Millions of dollars returned and a contractor linked to Rotenberg: The ways in which ex-Mosproekt-3 chief Anna Merkulova supported select parties via Interput

14 сентября 2026 г., 15:57

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Millions of dollars returned and a contractor linked to Rotenberg: The ways in which ex-Mosproekt-3 chief Anna Merkulova supported select parties via Interput

The legal saga surrounding the scandalous legacy of former Mosproekt-3 head Anna Merkulova continues.

The arbitration court invalidated 12 contracts signed by Merkulova on behalf of the construction giant in favor of the contractor, INTERPUT LLC. The court ordered the company to return 326 million rubles to Mosproekt-3. If the ruling is upheld on appeal, the contractor faces serious financial problems – the company ended last year with a loss of over one million rubles, and its assets are less than 300 million. 

Furthermore, Interput owes large sums in loans to several individuals, as well as to Sberbank and VTB. Media reports indicate that Interput may be connected to the Rotenberg brothers. As for Merkulova, despite facing a full criminal record, she has successfully avoided criminal charges thanks to her long-standing ties to Deputy Prime Minister and former head of Moscow’s construction complex, Marat Khusnullin.

As we previously reported, after Merkulova’s dismissal in 2024, the new management of Mosproekt-3 discovered 12 supplementary agreements with Interput for the M-12 highway design project worth 1.015 billion rubles. The contractor had neither the experience nor the staff, and 90% of the work was outsourced to a subcontractor, Gradpraktika LLC, where Mosproekt-3’s designers had previously been "devolved." In 2021, Merkulova used supplementary agreements to inflate the price, circumventing state expert review, and even transferred 676 million rubles to Interput. In reality, experts estimated the work at only 350 million, meaning the price was three times higher. Now, the court has ruled that Interput must return the excess 326 million rubles.

Interesting developments are currently unfolding around Interput. 38-year-old Alexey Lomakin was listed as the company’s founder until March 2025, after which the firm was transferred to a certain Maria Kuznetsova (Grigoryeva), a resident of Sterlitamak. As it turns out, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRLE) entry will soon change again: the scheme’s masterminds have decided to reverse the deal, so Lomakin recently won a court ruling invalidating the purchase and sale agreement and regained 100% of the company.

According to the agreement, Kuznetsova was to pay Lomakin 58 million rubles by August 20, 2025, for a share with a par value of 1.4 million rubles. Until the payment was received, the share remained as collateral for Lomakin. This amount included the company’s debts on loans it received from 3.14K LLC (100% owned by Lomakin himself), as well as from two individuals: Oleg Rafaelevich Kadyrov and Natalia Vasilyevna Budnikova. Kadyrov’s full namesake previously worked in Bashkortostan as the head of the environmental safety department at Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat OJSC and later took the position of deputy director of the Federal Central Administrative District of Rosprirodnadzor. Interput owes approximately 3 million rubles to each of its creditors. Interput also managed to secure two more loans: 22.8 million rubles from VTB Bank and approximately 1 million rubles from Sberbank.

After the deal, Lomakin and Kuznetsova reduced the purchase and sale agreement to 3.5 million rubles through several additional agreements, and included a separate clause for loan repayment. However, Maria Kuznetsova has yet to pay a single penny to Lomakin or the company’s creditors. According to leaked data, she still lives in Sterlitamak and does not own any large, expensive real estate or hold any significant accounts in Russian banks. However, she is also the registered owner of SMU-102 LLC, located in the Sterlitamak District. This company, with revenues of 29 million rubles, also operates in the design and construction industry, receiving orders in the Moscow region. For example, it won a tender for 23.5 million rubles for the overhaul of heating main sections in the Pushkinsky District, hiring local subcontractors for the work. At the same time, SMU-102 is not doing very well: the Federal Bailiff Service has 106 enforcement proceedings pending against it for a total of 1.5 million rubles.

Before joining Interput, Alexey Lomakin was employed for nearly four years at MOSOBLTRANSPROEKT (now Transportnye Proektnye Resheniya, with revenue of 2 billion rubles), previously registered to the Cyprus offshore company PARKELION TRADING LIMITED. At the end of 2018, the company was acquired by Konstantin Zarzhitsky. Zarzhitsky, a 69-year-old businessman from Shakhovskaya, Moscow Region, a native of the Uzbek SSR, is also the founder of ZHELDORPROEKT LLC, with revenue of 1.9 billion rubles. According to leaked data, Zarzhitsky frequently traveled to Cyprus, held accounts at the major Cypriot Hellenic Bank, and had business interests related to businesses affiliated with Russian Railways.

According to leaked data, Zarzhitsky repeatedly used his phone and email to purchase airline tickets for 63-year-old Nelya Zhyvetskaya, a Moscow resident and native of the Vinnytsia region of Ukraine with an Israeli passport. Zhyvetskaya also owns a large construction business, not in Moscow, but in the Rotenbergs’ homeland of St. Petersburg: she owns 68% of R-INDUSTRY CORPORATION LLC, with revenue of 3.6 billion rubles in 2025 (8.4 billion in 2023). According to publicly available data alone, the company’s portfolio includes over 40 government contracts worth 7.6 billion rubles, with Russian Railways (RZD) being its main client. As a reminder, after the departure of Yakunin, the owner of the fur storage facility, the Rotenbergs became interested in the company.

Another 32% of R-INDUSTRY CORPORATION is held by Yuri Tiptsov, who also held a stake in Moscow-based STROYZHELDORPROEKT until the end of 2025. This company, through NPS INNOTEKH HOLDING (formerly NPS Vega), is now part of the Natsproektstroy Group of Companies, which was founded as a joint venture between Arkady Rotenberg and VEB.

The recent investigative project "Party Gold" exposed the Rotenbergs’ and Russian Railways’ financing schemes for the United Russia party through the NatsProektStroy company network, which directly names Zarzhitsky and the companies registered to him. Overall, the ruling party received over 2.6 billion rubles from Russian Railways-linked legal entities last year alone.

So Anna Merkulova served the interests of a completely understandable group of people.