The four firms — Verona Capital, KDP, RSK and ShYuZ — replaced Prigozhin's Verona, Kindergarten Catering Combine, Russozkapital and Shkolnik-YuZ, Verstka reported. All were registered between March 12 and 19, 2024, roughly six months after Prigozhin died in a plane crash.
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Verona Capital is owned by Sergei Yefimchuk, KDP by Nikolai Kuznetsov, ShYuZ by Olga Rusishvili, and RSK by Dmitry Aliyev and Alexander Fatalov. All of them worked at Grandtitul, according to Verstka and Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Yefimchuk spent 19 years at Grandtitul in the administration department on a salary of 70,000 rubles a month. He now owns Verona Capital, which holds assets worth almost 5.3 billion rubles.
Ragimov owns 15% of Grandtitul, the largest single stake in the company. In 2018 he left the list of co-owners, transferring his stake to his son-in-law, but is now listed again in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. The remaining stakes, according to Verstka, belong to the circle and relatives of billionaires God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev, the main owners of the Kievskaya Ploshchad group, one of Russia's largest commercial real estate holders (the Yevropeisky shopping center and the Sadovod and Food City markets). Ragimov was their minority partner from the start.
The contracts were distributed among the winners as follows: Verona Capital received 12 tenders worth 38.2 billion rubles, KDP seven worth 29.1 billion, RSK nine worth 34.8 billion, and ShYuZ 11 worth 24.6 billion. Previously, Moscow's school catering market belonged almost entirely to Prigozhin's structures: between 2011 and 2021, firms linked to him received state contracts worth 184.6 billion rubles, and in 2022 alone a record 91.5 billion. Even an outbreak of dysentery in schools and kindergartens in southeast Moscow in 2019 did not stop them from receiving new contracts.
Ragimov studied with Putin at the law faculty of Leningrad State University (now St Petersburg State University). He is an honorary doctor of the university, where a monument to him was unveiled in January. Ragimov entered business in 1999, when Putin was appointed prime minister of Russia. In 2014, Forbes estimated his fortune at $500 million. His main income came from stakes in the Sadovod market, the Ukraina hotel, and the Yevropeisky and Panorama shopping centers.
According to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Ragimov, along with two other classmates of the president, Nikolai Yegorov and Viktor Khmarin, helped finance the construction of the "Putin's palace" near Gelendzhik. In total, their company Investitsionnye Resheniya spent 7 billion rubles on it. Ragimov himself said in a 2010 interview that he and Putin had been "friends for forty years" and that this relationship aroused the envy of his enemies.
Novaya Gazeta Europe reported back in June 2024 that Prigozhin's companies were passing to Nisanov's people. Nisanov and Ragimov's circle surfaced again last week: the wife of Interior Ministry General Andrei Krayushkin worked at Vysotka, the legal entity of the Ukraina hotel, Agentstvo found. Nisanov owns 42.5% of Vysotka and Ragimov 15%. Krayushkin himself heads L.E.V. Management, to which Putin transferred temporary management of Russian assets of Auchan, Nestle and Lemana Pro on September 17.