As revealed by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Metrokhim LLC—a favored contractor of the St. Petersburg Metro that secured a 1.7-billion-ruble contract this year—has ties to a foreign national. Igor Kipper, who currently holds a 20% stake in the company, is a Latvian passport holder. His father, Levs Kippers, ran a business in Riga—SIA “JB WORKWEAR”—specializing in the manufacture and rental of workwear; this is the exact same line of business St. Petersburg’s Metrokhim is now engaged in.

Leaked data indicates that 60-year-old Igor Kipper holds a Latvian passport; notably, in the early 2000s, he was detained by police in St. Petersburg for violating regulations governing the stay of foreign nationals.

 

In 2001, he co-founded Business Partners LLC alongside Grozny native Murad Tangiev; Aslanbek Uzhakhov was their third partner. Tangiev and Uzhakhov were later among the founders of the "Targim" Ingush Cultural Center of St. Petersburg—a regional public organization led by Yunus Khautiev, the head of the Ingushetia representative office in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.

 

Tangiev, Kipper, and Uzhakhov studied together and defended their dissertations at the St. Petersburg University of Economics and Finance in the late 2000s; Kipper and Tangiev even co-authored a book titled *Logistics of Tolling Operations* under the editorship of Professor Vladimir Shcherbakov, the head of the Department of Logistics (Kipper later joined the team that authored Shcherbakov’s textbook *Fundamentals of Logistics*). The department has historically maintained very close ties with the October Railway and Russian Railways (RZD) in general, as well as with the St. Petersburg Metro (a state-owned unitary enterprise)—facts Shcherbakov himself has discussed in interviews.

 

After defending their dissertations, Igor Kipper, Tangiev, and other partners registered the company Metrokhim in 2001; it was based at the same address as the St. Petersburg Metro and was 2% owned by the metro enterprise. Currently, the phone number listed for Metrokhim is one used by the metro enterprise and its affiliated organizations.

 

Metrokhim leases workwear, regularly collecting items for laundering and dry cleaning, and promises to replace worn-out or damaged garments. The St. Petersburg Metro is the company’s largest government client: Metrokhim signed contracts worth 665 million rubles in 2016 and 798 million rubles in 2021, followed by a record-breaking 1.7 billion rubles this year. The company has eight co-owners, four of whom are members of Murad Tangiev’s family: Maryam, Dali, Leila, and Taib. Their combined share... ...collectively account for 20% of the company's equity. Another 5% belongs to Irina Kurlat, the former director; notably, ten years ago, her stake stood at 52.7%. Alexei Simakhin—who holds no other business interests—is listed as the owner of a 20% stake in Metrokhim, while Veronika Mikhailova holds 35%.

 

 

Mikhailova also previously worked within the Tangiev-Kipper business group; specifically, she served as a co-founder and liquidator for their companies, KipTan & Partners and Energologistika Design Bureau. She is currently the sole founder and director of Uniklin LLC, a company specializing in laundry and dry-cleaning services. However, the firm does not file financial statements with the tax authorities. Previously, Tangiev and Kipper held their stakes through a joint venture, KipTan, which controlled over 45% of Metrokhim.

 

 

When Metrokhim was founded in the early 2000s, the St. Petersburg Metro was headed by Vladimir Garyugin—a former First Secretary of a Leningrad district CPSU committee and a former employee of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. Irina Kurlat’s husband, Andrei Eduardovich Kurlat (who passed away in 2019), had also worked at the Oktyabrskaya Railway—specifically within its St. Petersburg-Vitebsk territorial administration. Interestingly, the position of Deputy Head for Territorial Administration is currently held by Roman Gorin; a namesake, Igor Gorin, worked for the Tangiev family’s business interests and used the email address "terek001" to register for Twitter and to purchase airline tickets for both the Tangiev family and his own relatives.

 

To be continued...