Shelomov Mikhail

Owner and CEO of Accept LLC, a minority beneficiary of Rossiya Bank and Sogaz Insurance Company, a cousin nephew of Vladimir Putin

SHELOMOV, Mikhail Lvovich (b. 1968) was born in the family of Lyubov Ivanovna Shelomova, a cousin of Vladimir Putin. There is no public information about his life until Putin was elected president of the Russian Federation. At least since the end of the 2000s, he worked as a chief specialist at the state shipping company Sovcomflot in St. Petersburg. In June 2002, together with a resident of Astrakhan Larisa Isaeva, he established the company Accept LLC in St. Petersburg, whose main activity is the investment in securities. In 2019, according to the SPARK system, Shelomov owned 99.99% of Accept, which, in turn, owns companies Platinum and Sogaz-Real Estate. Accept and Platinum own 8.4% of the shares of the Rossiya Bank. The bank's main shareholder is Yuri Kovalchuk, a businessman from the inner circle of President Putin. Accept also owns 50% of Igora Drive, a company that constructs an auto racing track near St. Petersburg.

Money laundering in the interests of the ruling regime, hiding information about beneficiaries.

Mikhail Shelomov is among the relatives and friends of the president’s youth living a modest life despite formally owning vast assets acquired through dubious schemes. Cellist Roldugin, butcher Kolbin, and clerk Shelomov did not attract the attention of investigators until a certain time, which allowed them to transfer billions of dollars, enrich the president’s inner circle and accumulate financial resources to maintain Putin’s power.

The stunning business successes of a mediocre clerk with an average salary began to attract the attention of journalists in the late 2000s. A thorough investigation of the condition and business activity of Shelomov was published in 2017 on the website of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). As it turned out, the companies belonging to the relative of the Russian president received 2.04 billion rubles of net profit for 2016, and he owns a fortune of $573 million, having a very vague idea about this money.

The basis of Shelomov’s fortune is the company Accept, which was opened on his behalf and owns shares of large corporations associated with people from Putin’s inner circle. The company does not have a website, and it does not engage in any other commercial activities. In 2004, a company without guarantees of repayment of a loan received a loan from Panamanian offshore Santal Trading Corporation of $18 million, which helped it to acquire a stake in Rossiya Bank and the SOGAZ insurance group. By 2013, the value of the Accept block of shares in the insurance company grew to 6.17 billion rubles. In 2009, Accept acquired another profitable project, SOGAZ-Real Estate, a real estate subsidiary of SOGAZ, which owns the St. Petersburg office of SOGAZ and the offices of Rossiya Bank and Gazprom Pension Fund. It is noteworthy that in an interview with Novaya Gazeta in 2009, Shelomov said that Accept was his personal project, but immediately after journalists asked if the true owner was hiding behind him, he abruptly interrupted the interview.

Another company bought by Accept, Platinum, turned out to be closely connected to Putin's old friends Arkady and Boris Rotenberg. The year before the acquisition, the little-known Platinum company was among the largest creditors of Rossiya Bank: the bank owed the company more than four billion rubles, but soon the debt was paid in full. After the purchase of Platinum, Shelomov increased his stake in Rossiya Bank. Platinum owns a villa and a plot of land in the Sochi region, where the government sanatorium Rus’ is located. In preparation for the 2014 Olympics, 5 billion rubles of budget money were allocated for the reconstruction of Rus’. Accept was also a co-owner of the building of the Konstantinovsky Congress Center near St. Petersburg, which served as the official residence of Vladimir Putin. At the end of 2016, it turned out that Accept acquired 50% of Igora Drive: this company is building a race track near St. Petersburg, not far from the Igora ski resort, one of Putin’s favorite ski resorts, where his daughter Ekaterina Tikhonova married in February 2013.

With all this, Shelomov does not make the impression of an oligarch: he lives in a three-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of St. Petersburg and is always very alarmed when journalists manage to get through to him. The holder of billions, he is only a nominal owner and cannot freely dispose of his assets. He, like Roldugin and Kolbov, keeps extensive funds in case of bad times for Putin and his entourage, when they would have to save their life, freedom, and financial well-being. The fact that the preparation of such a golden parachute began long before the wars with neighbors, annexations, and sanctions, suggests that the Putin clan set its main goal to usurp and maintain power from the very beginning. The persistence with which these people try to avoid publicity and exposure eloquently testifies that they are fully aware of their sins and crimes and above all are afraid of just retribution.