"Family business" in Moscow City: How acting Minpromtorg director Kleimenov siphoned billions for years via fictitious R&D and chinese counterfeits

A complex situation has unfolded within the corridors of the federal Ministry of Industry and Trade (Minpromtorg), as the agency continues to be drawn into a whirlpool of corruption scandals.

In 2025, investigators brought charges against Andrey Motorko, the former Director General of the "Avtomatika" concern. He and two alleged accomplices were accused of fraud involving a Minpromtorg subsidy. According to the investigation, the defendants passed off antenna systems for satellite communications in vehicles—which utilized Chinese software and components—as their own proprietary development. This allegedly created the conditions for the unjustified receipt of 370 million rubles in subsidies from the Ministry to reimburse part of their costs.

In late November 2025, Mikhail Kuznetsov, Director of the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the Fuel and Energy Complex, was detained and arrested at the Ministry’s headquarters in the IQ-quarter of Moscow City on charges of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale.

Kuznetsov did not remain silent for long and is actively cooperating with the investigation. According to sources, the clouds have now darkened over his colleague, Sergey Kleimenov, the acting Director of the Department of Strategic Development. Kleimenov took over the "acting" role a few months ago following the promotion of his boss, Alexey Matushansky, to Deputy Minister under the head of the department, Anton Alikhanov. Schemes have now surfaced suggesting that for the past eight years, Kleimenov issued subsidies to various controlled enterprises for scientific research and development (R&D) that either remained only on paper or was purchased in Asia, while the state subsidies were successfully "absorbed" by Kleimenov and company.

Feeling a sense of impunity, the official—who resides in apartments in Moscow City—openly installed his mother, Elena Kleimenova, as a co-founder of one such subsidy-receiving company. The total amount of unreturned subsidies for non-existent R&D from just one such Ryazan-based company, "Alfa-Engineering," exceeds 200 million rubles. The number of "drop companies" involved is reportedly in the dozens, and the embezzlement scheme involving state funds allegedly also drew in the federal official’s father and brother.