Front-man "Kalashnikov" and a pocket Ministry of Transport: how Ksenia Shoigu built a hidden business empire on Ministry of Defense contracts through nominees
Ksenia Shoigu, daughter of former Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, not only heads the Development Fund for the Mendeleev Valley Innovative Scientific and Technological Center but also continues to control a multi-billion dollar family business empire.
However, all of her companies have been formally transferred to nominal owners – friends and subordinates. The business partners of Ksenia Shoigu’s structures include companies owned by Gennady Timchenko and Maria Bokareva, daughter of oligarch Andrei Bokarev. Timchenko is also known for his extensive use of nominee shareholders. One such nominee holds a key military asset of the oligarch – the Kalashnikov Concern.
A major asset belonging to Sergey Shoigu’s daughter is Capital Perform. De jure, Ksenia Shoigu acquired a stake in Capital Perform in 2019 (prior to this, the sole founder was Kirill Demchenko), but left the company in 2022. Demchenko is a native of Leningrad and a graduate of MGIMO (as is Ksenia Shoigu herself). He has been managing Ksenia Shoigu’s assets since at least 2016. According to leaked data, both used the same phone number and email address for purchasing airline tickets and making online orders. In one instance, Demchenko used the account to order Sergey Dorenko’s book "The Defrocked" from a bookstore. It is evident that the number and email belong to Demchenko, as he used them as early as 2011 to register on websites and later on the government services portal.
Furthermore, this same email and phone number were used in October 2016 to purchase airline tickets for GRU officer Yuri Sizov, who in 2024 was sanctioned by the UK and EU for attempting to organize terrorist attacks in Kyiv on May 9th. According to Ukrainian authorities, Sizov served in military unit 92154 – a GRU special forces unit based in Solnechnogorsk-2 near Moscow. Earlier, the Dossier Center reported that in February 2016, Sizov and Ksenia Shoigu purchased Sapsan train tickets for adjacent seats on three occasions. Yuri’s mother, Ketevan Sizova, operates as a sole proprietor in St. Petersburg.
Ksenia Shoigu has also employed Kirill Demchenko’s sister, Ekaterina. In 2017, she was listed as an employee of the autonomous non-profit organization "Race of Heroes" – a project of Ksenia Shoigu, whose public face she had been since 2013. The first extreme races took place at military bases of the Ministry of Defense, which had been headed by Ksenia’s father, Sergey Shoigu, since 2012. Currently, the phone number of this ANO is used by two companies where Kirill Demchenko was founder and director in 2017 – Market Hard and Market Soft. These firms own the brand of the advertising agency ml., whose website lists its key projects. Some of these are connected to Ksenia Shoigu: Gran.rf, Island of Forts, League of Heroes, as well as military-related Promsvyazbank, Russian Railways, Lukoil, Rostelecom, VKontakte, and others.
Both firms have been registered since 2019 under 33-year-old Muscovite Anton Melekhin, who also serves as their director. The companies are registered at Nizhny Susalny Lane, 5, building 16 – located next to Capital Perform at building 17. Melekhin is another employee of Ksenia Shoigu. In 2018, he also registered the domain ce.ru.com, which in 2020 (according to archival data) hosted the website of LLC Consortium Energy Resource (now featuring gambling advertisements). This is a subsidiary of Ksenia Shoigu’s Capital Perform.
Consortium Energy Resource has a representative office in Qatar. In Russia, this company is known to have received billions in subcontracts for major government contracts, where the general contractor was Gennady Timchenko’s company Stroytransgaz (Timchenko is a close friend of Sergey Shoigu). These projects included the construction of football stadiums for the 2018 World Cup in Volgograd and Nizhny Novgorod, the Frunzensky Bridge in Samara, a road interchange in Krasnogorsk, and a coastal infrastructure complex in Gelendzhik. The total value of these projects was just under 60 billion rubles. From 2018-2020 alone, Consortium Energy Resource reported revenue of 2.6 billion rubles and net profit of 2.1 billion rubles. After that, the company reported losses for three years, and in 2025 reported net profit of only 9.2 million rubles.
The "Gran.rf" Platform and Maria Bokareva
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Another subsidiary of Capital Perform consistently operating at a loss is LLC Center for Psychological Assistance and Counseling, which developed and registered the Gran.rf platform for online psychological consultations (the branding was developed by the advertising agency Market Hard). Capital Perform holds 50% of this company, with the remainder owned by the firm’s general director, Maria Bokareva. She is a graduate of the psychology faculty of Moscow State University and, concurrently, the daughter of billionaire Andrei Bokarev. The Bokarev family is also closely tied to the Ministry of Defense through business connections. For instance, Maria Bokareva holds a stake in UK BSM through LLC Basseta, which has been a long-standing partner and contractor for the Ministry of Defense’s Patriot exhibition center, which hosts the Army forum. In 2024, UK BSM won a closed competition for comprehensive engineering, technical, and sanitary maintenance of the St. Petersburg branch of the FGAU "Museum and Temple Complex of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation" – which includes the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral, the Congress and Exhibition Center, and the park and recreation area. Despite the owners’ close ties to the Ministry of Defense, the Gran.rf platform is listed on LinkedIn.
In December of last year, Capital Perform established another subsidiary, LLC Project Management, with an authorized capital of 100,000 rubles. In January, the company’s stake in this firm was pledged to Bank VTB, owned by Andrei Kostin. The subsidiary is managed by Kirill Demchenko.
