VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info discovered who's hiding behind the screen of closed-end mutual funds that own Samara-based Netline, which has gained a significant foothold in the Safe City systems servicing market in recent years. Key positions in the group's companies, it turns out, have been filled by people from the federal integrator Open Technologies, which works closely with Rostec and the Ministry of Defense. This connection is no coincidence—the founders of the Samara business themselves began their careers at Open Technologies (OT). Furthermore, Netline collects bonuses for servicing and integrating other systems into Safe City in the regions where OT developed it. Essentially, this is a monopolization of a large market segment, which the owners of OT and their partners at Rostec have managed to conceal for many years. Meanwhile, Open Technologies 98, a company affiliated with OT, closely collaborates with the Ministry of Defense.
Netline, as is well known, profits from the implementation of city video surveillance systems, including the "Safe City" system. This company alone has approximately 160 contracts worth 7.8 billion rubles in its portfolio, and a number of related legal entities also successfully participate in public procurement. Its largest customers are the Ministry of Transport (2.5 billion rubles in 2025), Rostelecom, and the Samara Region State Budgetary Institution "Safe Region." This year, Netline received government contracts worth 60 million rubles from the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution "MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES AND COMMUNICATIONS." In 2024, it won a tender from the Samara State Budgetary Institution "NSO TsODD" for the supply of photo and video recording systems for traffic violations worth 23.9 million rubles. It also provided maintenance services for the law enforcement segment of the "Safe City" program for 105.5 million rubles. Furthermore, its subsidiary, Netvision, developed a vertically integrated video surveillance and video analytics ecosystem for populated areas—the same total surveillance system, but packaged into a single product, from cameras to a mobile app for operational monitoring. It recognizes license plates and faces, controls access to restricted areas, monitors emergencies (including fires and accidents), crowds, and more. According to government procurement records, NetVision has already delivered its software to the Nizhny Novgorod Region Center for Transport Systems Development, the Vologda Center for Digital Development, the Novosibirsk Region Center for Traffic Management, and other government agencies.
Netline was founded by Samara engineer Roman Kazachenko and two fellow businessmen, Viktor Stolyarov and Dmitry Kireev. As of 2014, both were advisors to the general director of Open Technologies 98 LLC and, in this capacity, participated in the interdepartmental working group under the Samara Region government. The group focused on the implementation of the "Safe City" program and the automated traffic violation recording system. Back in 2008, an Open Technologies employee purchased Kireev's plane tickets from Samara to Moscow, making him a longtime and dedicated employee of the company. It was Open Technologies that received the contract to create the "Safe City" system for Samara. Unsurprisingly, Stolyarov and Kazachenko's newly established Samara-based Netline subsequently secured the lion's share of government contracts related to these systems. This scheme then expanded to include other companies, which also managed to secure their share of budget funds.
Through the trio of founders and their relatives, Netline is connected to a number of other legal entities: MSK Group LLC, NPO VZOR, GST, and others. It is known that OT, in collaboration with Rostec, developed "Safe City" systems for, among other cities, Ufa, Komi, and North Ossetia. According to leaked data, Kireev, Dmitry Peskovetsky, and other top managers of companies affiliated with Netline regularly flew to these same regions. In 2018, Netline won, among other things, a Ufa mayor's office tender for the installation of road surveillance systems. In North Ossetia, in 2019, MSK Group received a contract from the Ministry of Health (which OT worked with) for almost 20 million rubles. OT's interests in the "Safe City" program are closely intertwined with Rostec's. In 2020, the head of the state corporation, Sergey Chemezov, stated that Rostec was already working on such systems in three regions.
In 2023-2024, Netline's founders changed, and now 90% is owned by three closed-end mutual funds managed by RIO LLC: Infinit, Integral, and Borey. Investors in closed-end mutual funds, as is well known, are not disclosed—this is a very convenient form of hidden asset ownership. However, the company's manager, Dmitry Peskovetsky, remains the same. He is a 50-year-old native of the Kyrgyz SSR who has worked at GST LLC under Dmitry Kireev since at least 2016.
