Wildberries is essentially a "cash pool" for senior government officials. As VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info discovered, Alexey Gromov, First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration, is a co-owner of Wildberries, which quickly grew from a marketplace into a multi-industry holding company. Our project previously reported that another co-owner is Anton Vaino, Head of the Presidential Administration. RWB executives Robert and Levan Mirzoyan call Gromov "senior."

According to a project source, after the sale of Video International (Lesin was a close friend of Gromov's, and the First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration also had interests in this company – ED.), Gromov accumulated a large sum of money. He isn't well-versed in all the new, modern media, but the outdoor advertising market is very familiar and familiar to him. As a result, Gromov, through his acquaintances Suleiman Kerimov and the Mirzoyan brothers, decided to invest in the purchase of Russ Outdoor (one of the largest outdoor advertising operators). They essentially pooled their funds for the purchase. Danila Gromov, the son of the First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, became deputy director of the Russ Outdoor group of companies. "The Mirzoyans visit Gromov two or three times a week, calling him among themselves nothing less than 'senior' and 'boss,'" our source noted.

 

Russ Outdoor received unprecedented support from the Kremlin. According to the source, Gromov was the main driver of the controversial bill to create a single operator for digital outdoor advertising. The entire bill was tailored exclusively for Russ Outdoor, which would have given it a complete monopoly in the relevant market. "During the struggle over this bill, the Mirzoyans never left Gromov's office," the source noted.

 

Its main opponents were other major players in the outdoor advertising market: the RIM media group (backed by Tatarstan-born officials) and the Mayer Group (a company owned by Konstantin Mayor, the husband of Putin's niece, who is closely associated with Iskander Makhmudov and Andrei Bokarev). They eventually secured the support of Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Sergei Kiriyenko, which resulted in the bill being nixed.

 

This project failed in 2003, but in 2004, another, even more profitable one was launched. A merger (or, in essence, a takeover) of Wildberries, Russia's largest marketplace, and Russ Outdoor (the joint company is known as RWB for short) took place. The main drivers and beneficiaries of this project were longtime partners Suleiman Kerimov and Anton Vaino. It was thanks to Vaino's support that Kerimov managed to win the "war" over Wildberries with Ramzan Kadyrov (at one point, the latter even declared a "blood feud" against Kerimov).

 

However, according to a source, Gromov, as a full co-owner of Russ Outdoor, also received his stake in RWB.

 

As our project previously reported, a year ago, Gromov was promoted to the rank of colonel general by a classified presidential decree. With his promotion to colonel general, Putin extended Gromov's term of service to 70 years. (He turned 65 on May 31, 2025, the maximum age for civil service.)

 

Gromov began his career in the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, now the Foreign Intelligence Service, and worked under diplomatic cover in Soviet and Russian diplomatic missions abroad, where he met the future president of Russia.