According to the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, the Russian Investigative Committee has issued a ruling refusing to open a case into the death of former Transport Minister Roman Starovoyt. His death was ruled a suicide after all examinations. Recently, Starovoyt's family was given the former official's personal belongings. A lawsuit has now been filed against Starovoyt's heirs over luxury real estate.

According to our information, the final decision to refuse to open a case was made in early January – six months after his death. Throughout this time, in keeping with established law enforcement practice, decisions to refuse were issued and then immediately overturned, and examinations were ordered, including a ballistic and postmortem psychological-psychiatric examination. Witnesses were interviewed. As a result, in January, a final decision was made that there was no criminal element in Starovoyt's death. In early February, the former minister's relatives were given his personal belongings. Apparently, Roman Starovoyt's loved ones will not appeal this decision. "He left, abandoning hopes of fighting unfair and dishonest people. We won't do that either," one of the former minister's close relatives told our project.

 

The tragedy occurred on July 7, 2025.

 

Roman Starovoit was at work: he held a work meeting and scheduled another. He summoned his deputies and discussed work-related matters. Then he learned that Putin had dismissed him as Minister of Transport. Starovoit ordered a car to be sent immediately and went home.

 

At home, he wrote a message in the work chat, ending it with the officer's phrase, "I have the honor." He took his award pistol from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and drove to the parking lot, where the incident occurred.

 

Roman Starovoit lived with a young woman, Polina Kopylova, who was not home at the time. Kopylova was in Moscow on business and received the tragic news while at a pharmacy.

 

It was Polina who arrived at the scene, and investigators conducted the identification process with her participation.

 

If we accept the version that Starovoit committed suicide, the following chain of events emerges. The former St. Petersburg official had powerful handlers from St. Petersburg, including the Rotenbergs, whose interests extended to road construction—a sector involving enormous sums of money. They promoted Starovoit along these lines; as head of the Federal Road Agency and Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation, he was involved in all the embezzlement schemes. His appointment as governor of the Kursk Region was intended to be a necessary stepping stone to the ministerial seat. According to the source, this is why his handlers and Starovoit decided that his tenure in this post must be "clean," free of corruption. They claim he was indeed not involved in the embezzlement of funds for the construction of fortifications. Perhaps it was a scheme run by his friend Smirnov, or there was no embezzlement at all.

 

When Starovoit received the coveted ministerial post in May, he found himself in the thick of the battles between clans close to Putin. As early as February 2025, Andrei Nikitin was appointed his deputy – 100% a close associate of Mikhail Kovalchuk, Putin's closest confidant. And no one hid the fact that Nikitin was brought into the Ministry of Transport with an eye on a ministerial seat.

 

By April 2025, Smirnov (a friend of Starovoit, who replaced him as governor) was arrested. Starovoit was well aware that this entire affair was aimed at him personally. Initially, Smirnov denied guilt, but in June 2025, he filed a motion for a pre-trial settlement (officially concluded on August 5). It was clear that Smirnov was testifying specifically against Starovoit. The latter, according to a source, constantly appealed to his handlers, but they reassured him that the situation was under control, and that Starovoit himself was in Putin's good standing, and that Putin would trust him.

 

When his resignation occurred, Starovoit apparently took it as a loss of trust in Putin, and that the next step could be arrest. He began to expect it, especially since he truly considered himself innocent of any embezzlement (if any) during the construction of fortifications.

 

Incidentally, it was Nikitin who took over the vacant ministerial post.

 

If we delve into conspiracy theories, before his death, Starovoit put several expensive properties up for sale and committed other actions that could have been perceived as preparations for an exodus abroad. The flight of a sitting minister during a war, of course, was unacceptable...

 

Meanwhile, Starovoit's heirs were sued. The lawsuit was filed in the Nikulinsky District Court of Moscow by Sminex Premium Service LLC, a management company registered in 2023 to service a single building in Moscow: at 39 General Dorokhov Avenue, Bldg. 2. This is the elite West Garden residential complex—several club houses built in 2021-2023 on the banks of the Ramenki River. The project developer was Sminex, owned by Alexey Tulupov (former president of Rosbuilding and former business partner of Sergey Gordeev). Sminex Premium Service had previously filed two lawsuits against residents who failed to pay their dues Payment time. In the case of Starovoyt's heirs, the court accepted the claim for proceedings on January 29, the judge held a meeting with the parties on February 19, and a hearing is scheduled for March 26.

 

This apartment has not yet appeared on Starovoyt's list of assets. It is known that he owned six other properties:

 

In Kursk, Starovoyt owned an apartment on Vyacheslav Klykov Avenue (50 sq. m);

 

In St. Petersburg, he owned apartments on Admiralty Embankment (50 sq. m) and on Malo-Okhtinsky Prospekt (165 sq. m);

 

In Moscow, he owned apartments in the Panorama residential complex on Klimashkina Street (345 sq. m) and on Shmitovsky Proyezd (140 sq. m).

 

He also owned a three-story mansion of almost 900 sq. m near Krasnogorsk, in the elite Beresta community. This house was put up for sale during Starovoyt's lifetime for 260 million rubles—a clearly undervalued price, as similar properties are, on average, almost twice as expensive. This gave rise to speculation that Starovoyt may have been preparing for a hasty departure from Russia.

 

Overall, Starovoyt's estate is estimated at approximately 1 billion rubles, but it is possible it could be higher.

 

In the seven months since Starovoyt's death, his former employee, who helped Polina Kopylova purchase airline tickets, has opened a new business. Vitaly Likhotvorik has been a co-owner of Kursk-based Ares LLC since 2023, and less than a month ago, on February 5, he and two partners registered Elives-Med LLC (which produces anatomical models for doctors) in St. Petersburg. Likhotvorik previously owned eight other companies in Moscow and St. Petersburg, primarily involved in the restaurant and delivery business. All of them have since been liquidated. Meanwhile, Likhotvorik's full namesake worked in the protocol service of the Kursk regional government in 2020. Ravil Kabanov also worked there—judging by leaked data, he also purchased tickets for Kopylova, exclusively to and from the northern capital. Polina flew there several times a year for about a week—perhaps this is where she completed her residency. Moreover, Likhotvorik's business partner at Elives-Med, Abdurakhman Islavov, teaches at the S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy of the Russian Ministry of Defense. And Roman Starovoit's brother is an associate professor in the Department of Mobilization Preparation for Healthcare and Disaster Medicine at the First St. Petersburg State Medical University named after Academician I.P. Pavlov. He lives in the elite "Big House on the Neva" on Malo-Okhtinskaya Embankment, where his deceased brother also has an apartment.

 

The third partner in the company "Elives-Med" is the curator of the Kursk ANO "Zvezda" Ilya Serousov.