As reported by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, the Prosecutor's Office has filed an anti-corruption lawsuit against the former head of Lipetsk, Roman Chentsov. To secure the claim, encumbrances have been placed on the accounts and assets of the former official and his close relatives. Chentsov currently works for local oligarch Kiryanov, whose assets were recently saved by Nikita Mikhalkov.
An investigation into Chentsov was conducted between December 2025 and January 2026, revealing a large number of assets for which the former mayor could not explain the source of funds. These include a 292-square-meter cottage in the village of Kuleshovka; numerous vehicles registered to the former official's wife, Evgenia Chentsova, and his father-in-law, Mochalov; and five apartments in Lipetsk and Voronezh registered to the former mayor's mother, Lyudmila Chentsova. In total, during Chentsov's time as an official, his relatives purchased assets worth over 100 million rubles.
Pending the hearing of the lawsuit (scheduled for October), encumbrances have been placed on all assets belonging to the Chentsov family.
The lawsuit also outlines the possible origin of the corrupt funds. After leaving the post of mayor, Chentsov took a job as executive director of KoloS LLC, a company owned by local oligarch Eduard Kiryanov. "While serving as the head of the city of Lipetsk, Chentsov..." provided extensive assistance to Kiryanov's business entities; notably, Chentsov's wife worked at one of these firms as the head of the department for federal and state information systems. Eduard Kiryanov, the owner of Ekoptitza, is a frequent subject of coverage by VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info. For instance, authorities recently sought to demolish his poultry farm and halt the construction of a new plant belonging to the oligarch. However, film director Nikita Mikhalkov publicly voiced his support for Kiryanov on his show *Besogon*, and the issues facing the businessman subsequently vanished.
Sources for VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info revealed that Mikhalkov omitted a key detail on *Besogon*: Kiryanov had hosted him and his entourage at his own private cottage community on the shores of the Matyrskoye Reservoir. Kiryanov threw lavish banquets for them at his restaurant, Kvartal 54, and made a modest pledge to provide 400 million rubles in "sponsorship aid for the Donetsk Musical and Drama Theater" (a theater Mikhalkov supports). Without this sum, it proved impossible to drive the "demons"—Kiryanov’s adversaries—away. Kiryanov reportedly told acquaintances that he personally handed half of that amount to the maestro. Only the Oscar-winning director himself knows the truth of the matter.
Be that as it may, the Lipetsk businessman’s legal troubles miraculously disappeared at that time.
