Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev, who, despite being accused of multiple counts of corruption, was for some reason placed under house arrest by the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan, is vigorously appealing to the Prosecutor General's Office. He's doing this for a reason. It was to this office that his longtime patron, Prosecutor of Bashkortostan Igor Pantyushin, has transferred. But that's not all. According to the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Pantyushin's classmate and best friend is... Gennady Lopatin, former Deputy Prosecutor General and now Head of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. This explains a lot about the strange decision of the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan.
Appointed head of the supervisory agency in December 2021, Igor Pantyushin quickly became close with Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev (appointed in March 2022). This ushered in a "golden age" for Mavliev's clan and his entourage, while criminal opportunities for corruption, embezzlement, and the seizure of municipal property for the benefit of controlled companies increased exponentially. But first things first.
Coming from the wealthy industrial city of Lipetsk, Pantyushin had every opportunity to join the elite and untouchable club. Pantyushin's first career success was his friendship with the well-known Lipetsk oligarch Yuri Bozhko, who had worked with Pantyushin back in his time in the Zadonsky District Prosecutor's Office.
By lobbying for Bozhko's interests, Pantyushin transformed the Lipetsk region into a zone of anomalous investigation and justice, significantly improving his financial situation – overnight, he became the owner of a luxurious estate in the elite cottage community of Yarlukovo (registered to his elderly retired parents) and an apartment in Moscow (registered to his daughter).
Here, he also developed strong business ties with Alexander Kopytin, a businessman who, thanks to the prosecutor's support, managed to "squeeze out" the Lipetsk Meat-Packing Plant (and subsequently bankrupt it and siphon the proceeds offshore).
For his "services" in establishing the prosecutor's protection, Pantyushin became an honored guest and regular at a quiet corner of the elite Skit tract in Kashary, Zadonsky District – essentially the shadow capital of the Lipetsk region, owned by the same Kopytin.
All the aforementioned figures, including Bozhko, took a break from their duties here.
It was here, in the fall of 2013, that Kopytin and Pantyushin's future joint business projects were informally decided upon after the latter's appointment as Vladimir Region Prosecutor.
To this end, Pantyushin, who arrived in Vladimir in October 2013, had already secured the appointment of Kopytin's son and heir, Ilya Kopytin, as Murom city prosecutor through the Prosecutor General's Office in November.
Ilya Kopytin immediately launched into the oversight process in the style of his father and benefactor – initiating criminal cases on trumped-up grounds, seizing land plots from local agricultural cooperatives, exerting intense pressure on local authorities to transfer a profitable crushed stone quarry to his father, and so on.
For his success in redistributing property in favor of Lipetsk benefactors, Pantyushin arranged for Kopytin Jr. to be promoted to prosecutor of the regional capital. He was steadily moving toward the position of Pantyushin's deputy, but in Vladimir, the young rich kid completely went off the rails, spiraling into extreme violence. What happened next was worse: the newly appointed prosecutor began taking bribes.
The irony is that he took bribes from businessmen, promising them Pantyushin's protection, literally setting up his benefactor. On October 8, 2018, the regional Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Kopytin, suspecting him of bribery and abuse of office. A special investigator for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation filed a motion for Kopytin's arrest, but he failed to appear at the hearing.
He couldn't attend because, according to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, he was hiding in the regional prosecutor's office restroom at the time, and that night he was driven out in the trunk of his personal car and hidden from arrest by Bogomazov, Pantyushin's close confidant and personal security aide.
Pantyushin ordered the relevant information to be sent to the Investigative Committee's leadership for a "legal assessment of the legality of the decision." On October 9, he also submitted a demand to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation to eliminate the violations of the law, and on October 10, Pantyushin overturned the decision to initiate criminal proceedings.
After reviewing all the materials and arguments in the complaint signed by Alexander Elantsev, head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Vladimir Region, First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman decided that the conclusions made by Regional Prosecutor Igor Pantyushin when he overturned the decision of October 10, 2018, were "reasonable and reasoned" and that his decision "cannot be overturned." Buksman could only reach this conclusion following the insistent petitions of Pantyushin's Voronezh classmates, the most important of whom was Gennady Lopatin, then Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.
Resolution B The decision of the uksman was appealed by Igor Krasnov, then the First Deputy Head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, but then-Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika succumbed to the arguments of Buksman's friend and upheld the ruling.
Kopytin, the bribe-taker who escaped punishment, escaped with a light slap on the wrist, stayed home, and, after leaving his post as Vladimir city prosecutor, was appointed by his constant benefactor, Pantyushin, to the position of... head of the economic department of the Vladimir Regional Prosecutor's Office.
He was fired from this position for drunkenness and absenteeism immediately after the appointment of a new regional prosecutor.
