RZD feeds "Arsenal": how Vladimir Shulga and Anna Kviriya funnel billions to shadow contractors and families of Russian senators
Vladimir Shulga, the husband of the eldest daughter of Gennady Lopatin, head of the judicial department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, does business with Sergey Glyadelkin, the notorious owner of the international Avenue Group. Glyadelkin has companies in Russia, as well as large assets in Europe and an active contract for a nuclear power plant construction project in Hungary.
Sergei Glyadelkin is a victim in the criminal case against former FSB officers Dmitriy Frolov and Andrey Vasiliev. According to investigators, security officials forced Glyadelkin and his cousin, Igor Tkach, to transfer shares in their companies, Ekostock and Yurpromkonsalting, to their partners. Interestingly, this isn’t the first criminal case Glyadelkin has been implicated in: previously, as part of an "operational support" operation with the FSB, he carried a $1 million bribe to his former colleague, former Deputy Mayor of Moscow Alexander Ryabinin, with whom he and his family were friends. But the son-in-law of the head of the judicial department wasn’t fazed by his business partner’s background.
Our project previously reported that Viktor Voronin, former head of the FSB’s Directorate K, has been a close friend of Senator Oleg Tkach and his friend, publisher Vladimir Uzun, for 15 years. They spend a lot of time together. Oleg Tkach’s daughter worked for many years as an aide to Mikhail Mishustin at the Federal Tax Service and then followed him into the government. Oleg Tkach’s brother, Igor Tkach, is friends with the new Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Igor Krasnov, and the former head of the FSB’s Directorate K, Ivan Tkachev.
In October 2023, Vladimir Shulga co-founded the Moscow-based UK Zagorodnye Investitsii (Countryside Investments Management Company), which manages several holding companies. Sergey Glyadelkin and his cousin Igor Tkach also received a 25% stake each. Last year, the company posted a loss of 35 million rubles. Shulga and Glyadelkin also own a company, Kremlevskaya 1, registered last summer with a registered capital of half a million rubles. Judging by the email address used by the company, it is part of the large Avenue Group, owned by the Glyadelkin family. It’s possible that Shulga joined the family business as a "protector" against potential claims from competitors and law enforcement.
This isn’t Shulga’s first joint venture with the Glyadelkins. In 2022, he and Sergey Glyadelkin acquired 647.3 square meters of real estate on Ostozhenka Street in central Moscow through Citiinvest LLC. Another company, Novy Algorithm CJSC, won the bidding from the mayor’s office, but city officials chose not to sign a contract with it, finding a loophole in the old law and awarding the properties, worth 458.8 million rubles, to the second bidder, Citiinvest. The winner tried in vain to seek justice in the courts. This is unsurprising.
Sergey Glyadelkin is the son of Sergey Ivanovich Glyadelkin, the former head of the Moscow Center State Unitary Enterprise, which was part of the Moscow construction complex during Yuri Luzhkov’s tenure and was responsible for construction in the city center. In the 1990s and 2000s, the elder Glyadelkin also worked for Inteko, a company owned by the mayor’s wife, Elena Baturina. Inteko was instrumental in the seizure of numerous city assets, including construction equipment and real estate belonging to Moscow’s construction trusts. Inteko is credited with the emergence of Avenue Group, which developed residential and commercial real estate in Russia, the CIS, and Europe, including Austria, Switzerland, Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Hong Kong, and Georgia. After the end of the Luzhkov era, control of Avenue Group remained with Glyadelkin and his business partners.
The international "Avenue" empire included a number of Russian companies (including AO UK "Avenue Management," "Avenue Finance," and "Avenue Engineering") registered to foreign firms, such as Avenue Osteuropa GmBH. Its ultimate beneficiary was the Austrian Avenue Holdings GmBH of the Glyadelkin family (liquidated in 2024). The Glyadelkin family also owned Real Novation NV (Belgium), Avenue North America GmbH (Austria), Candi Jago Holdings Ltd (Cyprus), CENITZ SAHAR and SMELA (France), BMT Beton Management Technologie GmbH (Germany), Avenue Mehanizacija d.o.o. and Kio Kotišina d.o.o. ( (Croatia), Avenue International Management SA (Switzerland), Prime Avenue EOOD (Bulgaria), and others. The Russian business is now formally separate.
The Glyadelkin family’s Austrian group of companies had an annual income of $500 million before the war, but was involved in much more than just business—for example, in Croatia, investigators are certain that Avenue made large donations to the local political party HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union). In addition, Glyadelkin acquired construction and engineering companies there, such as IGH (more than 51 %) and Hidroelektra. The latter had major projects to reconstruct the water supply system and a railway section in Croatia, totaling approximately €100 million, with the work partially financed by EU grants. Under the control of Glyadelkin and his cousin, Igor Tkach, the company was merged into another group in 2018, which then went bankrupt in 2019. Local investigators are certain that the "Russian investor" extracted everything possible from the companies and left them with debts. Hidroelektra shares were registered to the Russian LLC Gloria Vintex, managed by the management company Avenue Management. Gloria Vintex was liquidated in April 2022.
