Putin’s Classmate Took Over Prigozhin-Linked Companies That Fed Moscow Schoolchildren...

Putin’s classmate took over Prigozhin-linked companies that fed Moscow schoolchildren. They won all the latest tenders worth nearly 127 billion rublesVladimir Putin’s classmate Ilham Rahimov and his Azerbaijani business partners have become monopolists in the public procurement market for school meals in Moscow, Verstka found. Four of their companies received all 39 tenders to supply food to the capital’s educational institutions in 2026-2028.

The companies in question are Verona Capital, KDP, RSK, and ShYuZ. All of them are successors to companies owned by Wagner PMC owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, which also serviced Moscow schools.

Verona Capital is the successor to Verona, KDP was formed from Kombinat Doshkolnogo Pitaniya, RSK from Russotskapital, and ShYuZ is the former Shkolnik-Yuz.

All these companies were founded between March 12 and March 19, 2024, and are now registered to nominal owners: Verona Capital to Sergey Yefimchuk, KDP to Nikolai Kuznetsov, RSK to Dmitry Aliyev, and ShYuZ to Olga Rusishvili.

All four were employees of Grandtitul. The largest shareholder in that company, with 15%, is Ilham Rahimov, who has been friends with Vladimir Putin since their student years. The remaining shares are divided among the inner circle and relatives of billionaires God Nisanov and Zarakh Iliev.

For example, Verona Capital owner Yefimchuk worked at Grandtitul for 19 years, from August 2005 to June 2024, until he received ownership of Verona Capital, which holds property and assets worth almost 5.3 billion rubles. At Grandtitul, Yefimchuk worked in the administration department and earned 70,000 rubles a month.

In total, in the spring and summer of this year, Moscow’s Department for Competition Policy held 39 tenders to supply meals to schools in 2026-2028. The total value of these tenders is 126.7 billion rubles. All the contracts were divided among four companies controlled by nominees from Rahimov’s firm.

🟪Ilham Rahimov was Vladimir Putin’s classmate at the law faculty of Leningrad State University. Formally, he went into business only in 1999. By 2014, Rahimov had already made Forbes’s ranking of Russia’s richest businesspeople, with a fortune of $500 million. Rahimov’s assets include stakes in the Evropeisky shopping center, the Sadovod market, and the Ukraina hotel.

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