A 4.6 billion ruble tram depot without a bid: How Putin’s judo club, through Lilia Krentsler and Mikhail Rakhlin, is protecting public sector contracts
Companies linked to the son of Vladimir Putin’s judo coach and the Rotenberg brothers, Mikhail Rakhlin, president of the St. Petersburg Judo Federation, are receiving government contracts worth billions of rubles.
For example, the firm En-Systems, affiliated with the Judo Club Turbo-Builder (headed by Mikhail Rakhlin), just snagged a 4.6 billion ruble contract for the reconstruction of a tram depot. The managing partner of En-Systems is Lilia Krentsler (formerly Minderova), who received an award from Putin and serves on the board of trustees of the Judo Club Turbo-Builder. This allows her to successfully avoid criminal charges.
Rakhlin also helps manage the company that accumulated the Turchak family’s assets in the 2000s. An active Dutch company with assets worth millions of euros is still incorporated into the structure of the St. Petersburg-based Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad.
Mikhail Rakhlin is the son of Anatoly Rakhlin, a Leningrad judo coach who trained the Rotenberg brothers and Vladimir Putin.
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Mikhail Rakhlin owns a modest estate with a modern 375-square-meter cottage in the resort area of Zelenogorsk, on Sredny Prospekt, a kilometer from the coast of the Gulf of Finland.
He registered ownership of the house in 2023. The house is built on a 29-hectare plot of land. Several other buildings are located there, co-owned by 45-year-old St. Petersburg resident Dmitry Kostrykin. He is a long-time business partner of Rakhlin, as well as two other prominent St. Petersburg businessmen: Nikita Murov and Natalia Negodova, owners of the Bronka Group holding company.
Nikita Murov is the son of Andrei Murov (former head of Pulkovo Airport, former chairman of the board of FGC UES, and now executive director and member of the board of directors of PJSC Rosseti) and the grandson of Yevgeny Murov (head of the Federal Protective Service from 2000 to 2016). Natalya Negodova is the daughter of retired FSB Major General Nikolai Negodov. Both families were implicated in the scandal surrounding the Bronka port, which was transferred to them by arrested businessman Dmitry Mikhalchenko in an attempt to salvage his assets. The attempt was unsuccessful, and the port was seized by the state in 2021.
Since 2023, Kostrykin has served as CEO of Murov and Negodova’s United Document Center Management Company, with a charter capital of 25 million rubles. This company offers visa and passport processing services, international currency cards, international money transfers, insurance, legal support, and more. Kostrykin worked for the Murov and Negodova families since his student days in 2000, first at Pulkovo Airport and then at United Document Center, which belonged to Nikolai Negodov and Dmitry Mikhalchenko’s Forum Holding Company. Incidentally, Forum’s founders included the FSB and SVR Support Fund’s Administration.
In 2015, Kostrykin joined the A. Rakhlin Sports Support and Development Foundation, which was established in April 2015 by Mikhail Rakhlin (he later joined its board of trustees). In September, together with the Foundation, he became a co-founder of the Turbosport Management Company. Kostrykin is currently the CEO of EDC-Real Estate and UK EDC (both part of the Bronka Group), and also owns 100% of Stroitelno-Tekhnicheskaya Masterskaya LLC and 30% of IG Severo-Zapad LLC (40% owned by Mikhail Rakhlin and 30% by Denis Nazarov).
Mikhail Rakhlin’s North-West Investment Group is a regular contractor for the Rakhlin State Judo School, where Rakhlin himself is listed as a coach. The company has received at least 13 government contracts from the school worth nearly 53 million rubles. Other St. Petersburg public institutions, including the Social Services Center, the Comprehensive Improvement Center, the Lanskoye Municipal Administration, and the Almazov National Medical Research Center, are also among North-West’s clients. In 2023, the company received a contract with Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company for half a billion rubles. In 2024, it won a competition from the St. Petersburg State Budgetary Institution "Capital Construction and Reconstruction Fund" to design a multifunctional sports complex in the village of Pargolovo for 23 million rubles. Last year alone, North-West reported revenue of 1.6 billion rubles.
