American documents, nominees, and offshore schemes: how former deputy minister Denis Butsaev, with the help of Denis Manturov and Sergey Chemezov, fled Russia for the United States after the failure of the waste reform

13 мая 2026 г., 11:57

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American documents, nominees, and offshore schemes: how former deputy minister Denis Butsaev, with the help of Denis Manturov and Sergey Chemezov, fled Russia for the United States after the failure of the waste reform

Former Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Denis Butsaev has been placed on the federal wanted list. His closest friend, Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, arranged for Butsaev to flee Russia, but was unable to resolve the issue, even with the help of Sergei Chemezov.

Sources say Manturov made considerable efforts to negotiate Butsaev’s "painless" return to Russia. But to no avail. The situation is particularly poignant because, as our project has previously reported, Butsaev is currently in the United States and, in fact, held a high-ranking government position with American documents in his pocket. We’ll tell our readers about Butsaev’s inner circle.

Of course, Denis Manturov is Butsaev’s closest confidant. They were family friends, constantly in touch, and neighbors at the elite Pirogovo Yacht and Golf Club. It was Manturov (with Chemezov’s support) who paved the way for the former American company manager to various government positions. And opened the door to enormous wealth.

Butsaev ostentatiously wore very expensive watches (Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, Patek Philippe Nautilus, Rolex GMT-Master II "Pepsi" worth tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars), was always dressed in luxury brands, and, since his time in the Moscow regional government, preferred helicopter flights, including for personal travel. He owned a mansion in Pirogovo and other extremely expensive real estate.

In all his positions, Butsaev was always considered a loyal representative of Rostec’s interests, but he did not forget about his personal interests.

For his behind-the-scenes schemes, Butsaev used his proxy, Anatoly Erokhin, who formally owned 100% of the concessionaire’s stake in the Samara Region but then abruptly reduced his stake to 50%. Erokhin simultaneously managed Promresurs JSC, which controlled three concession companies in Bashkortostan. Since March 2024, Erokhin has been the general director of the Foreign Literature Magazine Editorial Office LLC, where Daniil Denisovich Butsaev, the elder Butsaev’s son, is one of the founders. This line of the Butsaev family’s activities is worthy of a separate journalistic investigation. On May 7, 2026, Butsaev Jr. hastily dropped out of the founders of this LLC.
Yevgeny Karelov, the son of Senator Galina Karelova, who at the time of the events was Vice Speaker of the Federation Council, was Butsaev’s deputy and right-hand man at the Russian Economic Cooperation Organization (REO).

The nexus of all the "shadow" deals was Butsaev’s "advisor," Pavel Besshapov, who was disqualified from holding senior positions at the state-owned company in 2019 due to two criminal cases of fraud (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code) related to the construction of concession facilities in Chuvashia, Saratov, and Murmansk Oblasts. The cases were hushed up, and Besshapov received the status of "advisor," with real power to distribute subsidies and select contractors, in part due to his close ties to Murmansk Oblast Governor Andrei Chibis and his sister, Tatyana Kretova.

During his tenure as head of the Russian Environmental Organization (REO), Butsaev actively promoted the "Recyclables Exchange" electronic trading platform, claiming it would connect producers and buyers of recyclable materials, "allow transactions to be made directly on the website," and speed up waste recycling.
In reality, it was a mercenary monopoly through which the REO channeled its budgets. Furthermore, it turned out that the electronic trading platform was not owned by REO, as one might expect, but by a certain LLC "ALLIANCE ECO," registered in March 2022. The company is owned by the little-known Ruslan Kokaia.

This individual is the nominal owner of several assets in shopping centers owned by the prestigious Mori-Mutsoev family. The company for Kokai was also initially created by Sergei Mori, a close relative of Amirkhan Mori (Mutsoev). The entire structure is headed by State Duma deputy Zelimkhan Mutsoev. The company "ALLIANCE ECO" is registered directly at the address of the "Dream Island" shopping center, which is owned by Mutsoev’s children, Amiran and Alimkhan.

History is silent on the exact moment when shopping center owners became cutting-edge IT professionals and cleanliness advocates. But we do know when Denis Butsaev joined their company. Under Butsaev, the "Russian Ecological Operator" became a 5% owner of the Mutsoevs’ company just a week before the high-profile presentation of the "Recyclables Exchange."

And then Butsaev started talking loudly about an electronic platform, supposedly a state-owned company, driving businesses onto it.

Putin is known to overlook corruption of any scale if he’s informed that the official is simultaneously successfully implementing mega-projects. In our case, such a mega-project was Rostec’s project to build waste-processing plants. The Russian Environmental Organization was created specifically for this purpose. In early 2025, it became clear that the project had failed—the funds had been embezzled, and the plants had never been built. And the blame for this would fall not on Manturov, and certainly not on Chemezov, but on someone close to them. Manturov attempted to save his friend by arranging his transfer to the position of Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation. Only after this, in the summer of 2025, Chemezov reported to Putin that Rostec was freezing the waste-processing plant project "until better times." But the efforts of Hero of Russia Manturov were in vain.

In February 2026, Ekaterina Stepkina, deputy general director of the Russian Ecological Operator and a trusted confidant of Butsaev’s, was arrested. She immediately entered into a plea bargain with investigators and testified against her boss, resulting in house arrest. As the case progressed, Butsaev was arranged to leave Russia via Minsk-Tbilisi, where he obtained American documents and traveled to the United States. Moreover, this all occurred while Butsaev was still deputy minister; he was dismissed from his post once he was already on American soil.