In Croatia, Glyadelkin also secured a concession for the development of Kupari, a former Yugoslav military resort on the Adriatic coast. The Ritz-Carlton (Marriott) was appointed operator. However, under the Russian billionaire’s leadership, the project’s cost suddenly skyrocketed (as far as Croatian authorities were concerned), and he even decided to demolish historic buildings that had been planned for preservation. Ritz-Carlton eventually grew tired of waiting and withdrew from the project, and in the spring of 2022, Avenue Group also left Croatia.
IGH has expanded its operations to Hungary, Armenia, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. The company remains managed by the Gladelkin and Tkach families. Sergey Gladelkin and Igor Tkach serve on the IGH Group’s Supervisory Board, and Marian Tkach has served as Chairman of the Management Board since September of last year. The director’s chair was previously held by Robert Petrosyan, the former head of Russia’s Roscapstroy. In 2023, Petrosyan announced that IGX had signed a three-year contract with JCS ASE (Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Rosatom) for construction supervision of units № 5 and № 6 of the Paks II Nuclear Power Plant under construction in Hungary.
While Shulga’s joint venture with the Glyadelkins doesn’t generate any official income, he does have other sources. This includes the Arsenal group of companies, which makes its money from construction and waste management services. Its largest client is Russian Railways. Arsenal LLC has received contracts from Russian Railways worth at least 3.75 billion rubles, IC Arsenal worth 150 million rubles, and so on. Arsenal’s reputation in the market would have long been negative if not for its owners. For example, while working under contracts with Russian Railways, the company starts forest fires and hires workers from the street without employment contracts.
In 2023, Shulga acquired a new business partner at Arsenal: St. Petersburg resident Anna Kviria, a dentist and former owner of an aesthetic medicine clinic, who acquired a 60% stake in the company. It would seem that construction contracts and contracts with Russian Railways are a far cry from an aesthetic dentistry practice run by a native of sunny Georgia, a lover of social events and high fashion. However, 41-year-old Anna Kviria has a very wide circle of friends. Firstly, she has a child with 46-year-old Artem Sheikin, a Federation Council senator from the Amur Region and first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building. Sheikin previously claimed that Kviria lived in Spain, but leaked data from late 2023 revealed that Anna Iraklievna was listed on the insurance policy for a black Mercedes-Benz owned by St. Petersburg resident Yuri Korotchenko. This is a former employee of Roszheldorsnab (a Russian Railways structure), a figure in the Paradise Papers leaks, and a long-standing major Russian Railways contractor who has misappropriated billions of rubles from the state corporation. Korotchenko owned stakes in PAO Bamstroymekhanizatsiya (which won three Russian Railways tenders worth 143 billion rubles in 2014) and EPF SUDOTEKHNOLOGIYA (an equipment supplier to Russian Railways, worth 8.8 billion rubles from 2012 to 2016). He also served on the board of directors of the First Non-Metallic Company of Artem Chaika, the son of the former Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. Furthermore, Korotchenko is a close friend of Dmitry Morozov, the son of Vadim Morozov, the former first vice president of Russian Railways. Dmitry previously headed the TransContainer branch on the October Railway, and before 2016, he owned a stake in Arsenal (Shulga joined the company only in 2019). Apparently, Anna Kviriya is now the registered owner of Korotchenko’s stake in Arsenal.
Additionally, through Ostozhenka 35 LLC, Shulga owned nonresidential premises on the first floor of the building at 11 Ostozhenka Street—initially, only on a leasehold basis, with an annual rent of 15 million rubles for 203 square meters. In October 2021, the company purchased 365 square meters in the same building in installments for 145.4 million rubles, and six weeks later, Shulga sold the company to the Kuptsov family (owners of the business airline Rusaero). The premises in the clubhouse at 11 Ostozhenka Street are leased by VTB Bank, as well as a beauty salon and a perfume boutique. Last year, the property generated 27 million rubles in net profit for its new owner, Alina Kuptsova.
Another former Shulga asset is Tvardovskogo 18 LLC. This company owned an aging 157-square-meter building at 18/1 Tvardovskogo Street in Moscow’s Strogino district. The company leases the 33-hectare plot of land underneath it until 2065. Rumors of impending development on this plot of land have been circulating for 20 years. In late 2020, Shulga sold the company to the Ural-based UDevelopment of the Anisimkov family, and a few months later, Tvardovskogo 18 ran into trouble: Moscow City Hall, which had ignored the semi-abandoned former catering building in Strogino for years, suddenly saw the light and dispatched a commission to the site. The commission, without hesitation, classified the building as dilapidated and posing a threat to the life and health of citizens, giving City Hall grounds to demand the building’s demolition and vacate the site—it was leased under the terms of the building’s use. True, the Anisimovs managed to fight back in court, but they quickly got rid of the problematic asset, reselling it to the St. Petersburg-based Okhta Group.
Shulga also owned 50% of Pyatnitskaya LLC, which owned a 396-square-meter office building at 62 Pyatnitskaya Street. In 2020, Shulga’s stake was transferred to his second co-owner, Mikhail Travkin, who also owns waste collection companies and chairs the ethics committee of the Union of Recyclers of Russia. In January 2025, Travkin, after several lawsuits with the Moscow mayor’s office over the taxation of the office building, liquidated the company.
Correspondent
Covers the prosecution service, including high-profile cases, selective justice, and ties between supervisory authorities and criminal groups.