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[lewisto]

Hi there!

Artyom Ekimov — the man who made Valerian Mazaraki his deputy and staffed Moscow’s territorial funeral services departments with fellow Stavropol natives — took charge of Ritual literally just a few days before federal agents carried out a special operation against his former place of work. As a result of that police bust, the entire leadership of the Interior Ministry’s Anti-Corruption and Economic Security head office (GUEBiPK) ended up in prison.

The reason for the police action was an earlier sting operation staged by GUEBiPK officers to try to catch Igor Demin, the deputy director of the FSB’s Internal Security 6th Service, in the process of accepting a bribe. Afterwards, seven GUEBiPK staff, including department head Denis Sugrobov, were charged with abuse of office and provoking bribery, and later with organizing a criminal association as well. Sugrobov was initially sentenced to 22 years in prison before the term was reduced to 12 years.

It’s believed that the Sugrobov case was a response to GUEBiPK’s attempts to gain control over the banking sector, which was traditionally supervised by the banking division (Department “K”) of the FSB’s Economic Security Service.

Denis Sugrobov knew about Artyom Ekimov's plans to leave the department to work at Ritual, a source close to Sugrobov told me. Back in 2013, says me, Sugrobov suggested that Ekimov had been hired as the new head of the Moscow funeral service because he was a “competent guy” and a friend of FSB Lieutenant Colonel Marat Medoev. Sugrobov's contacts in the presidential administration also allegedly informed him that Medoev’s superior, Alexey Dorofeyev, directly lobbied for Ekimov’s appointment to the top spot at Ritual.

FSB Lieutenant General Alexey Dorofeyev, now age 58, graduated from the Leningrad Mechanical Institute, before joining the KGB and working in city-level state security departments in Leningrad and then (after the city was renamed) St. Petersburg. In 2005, he took over the FSB’s office in Karelia. According to reports in the news media, Dorofeyev was removed from this post following deadly ethnic clashes in Kondopoga in August 2006, but he soon made it to Moscow. From 2010 to 2012, he managed the FSB's Department “M,” which subsequently carried out the operation to break up GUEBiPK. In 2012, Dorofeyev was put in charge of the FSB’s Chief Directorate for the Moscow metropolitan area.

Another source in law enforcement (an officer at one of Russia’s intelligence agencies who is personally acquainted with Marat Medoev) that Lieutenant General Dorofeyev was behind Artyom Ekimov’s appointment to Ritual, saying that Ekimov was considered “Dorofeyev's man.”

The same source describes Dorofeyev as a kind of “demigod.” “He’s a lieutenant general with an office and a sunroom. Not every boss from ‘Detsky Mir’ can get an audience with him,” my source says, referring to the children's retail store across the street from the FSB’s headquarters at Lubyanka Square in Moscow.

[lewisto]

Hey there!

On July 10, Egor Mazaraki sold off his 51-percent share of “TradeCom Ltd.” — a construction company registered in 2010 in the Mazaraki brothers’ hometown of Stavropol, and relocated to Moscow in 2017, soon after Valerian Mazaraki was appointed as Ritual’s deputy director. TradeCom’s business boomed after it moved to the capital, with revenue exploding from 49 million rubles ($777,570) to 304 million rubles ($4.8 million) in a single year. The company has state contracts with Rostelecom, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Federal Penitentiary Service. Egor Mazaraki wasn’t a co-owner of the business for very long — he joined the founders’ board only on April 24, 2019.

From April 11, 2019, to July 11, 2019, Egor Mazaraki was the sole owner of the “Three Mountain Baths” sauna complex, previously known as “Shaika-Leika” (Bad Company).

On July 15, Egor Mazaraki divested from the companies “Dzhubi” and “Dzhiefsi,” which lease 3,229 square meters (34,757 square feet) at the “Three Mountain Manufactory” for nightclubs that belong to the “Soho Family” holding group, as well as the “Friendship” cafe, the “Varka” restaurant, and the “Jagger Hall” banquet hall, according to a report by Daily Storm in December 2018. Egor Mazaraki became a restaurateur in September 2017. Before he bought the Soho Family holding company, it was owned by the designer Denis Simachev and the son of crooner Iosif Kobzon.

[lewisto]