CORRUPTION
The family of FSB General Mikhail Shchekin, who heads the FSB's support service and is in charge of procurement, owns assets worth over two billion rubles ($33 million): these include luxury apartments, luxury cars and even a mansion in Lubyanka, The Insider has found out. The secret to the FSB General's success lies in family values: his children own companies that have won lavish government contracts. The Shchekin family business interests have already spread beyond Russia - his daughter plans to plant vineyards in occupied Crimea and produce wine there.
Content
Look for the woman
Outed by chauffeur
Money is flowing to Dinamo
Look for the woman
On a November evening in 2014, the owner of the Royal Bar in Moscow, Yulia Tikhomirova, celebrated her birthday. Before marriage, Yulia went by the name of Shchekina.
Yulia Tikhomirova (Shchekina)
Her father, FSB general Mikhail Shchekin, was not in any of the pictures taken at the party, but her sister Anastasia Zadorina was.
Yulia Tikhomirova with her sister Anastasia Zadorina
Another mysterious woman was also present at the celebration, putting her arm around the shoulders of the high-ranking FSB general’s relatives.
This photo allowed The Insider to identify her and tack down the hidden assets owned by the general's family.
The woman posing with a glass in her hand is named Valentina. She had the surname Pautova, and then became Shchekina.
Valentina Shchekina (Pautova)
Using facial recognition, we found Valentina's social media accounts.
A certain Sergey Shuvalov likes Valentina's photos.
Valentina does likewise for him.
The phone number linked to the account of «Sergei Shuvalov» in fact belongs to Sergei Shchekin, the son of the FSB general, The Insider found out.
By Valentina Shchekina's phone number we found out that she has ordered food from the Italian Quarter housing complex in Moscow. According to the information available to The Insider, five-year-old Valeria Sergeevna Shchekina, apparently the granddaughter of the secret service officer, is registered at the same address.
According to an extract from the Rosreestr, the owner of the 201-meter apartment is the «Russian Federation.” Such entries are made to conceal the name of the real owner.
The market value of the apartment may be as high as 270 million rubles. And it is not the only expensive property owned by the Shchekin family, classified by the real estate register.
Outed by chauffeur
The Insider noticed that the Shchekin family's parking fees, including those of the wife Raisa, were paid for by a certain Maxim Ivanov. He turned out to be employed as a driver by the firm owned by Anastasia Zadorina, the FSB general's daughter.
Using his phone number Ivanov also ordered food to the apartments, which, as The Insider found out, had been purchased by members of Shchekin's family and classified by the Rosreestr. And not just hidden under the «Russian Federation» moniker but simply removed from the official register. But thanks to the driver, as well as the leaks from various databases, The Insider discovered the real estate owned by the Chekist and his relatives. In addition to the apartment in the Italian Quarter, the Shchekins are hiding:
- A 112-meter apartment on Lavochkin Street, next to the Dynamo Sports Palace ($575 000);
- A three-room apartment on Olympiisky Prospekt ($328 000);
- A small apartment in a 5-story house on Sushchevsky Val ($246 000);
- A two-level apartment in the Swallow's Nest residential complex. A similar-sized apartment (182 sq. m.) is currently on sale for 180 million rubles;
- A 197.3 sqm apartment in the Golden Keys 2 residential complex ($1,8 million);
- A townhouse on Vorotynskaya Street ($739 000);
- A 202-meter apartment near the Tsvetnoy Bulvar metro station ($2,6 million)
- Several land plots in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region.
Shchekin and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev
Together with the Shchekins’ car fleet, the assets owned by the general’s family may be worth 1 billion rubles. The FSB officer’s family members own a Lexus, two Porsche Cayenne cars, two Bentley Continental cars and eight Mercedes-Benz cars.
Money is flowing to Dinamo
If you open the official website of the FSB and scroll down to the bottom of the main page, you will see a link to the Dinamo sports society controlled by the special service. The president of the Dinamo volleyball club is Mikhail Shchekin.
In addition to sports, the FSB club Dinamo is also engaged in business, in which General Shchekin’s daughters own interests. Thus, a 65% stake in the clothing manufacturer Zasport LLC is controlled by Dinamo, and the remaining 35% by Anastasia Zadorina. The company Zasport earned 2 billion rubles under public procurement contracts, receiving over a billion rubles in 2022 alone. The largest contract was for the supply of special clothing and footwear for the Moscow metro.
The Sports Club Dinamo, together with Shchekin's daughter, recently opened a joint production facility in Bashkiria. The Factory Zasport enterprise was one of the first entities resident in the special economic zone Alga, to which the republican authorities lure investors with tax incentives. According to the head of Bashkortostan, Zadorina «should be pampered.»
Factory Zasport has received government contracts totaling nearly half a billion rubles. It mainly supplies the Moscow mayor's office with uniforms for transport workers.
Zadorina also owns Ekoresurs LLC and, through it, a building on Bolshaya Lubyanka Street (2574,3 square meters). The building also houses the office of the Volleyball Federation.
Based on the current ads for the sale of mansions in the area, the building which belongs to the company owned by the FSB general’s daughter may be worth nearly 1.1 billion rubles.
A few days after the start of the war with Ukraine, Anastasia Zadorina registered Vinnaya Istoria LLC in Crimea. She plans to plant vineyards in the Saki district and produce 3 million bottles of wine a year.
The second daughter of the general, Yulia Tikhomirova, heads the Center for the Preparation and Holding of Sports Events Dinamo. She also owns Sport-Yug LLC, whose subsidiary Volley Grad manages Volleygrad Sports & Health Resort in the Krasnodar Krai. Volleyball players live, compete and eat there at the government’s expense.
Also, both daughters of Shchekin own hunting farms in the Yaroslavl region in partnership with the head of the VTB Bank, Andrei Kostin.
Kostin is not the only member of the business elite with ties to the Shchekin family. Vedomosti reported that the Shekins used to do business with Iskandar Makhmudov and Andrei Bokarev, shareholders of UGMK and Transmashholding, involved in several criminal cases in Europe, known to have been laundering money for the underworld.
According to the information available to The Insider, Shchekin's relatives had been employed by companies related to the Sibantratsit and Vostokugol conglomerates controlled by the late Dmitry Bosov. The general’s former son-in-law and also Valentina Shchekina had worked for the billionaire. Valentina also worked at the Arctic Mining Company, which transferred the seaport in Dickson to the daughter of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Sibantratsit is also a sponsor of the Dinamo volleyball club.