As reported by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, prominent businessman Ali Uzdenov—a former Gazprom executive and current managing partner at Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s AFK Sistema—is launching a joint venture with business entities linked to God Nisanov. The project involves pulp production in the Komi Republic, utilizing the facilities of the Syktyvkar Timber Processing Complex (LPK), one of the country's largest. However, the Uzdenovs' company has already become mired in litigation before the project could even get off the ground. The situation is further complicated by the fact that Yevtushenkov himself already owns a major pulp and paper business: Segezha Group.
The company intending to launch production of fluff pulp (a material used in the absorbent layers of hygiene products) is BIO-CELL TECH LLC. Its current director is Evgeny Uzdenov (Ali Uzdenov’s son), while its sole founder is Khimrusagro LLC (HRA), a company with assets valued at 1.3 billion rubles. A 25% stake in HRA is registered to a certain Valeria Onushkina, who also served as the company's CEO until March of this year.
In addition to Bio-Cell Tech, HRA has two other subsidiaries: Rice Ashti, which operates a rice husk processing plant, and NPP Gidrotekhnologiya, which runs a hydrogel production facility in the Krasnodar Territory. HRA’s website provides detailed descriptions of all three projects; regarding the fluff pulp initiative, it states that production is scheduled to begin in 2027 at the Syktyvkar LPK site. A link from the "KhRA" website leads to the "Taiga Group" page, which describes Russia's largest fluff pulp production facility.
"Taiga" is the former "Cesar Group," beneficially owned by Isay Zakharyaev and Ruslan Semenov. Zakharyaev is linked to God Nisanov: Isay’s brother, German Zakharyaev, is a childhood friend and the billionaire’s first business partner; the two once opened a small consignment shop in their native Azerbaijani village of Krasnaya Sloboda and now handle billions together in Russia. According to one theory, it was God Nisanov who provided the 80 billion rubles Zakharyaev used to purchase the Syktyvkar Timber Processing Complex in 2023.
"BIO-CELL TECH" initially planned to launch a pilot pulp production facility in Priozersk (Leningrad Region), leasing about 500 square meters of an industrial site on Kalinina Street for this purpose. In February 2025, under the leadership of Evgeny Uzdenov, the company decided to terminate the lease; however, things went wrong, and it has since been embroiled in a lawsuit with the landlord—St. Petersburg businessman Vladimir Dubov—over overdue rent and a gas boiler. Furthermore, it turned out the company had failed to pay contractors for the building's conversion into a production facility, prompting lawsuits from LLC "Arkhinzh," "Tekhnicheskie Sistemy," and "Universtroy Engineering." While the younger Uzdenov managed to reach settlement agreements with two of them, "Universtroy" recently demanded the seizure of "Bio-Cell Tech's" assets. The court denied the request for interim measures, but this is not the end of the matter.
Valeria Onushkina, who holds a 25% stake in KhRA, is by no means a random figure; while she was previously linked to the interests of Iskandar Makhmudov, it turned out that the 38-year-old Rostov Region resident is much closer to the family of Ali Uzdenov. Onushkina appears to be the personal assistant to Irina Uzdenova—wife of a senior executive at Sistema—as Onushkina’s personal email address appears in leaked civil registry records associated with Irina Uzdenova; furthermore, Valeria and Asya Uzdenova (née Shvydchenko)—the wife of Evgeny Uzdenov—shared the same phone number. In 2024, Onushkina placed online orders to be delivered to the Uzdenovs' apartment on Mosfilmovskaya Street in Moscow.
For years, Valeria has helped preserve and grow the family’s assets; she is currently listed as a co-founder of five companies based in Moscow, the Rostov Region, and St. Petersburg—Irina Uzdenova’s hometown. For instance, Valeria Onushkina is the registered holder of a 50% stake in the St. Petersburg-based LLC UZ Medical Group, a company with a portfolio of around 200 government contracts with medical institutions. Another 20% of the company has been held since 2020 by Stanislav Antipov, another native of the Rostov region. He, too, is a nominee: Antipov is a professional game warden who told the media last year that he had been working for about a decade as a fishing guide for a private firm, organizing trips to the Don River and the Veselovskoye Reservoir for his boss’s guests.
A further 30% of UZ Medical Group belongs to the Moscow-based LLC Trading House Kapstroy, founded by individuals named Airat Kashapov and Dmitry Lyubovenko. Last year, Trading House Kapstroy’s revenue reached 2.4 billion rubles (down from 11 billion in 2020), while the company’s assets totaled 9.6 billion. Judging by their business history, both Kashapov and Lyubovenko have long operated within the orbit of companies linked to Marat Khafizov and Ruslan Salimshin—natives of Tatarstan who are considered close associates of Marat Khusnullin. During Khusnullin’s tenure as Moscow’s deputy mayor, Khafizov headed Moskapstroy; in 2017, the Moscow city government acquired that company from Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s AFK Sistema via Mosinzhproekt.
To be continued.