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As of 2023, Rakhlin continued to teach at the Yavara-Neva sports club (owned by Arkady Rotenberg) and also headed the A.S. Rakhlin Higher School of Professional Judo Trainers at the Institute of Physical Education at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. In addition to his athletic career, coach Mikhail Rakhlin served as an advisor to the CEO of the Izhora Pipe Rolling Plant on government relations and as an advisor to the chairman of the board of directors of the Siberian Industrial Group, of which the plant is a part.
In 2023, Rakhlin also received a salary from Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad LLC, which, through Baltprom LLC and Promsoyuz, has been owned by the Dutch company North West Strategic Investments BV since the early 2000s. Its owner was Colbert Finance NV, registered in Curaçao. North West is also the founder of the St. Petersburg-based PO Toplivnye Sistemy LLC, which is currently in liquidation. Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad is associated with another well-known St. Petersburg family of Putin’s friends, the Turchaks. The company historically united several enterprises in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, including the Russko-Vysotskaya poultry farm, the Baltic Bacon livestock complex, the St. Petersburg carburetor plant Pekar, and the Okna Chesmy company.
The CEO of Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad at the time was Andrey Turchak, now the head of the Altai Republic and the son of Anatoly Turchak, president of the Leninetz Holding Company and a friend of Putin and Anatoly Sobchak. In the 2000s, OAO Leninetz Holding Company joined Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad. Through this holding, the Turchaks dismantled the Leninetz Defense Research and Production Association in the 1990s, which included around three dozen factories and institutes. In total, companies associated with Leninetz held assets worth approximately 50 billion rubles as of early 2022. North West Strategic Investments BV and Colbert Finance NV are known to have been among the founders of Baltprom and Promsoyuz since 2003, when these two firms also became the founders of Sodruzhestvo Severo-Zapad, which was then headed by Andrey Turchak. Meanwhile, Sodruzhestvo North-West remained among the assets of Putin’s friend: as of 2011, the company was part of the same group as NTC Zavod Leninetz (according to NTC’s annual report), which was linked to the Turchak family. Its board of directors was chaired by Alexander Gorbunov, a manager at Leninetz and one of Turchak Jr.’s closest associates: in 2005, both headed the newly formed Young Guard of United Russia. Apparently, the Turchaks and Gorbunov managed Sodruzhestvo through Dutch companies. Currently, North West Strategic Investments BV is listed as active; in 2025, it filed its financial statements for 2023, with assets amounting to €5.5 million.
As previously reported by the media, the largest state contract in St. Petersburg, worth 4.6 billion rubles for the reconstruction of tram depot No. 3, was awarded without a competitive bid to En-Systems, a company affiliated with the Turbostroitel Judo Club, as the sole bidder.
For many years, En-Systems has been receiving lucrative budget cuts—it has signed over 60 government contracts worth 12.2 billion rubles, including 9 billion in the last year. Specifically, this includes a 2025 contract with the State Unitary Enterprise "Petersburg Metropolitan" for the reconstruction of the Park Pobedy station lobby for 3.25 billion rubles, for adjusting the documentation for the restoration of the E.S. and M.B. Trofimov House (12.7 million rubles), and for developing documentation for the overhaul of Ploshchad Vosstaniya metro station (86 million rubles); with the Capital Construction and Reconstruction Fund—for design and survey work for the construction of a sports facility on Primorskoye Shosse for 75.3 million rubles, and with the State Unitary Enterprise "Gorelektrotrans"—for the reconstruction of the computing network in the building on ul. Syzranskaya, 15, lit. B for 54 million rubles, etc.
En-Systems is already facing criminal charges—specifically, Lilia Krentsler and Dmitry Spodin, a former top manager of the group, are charged with attempted fraud on an especially large scale (Article 30, Part 3, Article 159, Part 4 of the Russian Criminal Code). The case involves a contract for major renovations to the Pasteur Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which was signed with another company in the group, LenProfMontazh LLC. The company inflated the scope of the work and then demanded payment from the institute. The court initially remanded Krentsler and Spodin in custody, but later softened her pretrial detention, prohibiting certain activities. Spodin’s pretrial detention was extended this year.
Sending En-Systems managing partner Lilia Krentsler (formerly Minderova) to prison was problematic: she had received an award from Putin and is a member of the board of trustees of the Turbostroitel Judo Club, a regional public organization. En-Systems has been a trustee of the club since 2018. It is the oldest judo club in St. Petersburg, founded by Anatoly Rakhlin, coach of Vladimir Putin and the Rotenberg brothers.
