"Gratitude" under a fake contract: How Sergei Kulikov’s RUSNANO paid Pyotr Tolstoy for help unblocking funds

"Gratitude" under a fake contract: How Sergei Kulikov’s RUSNANO paid Pyotr Tolstoy for help unblocking funds

It has become known that RUSNANO and its director, Sergei Kulikov, paid over 20 million rubles to State Duma deputy Pyotr Tolstoy (until recently, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma) for lobbying activities on their behalf at the international level.

The money was siphoned off through a shell company used by the state corporation for these purposes. When the story caught fire, RUSNANO rushed to recover the siphoned money from the shell company, at least to cover its own back.  

Case No. A40-126952/2026 is gaining momentum in arbitration court filings. The plaintiffs are JSC Rusnano and Rosnanotechinvest LLC. The defendant is the modest Moscow-based Sky Gallery LLC. The claim is for 22,910,140 rubles. For Rusnano, which is suing its former management for billions, this is a pittance. But the devil, as always, is in the details.

The company was registered on December 16, 2010. Its primary activities are software development and advertising services. The CEO and sole founder is Rauf Rayasat Ogly Aliyev.

In 2022, the new head of Rusnano, Sergei Kulikov, personally appealed to the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the activities of his predecessors, led by Anatoly Chubais. This resulted in criminal cases alleging embezzlement of tens of billions of rubles. Kulikov publicly played the role of an "anti-corruption fighter." However, it was under Kulikov that Rusnano and its subsidiary, Rusnanotechinvest, signed a contract with Sky Gallery for 23 million rubles. And when the situation escalated, Kulikov himself filed a lawsuit to recover the money. It looks like an attempt to feign a fight: we discovered the violation ourselves, filed a lawsuit, and we did a good job. In reality, it’s a classic cover-up.

Pyotr Olegovich Tolstoy is a deputy speaker of the State Duma, a descendant of Leo Tolstoy, and a former anchor on Channel One. He was elected to the Duma in 2016 and has since been re-elected several times. According to media reports, Tolstoy was recruited by RUSNANO and Kulikov to "resolve" the international sanctions-related issues. Rusnano subsidiary Rusnanomedinvest owned RMI (Luxembourg), which had its funds frozen in its GPB bank account.

The funds were frozen, with Kulikov listed as the company’s beneficiary. The sum amounted to almost 19 million euros. Rusnano tried throughout 2025 to unfreeze the funds, but to no avail. They sought foreign assistants—law firms. Tolstoy volunteered to help find such assistants and found them. The "Gratitude" payment was transferred under a bogus contract with Sky Gallery. There is evidence that these funds were actually managed by "M.N. Marichev and V.D. Yunusov," Kulikov’s deputies. The ultimate beneficiary was Tolstoy.

When Kulikov was confronted about this matter, he backed down, filing a lawsuit to formally distance himself from the scheme. However, the lawsuit was filed not against Tolstoy, but against a front company. Incidentally, this is precisely why they may have tried to keep the case under wraps—to avoid exposing the deputy speaker’s name.