Over the past four years, major private companies with assets worth at least 2.5 trillion rubles have come under Russian state control. According to Novaya Gazeta Europe, many of these businesses are managed by Rosimushchestvo, and prominent posts in such structures are given to people close to the agency and influential groups.
The outlet cites the Administrative Directorate of the Russian Culture Ministry, created in 2011 to handle federally owned architectural heritage sites. It was supposed to transfer properties to investors under preservation conditions, but the investigation says that mechanism never worked. Among the sites assigned to it was the Nikolskoye-Uryupino estate, which remained largely in ruins for years after a 2004 fire.
In 2024, Aleksandr Konovalov and Aleksey Korotonozhkin became deputy directors of the directorate. The newspaper reports that Konovalov received 5.5 million rubles for the last two months of 2024, even though the company earned nothing that year and employed only four people. In the first seven months of 2025, he received at least another 15 million rubles, while Korotonozhkin was paid 1.5 million rubles a month. The structure was later liquidated.
The report also says that from June 2024 to June 2025 both men earned at least 35 million rubles each at no fewer than three enterprises seized by the state. These included game developer Lesta Games, agricultural trader Rodnye Polya, and medical equipment manufacturer Kardioelektronika.
“These data once again confirm that the nationalization process is arranged so that assets end up in the hands of the right people,” anti-corruption expert Ilya Shumanov said.
In the newspaper’s assessment, Rosimushchestvo is linked to only a small share of the new directors at the biggest nationalized companies, while management more often passes to people tied to structures associated with Arkady Rotenberg, the family of Dmitry Patrushev, and other major influence groups.