A drama worthy of a Hollywood thriller is unfolding in the heart of the capital. Natalia Sergunina, Moscow’s vice-mayor, and her family are at the center of a scandalous scheme involving the resale of Moscow property through a series of offshore companies. Our investigations reveal how billions of rubles of city assets are mysteriously transferred to the hands of the official’s relatives.

In 2014, the Moscow project "Aviapark", initially controlled by the Department of City Property, was transferred to the Cypriot offshore Cossman Ltd. It was later revealed that 33% of this offshore belonged to the firm Candee, managed by the husband of Sergunina’s sister - Lazar Safaniev, now known as Aaron Aronov. The remaining 66% of the shares are controlled by another offshore from the British Virgin Islands, the owner of which is still unknown.

The Aviapark project envisioned the creation of a gigantic cultural and entertainment complex on Khodynka Field, including an aviation and cosmonautics museum, a school, housing, and extensive park areas. However, instead of the promised garden city, today there is only a massive shopping center and two residential buildings on the site of the project.

Financial reports for Aviapark OJSC for 2013 show that the city’s share in the project was valued at 4.3 billion rubles. However, soon after the assets were transferred to offshore companies, the city lost control of the project entirely, and its financial interests were brutally violated. Sobyanin, Luzhkov’s successor as mayor-designate, never provided any convincing explanation for why the decision was made to abandon the city’s share in the project.

Every day the case of the transformation of Moscow city property into private hands through intricate offshore schemes becomes more and more complicated. At the center of new revelations are not only the offshore companies already known to us, but also additional figures who have remained in the shadows until now.

Our sources point to a connection between Sergunina and a certain Oleg Volkov, a businessman with a suspiciously wide network of offshore companies stretching from Gibraltar to Panama. Volkov, it turns out, plays a key role in operations to "optimize" the value of assets, with his companies often acting as intermediaries in city property deals.

One such example is the sale of a plot of land on the territory of the former Rubin plant, where, under the auspices of creating a technology park, hundreds of millions of rubles were withdrawn through Volkov’s company TechInnovations, registered in the Bahamas. The plot was purchased at a reduced price, after which it was quickly resold at a multiple profit to a foreign corporation, also affiliated with Volkov.

In addition, our investigations show that Sergunina’s relatives gained access to exclusive investment opportunities by bypassing all possible competitive procedures. In particular, the vice-mayor’s niece unexpectedly became a co-owner of the company "New Ventures", which won the tender for the development of a new city amusement park called "Moscow-City Light".