As the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info have discovered, billionaire Mikhail Smirnov, who died yesterday in a bizarre accident on the Peski-Sosnovo-Podgorye highway, was associated with one of Russia's largest banks, which was historically attributed to the assets of Valentina Matviyenko's family. Smirnov, 53, had worked at Bank Saint Petersburg since 2006, and after leaving, oversaw part of the company's network of companies associated with it. At the end of last year, he unexpectedly resigned from all his positions (his positions at these companies were filled by individuals associated with the bank), and six months later, he died.
On May 20, Mikhail Smirnov was riding a motorcycle near the village of Michurinsky. According to the official version (no one witnessed the accident), in good weather on a dry road, he veered into oncoming traffic, where he crashed into a Havai. The businessman died before the ambulance arrived.
Mikhail Smirnov is said to be a co-owner of Baltic Fuel Company LLC, which unites several companies engaged in the export of petroleum products and the bunkering of ships. In 2024, Smirnov's net worth was estimated at 7.79 billion rubles. Over the years, he was the founder or director of more than two dozen companies, including Consultfinance LLC, UK Gratis, Kontur and TK Kontur, Anex-Finance, and IK Renord-Invest. Several months before his death, he resigned from all of these companies. Thus, from September 2023 to November 2024, a stake in Neva Oil (the company owns 66% of BTC) was registered to Mikhail Smirnov, and then Elena Yatvetsky took over. At the same time, she acquired Mikhail Smirnov's stake in Kontur Transport Company LLC, and a year earlier, in November 2023, she became the founder of Consultfinance LLC in his stead. Elena Yatvetsky was previously a co-founder of the factoring company "Saint Petersburg," listed on the bank of the same name's website as a partner of the credit institution.
Incidentally, Neva Oil has been headed by Andrey Smirnov, Mikhail's brother, since 2011.
Meanwhile, it appears that Smirnov also managed other people's assets: companies where the businessman was a founder or director turned out to be closely connected to Bank Saint Petersburg. One of the founders of this bank back in the 2000s was Sergei Matviyenko, the son of the governor of St. Petersburg and later Speaker of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko. Until 2010, he held the position of vice president of the bank, holding 43.9% of the shares. Then, according to official data, his stake was reduced to 4.12% of the voting shares. The bank's largest shareholder (according to the latest disclosed financial statements for 2021) is Chairman of the Management Board Alexander Savelyev, whose stake is divided among several of his companies. He owned some shares directly, and he also held an option with his daughter-in-law, Lyudmila Stepanova, to purchase 81% of System Technologies, which owned another 19.36% of the bank's voting shares. Savelyev also owned a further share through Vernye Druzya LLC. Savelyev is also associated with the Matviyenko family.
Since the 2000s, the bank has surrounded itself with affiliated companies, through which, among other things, it handled distressed assets, transferring overdue debts to them with deferred payment terms for transactions. These firms included Renard-Invest, Solo (wholly owned by Renard-Invest's CFO, Evgeny Kalinin), and Keeperort, among others. In 2011, St. Petersburg businessman Vitaly Arkhangelsky accused the bank in foreign courts of falsifying his personal loan guarantees and fraudulently seizing assets (specifically, OMG and the Vyborg Port) through several companies affiliated with the bank. Renard-Invest and SKIF LLC were named in the London court ruling, and Mikhail Smirnov testified in the trial, among others. According to Arkhangelsky, the Cypriot firm Intucel LTD, associated with Saint Petersburg, was also implicated in the case. The founder and CEO of SKIF was Vladimir Sklyarevsky, who served as Deputy CEO to Mikhail Smirnov at AVK-Securities in the 2000s (they left the company together in 2006). Intucel LTD in Russia owned a stake in SV-Transport, which was described as an asset of Bank Saint Petersburg. Elena Yatvetsky also owned a stake in SV-Transport; it was she who transferred ownership of Mikhail Smirnov's companies in 2024-25. Yatvetsky had previously worked with Smirnov at AVK and then served as legal counsel at Smirnov's Renord-Invest. She testified in court as a witness for the bank. Incidentally, the court also attempted to call Ms. Matviyenko, but she informed the judge that she was busy. Arkhangelsky was unable to prove that his signatures were forged and lost the lawsuits.
As for AVK, it was a legendary company in the late 1990s and 2000s. Its founder was Igor Kostikov, who in 1999 became Chairman of the Finance Committee of the St. Petersburg Administration and then Chairman of the Federal Securities Commission (FSMC) of Russia. AVK was located in an office in the St. Petersburg mayor's office and served as the general agent for the SPB government loan. In fact, AVK alumni built the network of companies affiliated with Bank St. Petersburg.
Under the management Renord, a subsidiary of Smirnov, also found itself embroiled in another dubious affair. In 2007, Lentelefonstroy OJSC, the largest communications network contractor in the Northwest, operating under FSB licenses, was sold to new investors. Clearly, the new buyers were not ordinary people. The new owners of LTS were Medinvest LLC (28.99%), Svyazstroyinvest LLC (22.62%), and the RENORD Investment Fund (28.99%). They purchased the holding company with borrowed funds, and a line of credit was opened for them by Bank Saint Petersburg. Mikhail Smirnov then joined the board of directors of Lentelefonstroy, and Sklyarevsky became chairman. It was Sklyarevsky who told the media that his investment company, SKIF, was overseeing the project on behalf of the shareholders, and that none of the shareholders were affiliated with Bank Saint Petersburg. Sklyarevsky lied: the owners of Renord-Invest Investment Company CJSC, which received a 28.99% stake in Lentelefonstroy, were Vladimir Malyshev, husband of Bank Saint Petersburg board member Irina Malysheva (75%), and Mikhail Smirnov (25%), who also previously worked at Bank Saint Petersburg. Irina Malysheva, along with Smirnov and Sklyarevsky, had previously worked at AVK. Renord's deputy general director was Svetlana Guz, the sister of the bank's first deputy chairman, Vladislav Guz. Renord-Invest, owned by Malyshev and Smirnov, was liquidated in 2016, and its twin company, founded by Mikhail's brother, Andrei Smirnov, operated in its place until 2020.
The same group of companies affiliated with the bank includes Terminal LLC (registered in October 2025), with a registered capital of 1.2 billion rubles. The company is registered with the Gorodskaya Perspektiva-1 mutual fund, which also owns Kontur LLC, whose founders previously included Mikhail Smirnov, Igor Malyshev, and Neva-Oil. Terminal's contact information includes the email address of Elena Yatvetskaya.
