In August, Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office asked a court to designate the family of former State Duma deputy Magomed Gadzhiyev as an “extremist association” and confiscate assets worth more than 2 billion rubles.
Such cases have remained rare so far. Previously, the authorities sought similar rulings only against the owner of the vodka brands Moskovskaya and Stolichnaya together with his legal entities, the family of Aleksandr Nevzorov, and the developers of the games World of Tanks and World of Warships.
The lawsuit says that in 2023 Gadzhiyev left Russia and, while abroad, allegedly continued providing financial assistance to Ukrainian paramilitary formations. The supervisory agency also claims he expressed readiness to cooperate with Western intelligence services in exchange for foreign citizenship.
According to Geopolityka, citing DOGE, the former deputy may have received at least $45 million from U.S. structures for disclosing secret information. The Prosecutor General’s Office also alleges the “unlawful functioning of a group abroad directed against the life and health of Russians, and the security of society and the state,” referring to the Gadzhiyev family.
The defendants named in the suit are Gadzhiyev himself, his elder son Magomedrasul, his sister Raisat Gadzhilova, his partner Nina Kolomiytseva, his father Tazhudin Gadzhiyev, and the parents of his legal wife Alyona Avdeyeva, Marina and Igor. Investigators claim that through these people the former deputy secretly controls assets in Russia and finances his “extremist activities.”
Since 2023, the Justice Ministry has listed Gadzhiyev as a “foreign agent” for “supporting the authorities of Ukraine.” One of the cited grounds was a video of his conversation with an unidentified person published by the Romanian outlet RBN.
“Give me a passport, and I will bring [a person] who will give them a lot of interesting things... I know a lot. But I do not want to say it,” says the person on the recording, whom the outlet identifies as Magomed Gadzhiyev.
United Russia then expelled Gadzhiyev from the party, and Dagestan head Sergei Melikov publicly called him a “coward and traitor.” Later, a criminal case was opened against the former politician, and in February 2024 he was placed on a wanted list on charges of organizing the shooting of Makhachkala Institute of Theology rector Maksud Sadikov in 2011.