Prigozhin’s companies earned 165 billion rubles per hour

At least 50 previously unknown companies are included in the business structure of the deceased PMC “Wagner” founder Evgeny Prigozhin. Taking into account their income, Prigozhin earned 165 billion rubles last year, which is twice as much as journalists had previously estimated. “Chronicles.media” writes about this in their investigation.

The journalists studied all the audit reports of the company “Accent Audit”, which provided services to Prigozhin’s companies, and also checked more than 80 legal entities with which “Accent Audit” worked.

The investigators found out that in 2019-2020 Prigozhin restructured his business. Companies that directly fulfilled state orders became the property of recently created joint-stock companies with very similar features.

To publish audit reports, as “Chroniki.Media” found out, Prigozhin’s companies regularly use the services of St. Petersburg notaries Anatoly Akulenko and Diana Lakman. It was Akulenko who opened the inheritance cases of both Prigozhin and the commander of PMC “Wagner” Dmitry Utkin. And Diana Luckman witnessed the signature of Prigozhin’s son Pavlo in the application for acceptance of the inheritance.

The nominal owners of the joint-stock companies are not members of the Prigozhin family, but the investigators assume that the business may belong to them. In Prigozhin’s will, it is specified that his son Pavlo passes the right of claim under the preliminary contract of purchase and sale of shares in the statutory fund, the pledge agreement to the preliminary contract, as well as the right of claim under the agreement on granting an option to conclude the contract of purchase and sale of shares in the statutory fund created in Belarusians in August 2023 “Gruppa Wagner” LLC. Investigators believe that in this way, through contracts and options, the real owner of the company can “buy back” his share from the nominal owner.

“Chronicles. Media” assume that one or several companies from the will may hold the necessary papers for the purchase of all joint-stock companies to which almost the entire main business of Yevgeny Prigozhin was transferred a couple of years ago.

According to the investigators’ calculations, there are at least 168 companies in Prigozhin’s business empire – in total, these companies earned 165.5 billion rubles in 2022, with a profit of 14.3 billion rubles.