Irina Tikmenova—co-owner of the Zelenograd-based military electronics manufacturer Elins and daughter of the company’s founder, Vasily Tikmenov—has become embroiled in a major scandal involving the siphoning of assets worth one billion rubles from the Moscow-region firm Walter LLC. Ultimately, some of the company's assets ended up with firms linked to the Ananyev brothers (formerly the ultimate beneficial owners of Promsvyazbank PJSC) and to Nikolai Tsvetkov, the former owner of Uralsib Bank. At the time, Walter’s founder was the Cyprus-based offshore entity Gonsenesto Commercial Ltd, which operated via nominee directors.

The Arbitration Court is currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the transfer of land plots in the Moscow region's Dmitrovsky District from Walter to various legal entities and individuals; the next hearing is scheduled for September 22. The list of parties involved in the transaction includes Irina Vasilyevna Tikmenova—Vasily Tikmenov’s daughter, who serves as the CFO of STC Elins, director of the Elins Scientific Center, and founder of Vita-Flor LLC. As previously reported, Elins had earlier managed to "vacuum up" assets from the bankrupt state-owned enterprise SKB Radel; for a mere 200 million rubles, the Tikmenovs acquired a 32-are land plot and a building with an area of ​​4,206.5 square meters in Zelenograd. Radel had previously served the defense industry and security services. STC ELINS itself participates—through industrial cooperation—in the development of at least 60 different types of weaponry and military hardware deployed in Ukraine; these include, notably, digital versions of the Osa and Tor air defense missile systems (manufactured by the Kupol Izhevsk Electromechanical Plant), the Pantsir-S1, the Iskander-M, the Su-57, and others. When European manufacturers cut off the Russian defense industry's access to military technologies, ELINS participated in import-substitution efforts for the French Thales "Catherine FC" and "Catherine XP" thermal imaging cameras used in infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) sights. To replace them, the Tikmenovs' design team developed the TEtsA.202162.001 camera (also known as "Zarya"), which was touted as a fully domestic product. In reality, however, ELINS had to resort to relabeling: following a long-standing domestic tradition, a Chinese MWIR 640x512 sensor array was passed off as the import-substituted component within the camera. Unsurprisingly, the equipment frequently malfunctioned, and the sight manufacturer, JSC VOMZ, found itself embroiled in lawsuits.

Furthermore, during the war, the Zelenograd-based JSC STC ELINS was commissioned by the V.V. Tikhomirov Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Design (NIIP) to develop the technical design for "LEVM-ELINS"—a component of a new air defense system. ELINS began the work and received a contract from NIIP, but the Tikmenovs were dissatisfied with the document. When the institute refused to rewrite the contract to suit the Tikmenovs' preferences (as the project was commissioned by the Ministry of Defense), ELINS neither made the necessary design adjustments nor signed the contract, citing a lack of personnel and a heavy workload. The institute found other contractors for the Ministry of Defense and obtained the required "Standart-PVO-NIIP" project from them; subsequently, Elins filed a lawsuit demanding 8 million rubles from the institute for the use of its proprietary technology. The court, however, ruled in favor of the institute, and the Tikmenovs received nothing. The matter is not yet closed, however: the Tikmenovs lost their appeals but filed a cassation appeal with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in late July. A date for the hearing has not yet been set.

Elins is a family-run company: its co-owner and founder, Vasily Tikmenov, works there alongside his daughter, Irina, and her husband, Alexander Markov—a MIET graduate who heads the department of automated information systems and technologies. Judging by pre-war information available online, Markov and his department focused on developing robotic systems, computer vision and AI technologies, and solutions for remote control and biometric data processing—essentially, the electronics used in air defense control systems, UAVs, and the like.

Ivan Markov, the 22-year-old son of Tikmenova and Markov, is a graduate of MAI and has also been working at Elins for several years—specifically in the information security unit of the internal security department. His half-brother, 30-year-old Vasily Tikmenov, is also involved in the family business; an economist and lawyer by training, he heads that internal security department. The family members receive "floating" salaries, averaging between 300,000 and over a million rubles per month.

Longtime friends of the family from Zelenograd also work at Elins—for instance, Alexander Markov’s friend, 48-year-old Oleg Rubichev. He serves as deputy to the chief designer, Viktor Viktorov, who is a business partner of the elder Tikmenov. In February 2024, Rubichev received the "For the Defense of the Republic of Crimea" medal from Sergey Aksyonov, the head of the Russian administration in Crimea. Admittedly, judging by the ineffectiveness of the air defense systems and the regular strikes on Crimean defense infrastructure, Aksyonov was premature with that medal.

Before the war, Tikmenov and Markov traveled extensively across Europe—visiting Chambéry in France, the Canary Islands, Prague, Rome, Geneva, Lithuania, Latvia, and so on. They may well still be touring EU countries, traveling there via Turkey and the UAE: although Elins and Vasily Tikmenov himself are under sanctions, his daughter appears only on Ukraine’s sanctions lists, and Her husband and sons were not subject to sanctions at all.