“Wait, Was That Even Allowed?”: How a Volgodonsk Mayor Gifted an Elite Apartment from the Budget — and How the Same Logic Scaled Up to Gazprom and EFKO

It is hard to believe. Yet in Russia of the 2020s this is no longer news — it is a genre. When a police chief pretends to be needy and walks away with an elite apartment paid for by the municipal budget, and the mayor signs the paper "almost without reading," that is still the local version. When a decade later the same man becomes mayor, then ends up in pre-trial detention, while in Moscow top managers of Gazprom and a billionaire from EFKO are arrested in the same week — that is the system working exactly as designed. And the question that keeps returning, louder each time, is simple: "Wait, was that even allowed?"

Start with Volgodonsk. A city of 170,000 in Rostov Region. In 2016 Yuri Marinenko, then head of the inter-municipal police department "Volgodonskoye," decided his family needed housing. The income certificate he submitted was remarkably modest: the bare salary, stripped of bonuses, allowances and everything else that usually makes police service less than poor. On the strength of those papers the city administration declared the family needy. Mayor Andrey Ivanov put his signature on the order. Later, under oath in court, he admitted he signed "almost without reading, among a stack of other documents." The apartment — 63.8 square metres in one of the better high-rises in town, cadastral value more than 2.5 million rubles — went under a social-tenancy contract. Soon it was quietly removed from the municipal housing stock and transferred into the ownership of a family member. Textbook.

Nearly ten years passed. Marinenko managed to become head of Volgodonsk in March 2024. In July 2025 he suddenly resigned, citing "circumstances of force majeure." In December 2025 the FSB came with searches. The court sent him to pre-trial detention under Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code — fraud on an especially large scale. Investigators claim incomes were understated, bank accounts hidden, annual earnings exceeded one million rubles. All for free square metres. Ivanov remains a witness. Many lawyers still cannot understand why the man who signed the decisive paper is not sitting in the dock beside the beneficiary. The answer is elegant in its simplicity: he "did not read." In Russia, it turns out, you can hand out budget housing as long as the paper arrives in a thick enough stack.

Volgodonsk is only the local chapter. The real scale begins where the numbers jump to tens and hundreds of millions. On 30 July 2026 in Moscow, Igor Moiseenko was detained — deputy general director for corporate security at Gazprom Energoholding. The charge is Part 6 of Article 290: taking a bribe on an especially large scale. The figure circulating in the case materials is about 50 million rubles. Gazprom Energoholding is not a minor outfit. It is the largest owner of power-generation assets in the country: Mosenergo, OGK-2, TGC-1 and dozens of other stations. Sources link the arrest to a long-smouldering scandal around PJSC MOEK, Moscow's main heat-supply company. According to investigative reports, a well-oiled scheme operated there for years: inflated contracts for grid connections, followed by "optimisation" for a modest percentage. The result — hundreds of billions that may have disappeared in unknown directions, and worn-out infrastructure paid for by ordinary Muscovites. Moiseenko is only one name. The network, they say, was far wider.

The same day brought another strike. Valery Kustov, main shareholder and chairman of the board of the EFKO group, and general director Evgeny Lyashenko were detained, along with other top managers. The accusation is fraud on an especially large scale. The case centres on subsidies for unmanned aircraft systems channelled through the project "Transport of the Future." The company, originally tied to EFKO, received budget money to build a plant in the Togliatti special economic zone. In January 2025 the president himself visited the site. Now investigators believe part of the funds may have been siphoned through intermediary structures under the guise of fictitious contracts. Earlier, other defendants in the same case — including a Ministry of Industry and Trade official — had already been arrested. Classic import-substitution choreography: loud announcements first, quiet detentions later.

What links a Volgodonsk apartment, 50 million at Gazprom and drone subsidies at EFKO? One thing only — the attitude to the budget as a common pot from which anyone can draw, provided the paperwork looks correct. In one case it is a certificate of "bare salary." In another it is contracts with built-in "optimisation." In the third it is a project that looks beautiful on paper and on high-level visits. The difference is merely scale. A local police chief takes 2.5 million in square metres. A state-corporation executive takes 50 million in cash or transfer. A billionaire takes subsidies measured in hundreds of millions.

The most revealing part is the system's reaction. Marinenko walked free for ten years, became mayor, and only then faced investigation. Ivanov signed and "did not read." In the corporate cases the figures remained in their posts until the FSB arrived with search warrants. This is not coincidence. It is style. As long as the paper looks proper, as long as there is a "stack of documents," as long as the project is called "import substitution" or "heat supply" — everything is possible. When the time comes to answer, it turns out the signature was formal and the real incomes were "not the ones."

Lawyers have long pointed out that the actions of those who sign such documents easily meet the criteria for abuse of office. Yet the status of witness remains far more comfortable than the status of defendant. And while courts examine the "almost without reading" defence, the budget continues to feed those who know how to fill out the right certificates.

The question "Wait, was that even allowed?" stopped being rhetorical a long time ago. It has become a diagnosis. It was allowed. It remains allowed for as long as the system permits elite apartments to be handed to "needy" colonels and billions to flow through elegant projects involving drones and heat. It remains allowed for as long as a signature in a stack of papers is considered sufficient justification. It remains allowed for as long as society keeps expressing fresh surprise instead of refusing to be surprised any longer.

Volgodonsk, Gazprom, EFKO — these are not separate scandals. They are the same story told in different voices and different sums. And while the main character of this story is not any particular official or executive, but the habit of treating other people's money as one's own, the question will keep returning. Judging by the evidence, no one is in any particular hurry to answer it.