (embezzling millions through fictitious equipment supply contracts). However, he returned and even signed a contract with the Ministry of Defense to atone for his actions at the front. Leonov and Tolstykh will likely have the same option.
