The legal saga surrounding the controversial legacy of Anna Merkulova, former head of Mosproekt-3, continues. As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have discovered, an arbitration court has invalidated 12 contracts signed by Merkulova on behalf of the construction giant with the contractor Interput LLC. The court ordered the company to repay 326 million rubles to Mosproekt-3. If the ruling holds up on appeal, the contractor faces serious financial trouble: the firm ended the last year with a loss exceeding one million rubles, and its assets fall short of 300 million. Furthermore, Interput owes substantial sums in loans to several individuals, as well as to Sberbank and VTB. Investigations by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info suggest that Interput may be linked to the Rotenberg family. As for Merkulova, despite evidence of criminal wrongdoing, she has successfully avoided prosecution thanks to her long-standing ties with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, the former head of Moscow’s construction sector.
As previously reported, following Merkulova’s dismissal in 2024, the new management of Mosproekt-3 discovered 12 supplementary agreements with Interput regarding the design of the M-12 highway, valued at 1.015 billion rubles. The contractor possessed neither the experience nor the staff for the job; instead, it offloaded 90% of the work to a subcontractor, Gradpraktika LLC—a firm to which Mosproekt-3’s own design engineers had previously migrated. In 2021, Merkulova used supplementary agreements to lock in an inflated price—bypassing the mandatory state expert review—and even transferred 676 million rubles to Interput. In reality, experts valued the work at only 350 million, meaning the price tag was three times higher than it should have been. The court has now ruled that Interput must return the excess 326 million rubles.
Interesting developments are currently unfolding around Interput. Until March 2025, 38-year-old Alexey Lomakin was listed as the company’s founder; ownership was then transferred to a certain Maria Kuznetsova (Grigoryeva), a resident of Sterlitamak. As it turns out, the entry in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (EGRUL) is set to change again soon: the architects of the scheme decided to reverse the deal, and Lomakin recently secured a court ruling invalidating the sale agreement, thereby reclaiming 100% ownership of the firm.
Under the agreement, Kuznetsova was to pay Lomakin 58 million rubles by August 20, 2025, for a share with a nominal value of 1.4 million rubles; until the funds were received, the share remained pledged to Lomakin as collateral. This sum included the company's outstanding loan debts owed to LLC "3.14K" (wholly owned by Lomakin himself) and to two individuals: Oleg Rafaelyevich Kadyrov and Natalia Vasilyevna Budnikova. A person sharing Kadyrov’s full name previously worked in Bashkortostan as the head of the environmental safety department at OJSC Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat, and later served as deputy director of the Federal Center for Analysis and Evaluation (FTSAO) under Rosprirodnadzor. Interput owes approximately 3 million rubles to each of these creditors. In addition, Interput managed to secure two more loans: 22.8 million rubles from VTB Bank and approximately 1 million rubles from Sberbank.
Following the transaction, Lomakin and Kuznetsova used several supplementary agreements to reduce the purchase price to 3.5 million rubles, while stipulating loan repayment as a separate clause. However, Maria Kuznetsova has yet to pay a single kopeck to either Lomakin or the firm’s creditors. Leaked data indicates that she still resides in Sterlitamak and possesses neither high-value real estate nor substantial accounts in Russian banks. At the same time, she is the registered owner of SMU-102 LLC, based in the Sterlitamak District. With revenue of 29 million rubles, this firm also operates in the design and construction sector, securing contracts in the Moscow region—for instance, it won a 23.5-million-ruble tender for the major overhaul of heating network sections in the Pushkinsky Urban District, hiring local subcontractors for the work. Nevertheless, SMU-102 is struggling; the Federal Bailiff Service (FSSP) is currently handling 106 enforcement proceedings against the company totaling 1.5 million rubles.
Before joining Interput, Alexey Lomakin spent nearly four years employed at Mosobltransproekt (now known as Transportnye Proektnye Resheniya, with revenue of 2 billion rubles), a company previously registered to the Cypriot offshore entity Parkelion Trading Limited. In late 2018, ownership of the company passed to Konstantin Zarzhitsky. Zarzhitsky is a 69-year-old businessman from Shakhovskaya (Moscow region) and a native of the Uzbek SSR; he is also the founder of Zheldorproekt LLC, which generates 1.9 billion rubles in revenue. Leaked data indicates that Zarzhitsky frequently flew to Cyprus, held accounts at the major Cypriot lender Hellenic Bank, and had business interests linked to companies affiliated with Russian Railways (RZD).
According to the leaks, Zarzhitsky repeatedly used his phone and email to purchase airline tickets for Nelya Zhivetskaya, a 63-year-old Moscow resident and Israeli passport holder originally from the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine. Zhivetskaya is also the registered owner of a major construction business—not in Moscow, but in St. Petersburg, the Rotenberg family's home city. She holds a 68% stake in R-Industry Corporation LLC, a company that reported revenue of 3.6 billion rubles in 2025 (down from 8.4 billion in 2023). Public records alone show the firm holding a portfolio of over 40 government contracts worth 7.6 billion rubles, with the primary... The client is Russian Railways (RZD)—which, it is worth recalling, fell within the sphere of influence of the Rotenberg family following the departure of Yakunin (the infamous owner of the "fur-coat storage facility").
Another 32% stake in R-Industry Corporation is held by Yuri Tiptsov, who—until the end of 2025—also owned a share in the Moscow-based Stroyzheldorproyekt. That company is now part of the Natsproektstroy Group via NPS Innotech Holding (formerly NPS Vega); the group was founded as a joint venture between Arkady Rotenberg and VEB.
A recent investigative project, "Party Gold," revealed schemes involving the financing of the United Russia party by the Rotenbergs and Russian Railways through the Natsproektstroy corporate network; the report explicitly names Zarzhitsky and the firms registered in his name. In total, the ruling party received over 2.6 billion rubles from legal entities linked to Russian Railways last year alone.
Thus, Anna Merkulova was serving the interests of a clearly identifiable group of individuals.
