Not your average 30-year-old

Open Media profiles Russian defense minister’s younger daughter, examining her remarkable professional feats and penchant for leveraging dad’s influence and connections

In a new investigative report published by Open Media, Ilya Rozhdestvensky profiles Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s daughter Ksenia, who is just 30 years old but oversees billions of rubles in investments and youth programs. According to Open Media’s findings, the entire Shoigu family leverages state funding and government connections in its business dealings. Meduza summarizes the story here.

Through subsidiaries and with help from Vladimir Putin’s longtime friend Gennady Timchenko, Ksenia Shoigu’s investment company “Capital Perform” has earned an estimated 2.1 billion rubles ($28.7 million) on state construction projects. Notably, the company owns a firm called “Consortium Energoresource” that has participated in infrastructure projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but financial records studied by Open Media show that the firm has almost no staff or construction equipment.

Before falling out with his partners and feuding with Rosneft head Igor Sechin (and eventually killing himself), businessman Dmitry Bosov transferred a Northern Sea Route port to the Shoigu family, which developers had hoped to renovate and use to export coal from Russia’s Arctic deposits.

VTB subsidiaries, “Sibur” board chairman Dmitry Konov, and “Lukoil” president Vagit Alekperov have entrusted Ksenia Shoigu with the management of as much as 5 billion rubles ($68.4 million) in high-tech venture capital investments. Ksenia also helped recruit Yuri Chechikhin, the son-in-law of National Guard director Viktor Zolotov, to invest in the development of Kronstadt, a port city outside St. Petersburg, where private companies have pledged 44 billion rubles ($601.8 million).

Moscow officials have allocated 6.7 billion rubles ($91.7 million) to “patriotic youth organizations” managed by Ksenia Shoigu. The same organizations have also received significant funding from the city of St. Petersburg and corporate backers like Gazprom and VTB Bank. Ksenia has also spearheaded the “Heroes’ Race” athletic competition, which has expanded rapidly since 2013, attracting major sponsors and benefiting greatly from the Defense Ministry’s favoritism.

Summary by Kevin Rothrock