The towers and arable lands of the Tonoyan family, or KUGI, are all gone

The post of head of the Vsevolozhsk region, vacant after the dismissal of Andrei Nizovsky, is expected to be filled by his former deputy Marine Tonoyan, chairman of the Leningrad Regional Property Committee. It’s just that the official has such a trail of ambiguous stories that it’s amazing.

It was Nizovsky, who is considered the man of Governor Alexander Drozdenko, who brought Ms. Tonoyan into the corridors of power in the Vsevolozhsk region, which could have contributed to Tonoyan’s career rise.

Meanwhile, Ms. Tonoyan, who took over the post of head of the Leningrad Regional Property Committee in 2023, may be the daughter of a certain Radik Serzhovich Tonoyan. He, in turn, turned out to be the owner of numerous real estate, details of which surfaced during Mr. Tonoyan’s bankruptcy case, which lasted from 2017 to 2022. The register contained claims for more than 69 million rubles. Moreover, the annual turnover of Tonoyan’s company is about 10 million rubles.

It is not clear how a businessman with such income was able to acquire dozens of plots, buildings, and a property complex in Shlisselburg, with a book value of more than 165 million rubles. Did your daughter help? Moreover, judging by the inventory, they were acquired mainly during the period of Ms. Tonoyan’s career growth – in 2009–2011.

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Are the ex-beneficiaries of Energomashbank involved?

Part of Tonoyan’s property was pledged to NordWestEnergy LLC, which later became the plaintiff’s legal successor, Direct Investments LLC. The auction for these assets did not take place and the secured creditor kept them for himself, and Natalya Bykova (owner and director of NordWestEnergy) bought one of the plots at the auction.

An important point: since 2019, Bykova has owned Etazhi Rosta LLC, whose owners previously included Pavel Seleznev, the full namesake of the former head of the Board of Directors of EnergoMashBank OJSC. Seleznev today has an extensive business in the real estate sector in the Leningrad region and good connections. For example, he and the head of the board of directors of the LSR group, Alexander Vakhmistrov, established a fishing club. Vakhmistrov at one time was the head of the construction committee and the construction vice-governor of St. Petersburg, and he is also the president of the Association of Builders of St. Petersburg. Dmitry Gordo, the ex-head of the land committee and the Rosnedvizhimost Administration of St. Petersburg, also appeared in the same club.

Interesting coincidence?

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Wasn’t it Seleznev who sponsored Tonoyan’s numerous deals to buy real estate? Or was there another sponsor?

Also of interest in this story is Direct Investments LLC, which at one time became the buyer of Tonoyan’s debt from Energomashbank, where he took out a loan in 2013, and real estate was pledged as collateral (apparently, a recreation center and a group of office buildings) .

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Raschukova and the RTM holding: who plays for whom?

The owner of Direct Investment is Maria Raschukova, who was mentioned in a letter from the shareholders of the large development holding RTM, which, having taken out loans worth several billion rubles from several banks at once, including abroad, went bankrupt.

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Moreover, as the lawyer representing the creditors reported, a couple of months before Andrei Muravyov and Andrei Kirikov bought stakes in RTM in June 2008, and Sergei Khrapunov became the general director, the market value of the group’s portfolio of properties was at $983.4 million USA. A year passed and Khrapunov announced that the company was close to bankruptcy.

More than 0.5 billion US dollars disappeared without a trace in the RTM group, and the total damage to RTM business partners exceeded 15 billion rubles.

And in the history of this holding Ms. Rashchukova was noted as the director of Odintsovo SEC LLC, which was purchased from RTM, but in fact, there is an opinion that the funds for the purchase were allegedly taken from the rental income of the holding itself.

Raschukova has a rich business portfolio and track record. For example, she was the head of one of the departments of the Kemerovo branch of Promsvyazbank, at a time when it still belonged to the Ananyev brothers, who are now involved in a criminal case for the theft of more than 87 billion rubles from the bank.

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Raschukova still manages the aforementioned shopping and entertainment center Odintsovo, among the owners of which was previously noted Paradise LLC, owned by Andrey Kirikov, one of the founders of the Kuzbass holding Siberian Cement. His business partner was Andrey Muravyov. Both, as we know, later became the owners of RTM, which a year later died for a long time, leaving behind large losses. Moreover, to this day Ms. Rashchukova heads Estate Management LLC, which is controlled by Andrey Muravyov, and in Data Capital LLC, Muravyov’s share clearly passed to her in 2022, making her a business partner of Andrey Romanenko (founder of the Group of Companies Kiwi”).

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Raschukova also, together with a certain Galina Muravyova, owns UK M-1 LLC. The latter is a co-owner of a number of assets in the field of mining in Kuzbass, and Direct Investments LLC also has a share in Sibuglecom LLC, which appeared in Mr. Tonoyan’s bankruptcy case. A very notable person involved in Sibuglecom also has a 40% stake – Andrey Gnezdilov. And what a coincidence: he is the exact namesake of the former deputy governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

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It is curious that among the co-founders of Direct Investments, before Rashchukova, there was also the closed mutual fund Ladoga, managed by Alexander Mikhalev Management Company Intellect-Capital LLC. Moreover, the closed mutual fund lent a large amount to the Odintsovo shopping center in 2020.

Raschukova is also connected with Mikhalev, Gnezdilov and UK M-1 LLC by Spetsstroymontazh LLC, in which she is also a director.

Rashchukova also in 2022 took over the former asset of Management Company Intellect-Capital – Region Estate LLC, the director of which (and former co-owner) is another interesting gentleman – Mikhail Timokhin, who figured in the history of the collapse of the Krasnodar OJSC Medvedovsky Meat Processing Plant of the Ozerovs (In 2017, Nikolai Ozerov was convicted of loan fraud). Timokhin later registered the company MMK LLC, but in 2021 he sold it to Akashevskaya Poultry Farm LLC, behind which is Maria Lisitsina. Lisitsina is associated with the companies of ex-Minister of Agriculture of the Russian Federation Alexander Tkachev.

Mr. Mikhalev, by the way, owns (through UTRC LLC) a tiny share in Muravyov’s Estate Management LLC, which is registered at the same address as Direct Investments, from which the story of Tonoyan’s bankruptcy began.

Another coincidence: Rashchukova heads Klandestin LLC, which was previously owned by Stanislav Golovin, a business partner of Kirikov and Muravyov, as well as Inna Khrapunova, probably a relative of the ex-director of RTM.

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In general, it seems to us, we can talk about fairly close ties between Ms. Rashchukova both with the ex-beneficiaries of the notorious RTM holding, where creditors directly declared assets that had fled into the unknown (offshore again?), and with the former Krasnoyarsk Vice-Governor Gnezdilov. Don’t you think that in light of this, the story about Mr. Tonoyan’s assets begins to play with new colors?