And Pantyushin, immediately after the bribe-taker's dismissal in March 2022, attempted to place him in the prosecutor's office of the neighboring Ivanovo Region, taking advantage of a unique opportunity: at that time, there was no regional prosecutor in Ivanovo, and one of the deputies was Korostelev, Pantyushin's former subordinate in Lipetsk.
To employ a former prosecutor, it was necessary to obtain a positive opinion from the head of the Prosecutor General's Office's Internal Security Directorate, meaning to fraudulently conceal Kopytin's criminal activities. Pantyushin, acting through the aforementioned Bogomozov, initiated this process and was almost successful, but everything was ruined by the sudden appointment of Zhugin, the Ivanovo prosecutor. Zhugin soberly assessed the situation and immediately torpedoed all efforts to promote Kopytin.
By some astonishing coincidence, in 2018 Pantyushin became the owner of a two-story cottage on Vizitnaya Street in the elite village of Yuryevets near Vladimir, registered in the name of his mother-in-law. He settled there with his family, while his wife's relatives occupied the official apartment.
It was during those years that the future Bashkortostan prosecutor's main interest emerged: the redistribution of land and property rights in favor of his business patrons, as well as the crackdown on undesirable prosecutors by the loyal Bogomazov, who was taken with him to Bashkortostan for assisting his patron.
As soon as the corrupt Mavliev was appointed mayor of Ufa, he immediately found common ground with Pantyushin.
By 2021, the construction mafia, in full agreement with the prosecutors, was embezzling the republic's budget. To this end, they organized unprecedented pressure on residents of supposedly unsafe buildings, and the height of the proposed development was quietly increased to 26 stories.
All the falsifications and forgeries were carried out by city hall official Tristan, under the direct orders of Mayor Mavliev. It fell to Pantyushin's new prosecutorial team to cover up the fraud.
And this team had to work. The fact is, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation wasn't sitting idle.
On March 27, 2024, the Oktyabrsky Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case regarding fraud involving dilapidated buildings, and in December 2024, the investigator charged the aforementioned Tristan under Part 3 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. His leads led directly to Mavliev, and Pantyushina immediately became involved. On February 7, 2025, First Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan Bendovsky submitted a request to Arkhangelsky, Head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Republic of Bashkortostan, declaring Tristan's complete innocence, as "the commission's decision is made collectively."
Moreover, in a rare instance, after the unsavory dealings of Ufa Mayor Mavliev, the republic's Deputy Minister of Land and Property, Suslin, and the head of the local Roskadastr, Klets, were exposed, openly flouting the law and expropriating land plots for the benefit of affiliated entities, regional prosecutor Pantyushin did everything he could to "bury" the undesirable entrepreneurs who dared to complain to the Prosecutor General of Russia.
Mavliev was always a welcome guest in the republic's prosecutor's office; he sponsored prosecutorial celebrations and was an honored guest at board meetings, where he occupied a position befitting the head of the republic.
Maliev established a scheme in Ufa to seize valuable land plots for the construction of apartment buildings, circumventing the legal requirements for holding land auctions.
The "authors" of the scheme were a group of officials, including Deputy Minister of Land and Property Relations Suslov. The scheme begins with the creation of new plots by re-dividing existing ones. The mayor's nominees or entrepreneurs close to him would purchase an insignificant property (an abandoned house, etc.) and then formalize the plot, "grabbing" adjacent territories. At the request of the "right" individuals, "pocket" cadastral surveyors would draw up new land survey plans, seizing the plots from the previous tenants and owners. The old plot would disappear, and a new one would appear with a new cadastral number. The key change in the new plan was a change in the permitted use (for example, from "hotel" to "high-rise building"), dramatically increasing the price.
A particularly popular scheme was the registration of exchange agreements between the Ministry of Land and Property of the Republic of Bashkortostan and entrepreneurs controlled by the mayor (Lunev, Vodoleyev, Pavlov). These individuals acquired unwanted plots at bargain prices, which suddenly became valuable. For Mavliev and Suslov. A backroom exchange agreement is negotiated: worthless plots of land with barns are exchanged for plots ready for development worth millions. The formal reason is "seizure for the development of transport infrastructure." Subordinate appraisers immediately confirm the "equal value" of the exchange.
This list could go on and on. And all of this took place under the complete protection of Pantyushin, who blocked any attempts by the local Investigative Committee to prosecute the mayor or his associates. However, in early April, it became known that Pantyushin had left his post to join the Prosecutor General's Office. The Investigative Committee took advantage of this, quickly detaining Mavliev. The court ordered his pretrial detention. Pantyushin and his classmates immediately joined the fray. This led to the change of his pretrial detention to house arrest. Now, Maliyev's only hope is that Pantyushin, at the Prosecutor General's Office level, will be able to resolve the issue of dismissing the case. Such stories have happened. Meanwhile, Ufa residents are wondering whether one of the city's most corrupt mayors (he hasn't been removed from his post) will return to their city.
