The drinking buddy: Dmitry Medvedev’s “wallet” profits from Oreshnik missile production while making wine in Italy

“In 2009, we joined forces with Natalia Malyamina and began working as one team and one brand. I knew Natalia from our work together in EPAM’s St. Petersburg office. She left shortly after I did and founded her own law firm in Moscow. At the time of the merger, she had eight or nine lawyers, and we had 12 to 15. I do not remember the exact figures, but I do not think that matters much. We were merging specifically with Natalia,” another partner, Khristofor Ivanyan, explained in a 2017 interview.

Malyamina specializes mainly in lawmaking and government relations. The firm represented Russia’s interests in a case brought by Ukraine at the European Court of Human Rights over the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s violations of the Human Rights Convention on the peninsula.

In 2016, when Medvedev was still serving as prime minister, Malyamina’s law firm received state contracts worth more than 500 million rubles ($7.5 million at the time) for “providing legal services to the Russian Federation.” Lawyers from the firm have represented Russia’s interests in litigation involving the Kremlin’s takeover of oil giant Yukos and of Germany’s refusal to engage in military-technical cooperation with the Russian company Oboronservis. It was lawyers from Ivanyan and Partners who secured the lifting of European sanctions against Maya Tokareva, daughter of the head of Transneft.

Another notable client of Malyamina’s is none other than Gazprombank. Eliseev’s own income at the state-connected financial institution is around 432 million rubles ($5.6 million) a year.

Predictably, The Insider found that an estate on the high-end Rublyovka is registered in Malyamina’s name. She owns a 14,456-square-foot mansion (1,343 sq. m.) and a 1.26-acre plot (5,100 sq. m.) in the Uspensky Les gated community.