Igor Shpurov, Director General of the State Commission on Mineral Reserves (GKZ), has been detained in Moscow on charges of accepting a bribe on an especially large scale. Investigations by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info revealed that, through his current wife, Shpurov was a business partner of Grigory Vygon—the former director of the Department of Economics and Finance at Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and current owner of VYGON Consulting, a major firm in the oil and gas consulting sector. Additionally, through his ex-wife, the official held two licenses for the exploration and assessment of mineral deposits in the Tyumen region.
Shpurov has served as Director General of the State Commission on Mineral Reserves (an autonomous budgetary institution) since December 2013. He also heads the Department of Theoretical Foundations of Oil and Gas Field Development at the Faculty of Geology of Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU) and serves on the faculty's academic council; his name appears on the list of council members on the geology faculty's website.
A native of Tyumen, the 61-year-old official holds a degree in mining engineering from the Tyumen Industrial Institute and a Doctor of Technical Sciences degree. Prior to his appointment at the GKZ, he headed the West Siberian Research Institute of Geology and Geophysics (a federal autonomous institution) in Tyumen. During his nearly 13-year tenure as head of the FBU GKZ (State Commission on Mineral Reserves), Shpurov consolidated the primary mechanisms for the allocation and registration of mineral reserves: his commission controls key decisions regarding deposits and subsoil tracts—ranging from the official registration of reserves and boundary adjustments to the expert review of geological data and the allocation of additional reserves to favored companies. We are talking about tens of billions, if not trillions, of rubles. Naturally, to ensure the implementation of desired management decisions, Shpurov promoted fellow natives of his home region within the GKZ system. For instance, Igor Dubkov, deputy director of the GKZ’s St. Petersburg branch, hails from Tyumen, and even Igor Plesovskikh—a former deputy head of Rosnedra—is a former top executive at the Tyumen-based SibNATS.
At the same time, Shpurov himself sought to keep his assets out of the public eye. According to leaked data, between 2019 and 2020, he purchased only two apartments: one in Moscow at the Serpukhovskie Vorota residential complex on Serpukhovsky Lane (99 square meters) and another in St. Petersburg at the OSTROV complex on Petrovsky Prospekt (73 square meters). He held no significant bank accounts, either. However, Elena Shpurova—the spouse of Mr. Shpurov—does have a business in Moscow: she owns a 30% stake in RUSTEKHAUDIT LLC, a company specializing in business consulting. Elena Shpurova (née Tokareva), a native of Tyumen, acquired this stake in 2023 from a fellow Tyumen native, Natalia Dulova. Dulova serves as the director of the Oil and Gas Research and Innovation Center of Lomonosov Moscow State University (with MSU among its founders) and is the founder of two Tyumen-based companies: TechGeoConsulting and Independent Oil and Gas Consulting (NNK). TechGeoConsulting, for instance, was contracted to analyze rock properties and assess reserves at oil and gas fields, while NNK worked under contract with the Shpilman Research and Analytical Center for Rational Subsoil Use in Yugra.
Elena Shpurova’s business partners in RUSTEKHAUDIT include Grigory Vygon—a former TNK-BP manager, ex-head of the Department of Economics and Finance at the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, and founder of VYGON Consulting (one of the oil and gas sector's major consulting firms)—as well as Daria Sergeeva. In 2021, Grigory Vygon successfully petitioned the courts to oust former CFO Daria Sergeeva from Vygon Consulting after discovering she had been awarding herself bonuses; however, she retained her stake in RUSTEKHAUDIT. In 2025, Elena Shpurova also became a co-founder of the Tyumen-based companies Inteltek LLC (liquidated in May 2026) and 2V-Service; she left the latter on September 15 of that year. In total, 2V-Service secured at least 16 government contracts for the supply of licenses and the repair of computer equipment, including deals with the Tyumen Regional Duma and the region's Department of Property Relations. The firm is currently owned by Tyumen resident Ekaterina Lovchuk—formerly the director of the Xerox CIS representative office and head of the International Center of Excellence ANO, an organization founded by Natalia Dulova’s Oil and Gas Research and Innovation Center (affiliated with Lomonosov Moscow State University).
Several properties in Tyumen were registered in Elena Tokareva’s name: a garage and an apartment (76 sq. m) in the upscale "Vertikal" club-style building on Vantsetti Street; a parking space in the "Aurora" residential complex (1 Tsiolkovsky St., Bldg. 21); a 76-square-meter apartment at 11 Tsiolkovsky St.; apartments measuring 40 sq. m and 29 sq. m on Gazovikov Street; and a 25-square-meter studio on Farman Salmanov Street.
Shpurov’s previous wife, Tyumen resident Marina Tarasevich, was—along with CJSC Techgeoconsulting—among the founders of JSC Siberian Oil and Gas Company until 2021. The company held at least two licenses for the exploration and assessment of mineral deposits in the Uvatsky District of the Tyumen Region: the Novochirpsky site and... The Tanyagsky blocks. It is unknown who acquired the licenses following the company's liquidation in 2022.
The official’s first wife, Tatyana Shpurova, was also a co-owner of a business linked to the Tyumen-based company Techgeoconsulting; from 2014 to 2016, she held a stake in Unicor Technology LLC, a company co-founded by... It was first an LLC, then a CJSC, called Tekhgeokonsalting. The company had a subsidiary in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Yugra Unicor Technology. Unicor Technology was a resident of the Tyumen Technopark and developed remote access computer technologies.