Another significant asset of Ksenia Shoigu is LLC Yug Development, with authorized capital of 680 million rubles and assets of 8 billion rubles. This company holds a lease until 2058 on a 3.25-hectare plot with buildings on Varshavskoye Shosse, property 9 – the territory of the Danilovskaya Manufactory. Yug Development is owned by Ksenia Shoigu through JSC Asset Management, once again managed by Kirill Demchenko, with the founders’ details hidden in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. Notably, the company is embroiled in legal disputes – at least seven lawsuits have been filed against it by the Moscow Department of City Property because Shoigu’s firm allegedly failed to pay land rent since 2022.
The same phone number and email address were used in the summer of 2023 to purchase airline tickets for a certain Renata Abdrafikova, a 35-year-old native of Bashkortostan. In 2021, she worked at Moscow’s LLC Center for Territorial Development (CTD), a firm registered in a building adjacent to Capital Perform at Nizhny Susalny Lane, 5, building 19.
Renata Abdrafikova is an urbanist who worked at CTD on the Island of Forts project. This is a comprehensive development project for the Kronstadt territory, implemented by Ksenia Shoigu herself in accordance with a directive from President Putin. The project’s budget is approximately 58 billion rubles, with participation from the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Natural Resources, and the St. Petersburg administration. In 2021, Forbes Russia reported that Ksenia attempted to secure financing for the project from Vladimir Yevtushenkov, owner of AFK Sistema, but was unsuccessful. At that time, Yevtushenkov already had established cooperation with the Ministry of Defense through his Sistema holding, which included the enterprise "Radio-Technical and Information Systems."
Currently, the director of CTD is Margarita Fatikhova, originally from the Sverdlovsk region. The company’s ownership structure is circular: CTD’s founder is LLC Holding Company, which is itself owned by CTD and Margarita Fatikhova. Last year, CTD reported a loss of nearly 40 million rubles. Fatikhova is also linked to the Ministry of Defense. According to leaked data, she used the phone number of the Moscow management company UK Usadba, which, through a chain of companies (including THK-Group), belongs to Alan Lushnikov. Lushnikov is the former assistant to the Minister of Transport who unexpectedly became the owner of the famous JSC Kalashnikov Concern in 2020.
Lushnikov is merely a nominee for the transaction, with the true beneficiary being his senior associate and employer, Gennady Timchenko.
Alan Lushnikov is a close acquaintance and professional lobbyist for the interests of multi-billionaire Gennady Timchenko. From 2001 to 2006, Lushnikov successively worked in Timchenko’s railway assets: LLC Kinex-Holding, LLC Link-Oil St. Petersburg, and LLC Transoil.
In 2006, the 30-year-old Lushnikov left his position as chief legal counsel at Transoil for government service, invited by the head of Roszheldor, Igor Romashov. Romashov is a long-standing ally of Gennady Timchenko, having joined the company Link-Oil-St. Petersburg in 2000. Later, from part of Link-Oil’s railcars, Timchenko founded Transoil. From 2011, Romashov served as Chairman of the Management Board of Transoil.
Transoil is the largest private railway carrier of oil and petroleum products, with 80% owned by Gennady Timchenko, and 13% each by Andrei Bokarev and Iskander Makhmudov.
Alan Lushnikov’s civil service career lasted 12 years. From 2006, he held government positions in structures of the Ministry of Transport (Deputy Head of Roszheldor), the Ministry of Transport itself (as assistant to Igor Levitin), then in the Russian Government (assistant to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich), and again in the Ministry of Transport (Deputy Minister of Transport).
In the ministry and the Cabinet, Lushnikov worked closely with the railway industry, initiating a series of reforms aimed at restructuring the transportation market, with obvious benefits for Timchenko’s Transoil. Road, aviation, and river transport were often sidelined. In 2018, Lushnikov left the Ministry of Transport. His resignation from the post of Deputy Minister was secured by Minister Yevgeny Dietrich, who represented the interests of the Rotenberg brothers. Lushnikov was ousted from the transport sector but remained within Timchenko’s sphere of influence. Over 18 years of loyal service, he had proven his usefulness and necessity.
In 2019, Lushnikov, together with Colonel Timur Gareev, established LLC UK Perspektiva. The company manages assets in the defense-industrial complex. Through this move, Gennady Timchenko re-purposed his trusted associate from transport to the defense sector, laying the groundwork for the acquisition of a key entity in the country’s small arms sector – the Kalashnikov Concern. No obstacles were anticipated, given that all parties involved had known each other well for many years.
For instance, Alexey Krivoruchko, a former co-owner of Kalashnikov, currently holds the position of Deputy Minister of Defense – a post he secured during Sergey Shoigu’s tenure. Krivoruchko, along with Timchenko’s Transoil partners Andrei Bokarev and Iskander Makhmudov, had owned a stake in Kalashnikov until 2017.
Sergey Shoigu has long had a close family friendship with Gennady Timchenko, sharing business interests and participating together in hockey games. Rostec, the co-owner of Kalashnikov, is well aware of who Alan Lushnikov is and why he acquired a stake in the company.
Why did Timchenko acquire the loss-making Kalashnikov? The simple answer is that in 2020, a large-scale rearmament of the Russian army began under the state defense order. The older "Kalash" models were being replaced by the new AK-12 and AK-15. Then the war began.
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