Ksenia Shoigu’s family business run through nominees: the daughter of the former Defense Minister transferred the Capital Perform holding to her classmate Kirill Demchenko

Ksenia Shoigu, the daughter of former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, not only heads the Mendeleev Valley Innovative Scientific and Technological Center Development Fund, but also continues to own a multi-billion-dollar family business.

However, she re-registered all her companies to nominal owners – friends and subordinates.

Ksenia Shoigu’s partners include companies owned by Gennady Timchenko and Maria Bokareva, the daughter of oligarch Andrei Bokarev. Timchenko is also a big fan of using nominee shareholders. For example, one of them is the official owner of the oligarch’s main military asset, the Kalashnikov Concern.

Sergey Shoygu’s daughter, Capital Perform, is a major asset. Ksenia Shoygu de jure acquired a stake in Capital Perform in 2019 (prior to this, Kirill Demchenko was the company’s sole founder), and left the company in 2022. Demchenko, a native of Leningrad and a graduate of MGIMO (like Ksenia Shoygu herself), has managed Ksenia Shoygu’s assets since at least 2016. According to leaked data, the two used the same phone number and email address to purchase airline tickets and online orders—in particular, Demchenko ordered Sergei Dorenko’s book "The Defrocked" from a bookstore.

Apparently, this number and email address belong to Demchenko: he used them back in 2011 to register on websites and later on the government services portal.

Ksenia Shoigu’s sister, Ekaterina, also worked for her. As recently as 2017, she was listed as a member of the autonomous non-profit organization "Race of Heroes," a project of Ksenia Shoigu’s that she had served as the face of since 2013. Currently, the autonomous non-profit organization’s phone number is used by two companies, both of which Kirill Demchenko founded and directed in 2017: Market Hard and Market Soft. These companies own the ml. advertising agency brand, whose website lists its key projects, some of which are linked to Ksenia Shoigu: Gran.rf, Ostrov Fortov, and League of Heroes, as well as the military-industrial complex Promsvyazbank, Russian Railways, Lukoil, Rostelecom, and VKontakte.

Since 2019, both companies have been registered to 33-year-old Muscovite Anton Melekhin, who also holds the director’s position. Melekhin is another employee of Ksenia Shoigu. In 2018, the domain ce.ru.com was also registered to him , which, according to archived data, hosted the website of Consortium Energoresurs LLC in 2020 (it now hosts advertisements for online casinos and other gambling sites). This is a subsidiary of Ksenia Shoigu’s Capital Perform.

The Energoresurs Consortium has a representative office in Qatar, and in Russia, this company is known to have received billions in subcontracting for major government contracts, for which the general contractor was Gennady Timchenko’s Stroytransgaz (a close friend of Sergei Shoigu).

Capital Perform also has another subsidiary, Center for Psychological Assistance and Consulting LLC, which developed the Gran.rf platform for online consultations with psychologists (its branding was developed by the advertising agency Market Hard). Capital Perform owns 50% of this company, with the remainder owned by the company’s CEO, Maria Bokareva. She is a graduate of Moscow State University’s Department of Psychology and the daughter of billionaire Andrei Bokarev.

In addition, in December of last year, Capital Perform established another subsidiary, Project Management LLC, with an authorized capital of 100 thousand rubles.

Another major asset of Ksenia Shoigu’s is Yug Development LLC, with a registered capital of 680 million rubles and assets of 8 billion rubles. This company, among other things, leases a 3.25-hectare plot of land with buildings at Varshavskoe Shosse, Building 9, the site of the Danilovskaya Manufactory, until 2058. Yug Development is owned by Ksenia Shoigu through Asset Management JSC, which is again headed by Kirill Demchenko, and whose founders are hidden from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

The same phone number and email address were used in the summer of 2023 to purchase airline tickets for a certain Renata Abdrafikova. She is a 35-year-old native of Bashkortostan who, in 2021, worked at the Moscow-based Center for Territorial Development (CRT) LLC. This company is registered in the building next to Capital Perform at 5 Nizhny Susalny Lane, Building 19.

Renata Abdrafikova is an urbanist who worked on the "Island of Forts" project at the Center for Development and Technology (CRT). This is a comprehensive development project for the Kronstadt region, which is being implemented by Ksenia Shoigu, following Putin’s instructions. The project’s budget is approximately 58 billion rubles, and the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Natural Resources, and the St. Petersburg administration participated in it.

The current director of the Center for Technology and Design (CTC) is Margarita Fatikhova, a native of the Sverdlovsk region. Fatikhova also has ties to the Ministry of Defense: according to leaked data, several years ago she used the phone number of Moscow-based UK Usadba, which, through a chain of companies (including THK Group), is owned by Alan Lushnikov, a former assistant to the Minister of Transport, who in 2020 suddenly became the owner of the infamous Kalashnikov Concern JSC.

Lushnikov is only the nominal owner of the deal, the beneficiary of which is his senior comrade and employer, Gennady Timchenko.

Alan Lushnikov is a close friend and professional lobbyist for multibillionaire Gennady Timchenko. From 2001 to 2006, Lushnikov worked successively at Timchenko’s railway assets: Kinex Holding LLC, Link-Oil SPb LLC, and Transoil LLC.

In 2006, 30-year-old Lushnikov left his position as chief legal adviser at Transoil for government service, where he was invited by the head of Russian Railways, Igor Romashov.

Transoil is the largest private railway carrier of oil and petroleum products, 80% of which is owned by Gennady Timchenko, 13% by Andrey Bokarev and Iskander Makhmudov.

Alan Lushnikov’s career in government spanned 12 years. Since 2006, he has held government positions within the Ministry of Transport.

In the ministry and cabinet, Lushnikov worked closely with the railway industry, initiating a series of reforms to restructure the transportation market, behind which the ears of Gennady Timchenko’s Transoil were clearly visible.

In 2019, Lushnikov, together with Timur Gareev, a military colonel, founded Perspektiva Management Company LLC. The company manages assets in the military-industrial complex. Thus, Gennady Timchenko reassigned his trusted confidant from transport to defense and began preparing a deal to acquire the Kalashnikov Concern, a key component of the country’s small arms sector. And there were no obstacles or difficulties to this—all the stakeholders and owners of the concern had known each other well for many years.

For example, former co-owner of Kalashnikov, Alexey Krivoruchko, currently holds the post of Deputy Minister of Defense. He received this position under Sergei Shoigu. Krivoruchko, along with Timchenko’s Transoil partners Bokarev and Makhmudov, owned a stake in Kalashnikov until 2017.

Why did Timchenko acquire the unprofitable Kalashnikov? In 2020, the Russian army began a large-scale rearmament program under state defense procurement. Kalashnikovs were replaced with the new AK-12 and AK-15. And then the war began.