Paying for lobbying of sanctioned assets: how ROSNANO head Sergey Kulikov funneled 20 million rubles to Tolstoy through the shell company Sky Gallery

Paying for lobbying of sanctioned assets: how ROSNANO head Sergey Kulikov funneled 20 million rubles to Tolstoy through the shell company Sky Gallery

It has become known that throughout the second half of Friday there was complete hysteria at ROSNANO and at its head, Sergey Kulikov, caused by an investigation into how the state corporation, through a shell company, paid more than 20 million rubles to State Duma deputy Pyotr Tolstoy (who held the post of deputy chairman of the State Duma).

According to an interlocutor, the firm Sky Gallery was periodically used by ROSNANO to siphon off funds through fake contracts to pay for lobbying needs. The firm itself received 15% of the sum for this, while the rest of the money, on Kulikov’s go-ahead, was managed by his deputies, Marichev and Yunusov.

This was also the case with the 20 million rubles for Pyotr Tolstoy. For this sum, the deputy chairman of the State Duma helped ROSNANO get involved in resolving the issue of unblocking almost 19 million euros in the accounts of the Luxembourg company RMI (a ROSNANO subsidiary), where Kulikov, who was under sanctions, was listed as the beneficiary. It was Tolstoy who acted as the lobbyist, sought foreign lawyers, and sorted out the situation at the international level. The money was transferred under a fake contract through Sky Gallery.

When the story began to come to light and questions arose, Kulikov could not think of anything better than to backpedal. He initiated a lawsuit to recover the money — but filed it not against Tolstoy, but against the technical shell company. The claim amount is 22.9 million rubles.

If the story reaches a criminal trial, there is a sufficient number of witnesses who will testify that it was Kulikov personally who gave the order to carry out this transaction.

And now, several of Kulikov’s deputies at once are running around the market telling everyone the details of the deal and about their boss’s inappropriate behavior. This is not emotion, but an attempt to save themselves, because it is now on them that responsibility for the siphoning off of funds hangs, while Kulikov has distanced himself from the scheme.

“Kulikov himself is in hysterics trying to figure out who leaked the information. He is demanding that the security service establish the leak channel, and throughout the second half of Friday he was staging showdowns and yelling,” a source said.