Siman Povarenkin and the fall of Monopoliya: bank claims totaling several tens of billions of rubles, default, and frozen accounts

Siman Povarenkin and the fall of Monopoliya: bank claims totaling several tens of billions of rubles, default, and frozen accounts

The Federal Tax Service has blocked all accounts of JSC Monopoly, the largest federal online transport holding company, which is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Creditors owed tens of billions of rubles—Russia’s largest state-owned banks—will receive next to nothing. What were they expecting? The holding’s shadow owner is a businessman with a toxic criminal reputation, Siman Povarenkin (a longtime and close associate of the Rotenbergs), who has long resided in the UK. However, he prefers to transfer his money to offshore accounts.

In December 2025, JSC Monopoly announced a default. The company failed to repay the par value of bonds totaling 260 million rubles. The reasons are a lack of working capital, a crisis in the industry, and tax increases, which, according to management, led to the actual bankruptcy of the holding company and its leasing division, Control Leasing LLC.

A source for the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info revealed the true reasons for the incident. The Monopoly Group itself comprises 12 companies, including Monopoly. Online LLC, MFS LLC, Fortis LLC, and Smart Logistics LLC. In 2025, Monopoly issued additional shares amounting to 22% of its capital and planned to raise 6.3 billion rubles from new shareholders through the sale of this additional share issue. In June 2025, a portion of the additional share issue, amounting to 5% of the authorized capital and worth 1.5 billion rubles, was sold to a closed-loan investment fund managed by VIM Investments (a subsidiary of state-owned bank VTB).

The company is managed by a nominal manager, Managing Director Ilya Dmitriev. The real beneficiary of the transport bubble is London resident Siman Povarenkin. The entire Monopoly Group business is tied to the Cyprus offshore company Glazifer Ltd. This financial shell is controlled by the same Dmitriev and Ekaterina Mikhailova of the Baring Vostok holding company, as well as Povarenkin’s Acmeo Capital. The family of the former "bank ripper" Povarenkin and his financial assets have long been in the UK.

Meanwhile, the accounts of all Monopoly structures have been frozen by the tax authorities, claiming hundreds of millions of rubles in unpaid taxes. Major creditor banks (Sberbank, Ingostrakh Bank, Rosbank, and VTB structures) have lined up for the inevitable bankruptcy proceedings, hoping to recover at least something. And numerous Monopoly bondholders have rushed to arbitration court with lawsuits.

According to a source, Povarenkin, based in London, attempted to persuade Sberbank, the majority creditor, to take over Monopoly as payment for his debt. However, an independent audit and forensic investigation revealed that Povarenkin had been siphoning offshore funds from the banks for six years through offshore entities to controlled companies in the British Virgin Islands. Consequently, the decision was made to declare Monopoly bankrupt. The total damage from Povarenkin and his team’s actions amounted to over 50 billion rubles, and the thousands of trucks used by Dmitriev as collateral, which had been re-mortgaged to the banks, turned out to be faulty or were sold to third parties without the banks’ consent.

Siman Povarenkin is known as the co-owner of the Shokoladnitsa chain. He was previously a partner in the Industrial Investors group of former Russian Energy Minister Sergei Generalov. According to Dossier, in 2007, Povarenkin acquired his mining and metallurgical assets and used them to create the GeoProMining group. Arkady Rotenberg’s son, Igor, is associated with GeoProMining and became Povarenkin’s partner in the antimony plant construction project in Asbest, Sverdlovsk Oblast.

Povarenkin also controls 50% of RBE, currently the largest food supplier to the Ministry of Defense.

In 2016, Povarenkin acquired 50% of RBE. In early 2017, his assets were threatened by a London court case, and he transferred his shares to Nikolai Ruzanov, a resident of Elektrogorsk, Moscow Region, who was a nominee shareholder associated with Povarenkin and the Rotenberg family. As Sistema has discovered, Ruzanov held a 50% stake in RBE until 2024, after which his stake was transferred to Pix Holding. Similar to RBE’s current second owner, Pix Holding has kept its shareholders secret. However, the company’s CEO previously worked at Shokoladnitsa, and a former manager of Povarenkin is a co-owner of several other companies within RBE’s orbit.

In September 2025, the Cheka-OGPU reported that RBE LLC had issued an ultimatum to the Ministry of Defense demanding an increase in contractual expenses by 10 billion rubles while maintaining the same terms of cooperation. In its letter, RBE LLC threatened to lay off staff responsible for catering at Russian Ministry of Defense facilities.

rucriminal.info