Netline's subsidiary, Netvision, is managed by Kazachenko himself. MSK Group, previously owned by the Kireev family and Viktor Stolyarov, was also transferred to the closed-end mutual funds Borey and Infinite in 2023-2024. Since 2024, there has been a new manager—Maxim Glushchenko, a native of the Kemerovo Region. However, he is also a distinguished employee of O Open Technologies: he has been working there for at least 16 years, rising from a client manager to director of the public sector department.
Vzor Scientific and Production Association, where Viktor Stolyarov previously held a stake, also saw a change in founders – the company is now owned by the same closed-end mutual funds Borey and Infinit. However, this change in founders was accompanied by a scandal: in the summer of 2022, when the Russian IT industry was frantically considering whether it was time to hide from sanctions, Samara resident Oleg Tyukilin received a 25% stake in the company. When the other owners meekly transferred their shares to closed-end mutual funds, Tyukilin dug in his heels. Ultimately, Vzor's new owners made serious efforts to oust him from the founders. Management Company Rio even filed a lawsuit, demanding that he be excluded from the company's capital, as he was not participating in shareholders' meetings (of which he was not informed in a timely manner) and was blocking the decision to liquidate the scientific and production association. The reason for the dispute also emerged in court: in December 2022, the company received federal subsidies to build scientific and technical capacity for developing technologies for the production of certain electronic components and electronic equipment (contract No. 020-11-2022-15837). Under the contract the company signed with the Ministry of Industry and Trade, it was obligated to complete the work by 2027 and regularly report on its achievements. At the end of 2025, the court upheld Tyukilin as a founding member, but RIO found leverage, and in late February of this year, Tyukilin resigned from the company.
The Kireyev family retained a business directly registered to them in the Samara Region. Specifically, Olga Kireeva (Dmitry Kireyev's wife) owns 5% of GST LLC, which continues to rake in a slew of government contracts annually—a total value exceeding 1.7 billion rubles. Last year, the company signed at least eight contracts, including one with the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media for technical support services (37.9 million rubles), the Samara Center for Civil Defense and Emergencies, and the Agency for Support of the Activities of Magistrates. Olga Kireeva is also the founder of ISIS LLC and City Service LLC, which are also doing quite well. So, her husband, Dmitry Kireev, apparently can continue to pursue his long-time passion: he collects watches. Back in 2010, when his GST had been in operation for less than six months and Netline wasn't even a project, Kireev purchased a Breguet watch worth over half a million rubles.
Open Technologies, a concern hidden in the shadow of closed-end mutual funds, is a major systems integrator that created emergency response systems for the Moscow Department of Information Technologies. Its partners include the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation and the M.V. Khrunichev (rocket and space industry), TsSKB-Progress, Russian Satellite Communications, Federal Customs Service Research Center, VSMPO-AVISMA, United Russia, Rostelecom, Megafon, and others. OT has been developing information security systems for many years and holds licenses and certificates from the Federal Security Service, Federal Service for Technical and Export Control (FSEC), Roscosmos, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The company was founded in the 1990s by Sergey Kalin and his business partners. Kalin, a graduate of the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Engineering (ITMiVT), was part of the development team for the Elbrus-2 computer. Until recently, Kalin himself, Pavel Pankratov, and Valery Bulushev were listed as OT's founders.
In the mid-2000s, Kalin worked at an institute under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, supervised by Yuri Borisov. With Borisov's support, Kalin actively pushed for the institution's privatization, but lost and returned to his business. Before the war OT had a representative office in Switzerland (headed by Oleg Kaurov) and branches in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Kalin was forced to close his European office at the end of 2023. OT is associated with Open Technologies 98, whose founders before the war also included Kalin, Pankratov, and Bulushev. The list of founders is currently hidden. Open Technologies 98 actively works under contracts with the Ministry of Defense—in particular, one of them was signed in December 2023; the Ministry of Defense is currently suing the company for 23.9 million rubles in penalties. OT 98's other clients include the Main Military Prosecutor's Office and the Kurchatov Institute.
