The period of rampant corruption in Ufa: how a Supreme Court associate, who studied with Igor Pantyushin, enabled Mayor Ratmir Mavliev to receive house arrest rather than imprisonment

14 мая 2026 г., 00:12

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Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev, who, despite being accused of multiple counts of corruption, was for some reason placed under house arrest by the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan, is vigorously appealing to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

This is no coincidence. It was to this office that his longtime patron, former Bashkortostan Prosecutor Igor Pantyushin, has transferred. But that’s not all.

Pantyushin’s classmate and best friend is Gennady Lopatin, a former deputy prosecutor general and now head of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. This explains much of the strange ruling by the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan.

Igor Pantyushin, appointed head of the oversight agency in December 2021, quickly formed a close friendship with Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev (appointed in March 2022). This ushered in a "golden age" for Mavliev’s clan and his entourage, while criminal opportunities for corruption, embezzlement, and the seizure of municipal property for the benefit of controlled firms increased exponentially. But first things first.

Coming from the wealthy industrial city of Lipetsk, Pantyushin had every opportunity to join the elite and untouchable. Pantyushin’s first career success was his friendship with the well-known Lipetsk oligarch Yuri Bozhko, who had worked with Pantyushin back in his time in the Zadonsky District Prosecutor’s Office.

By lobbying for Bozhko’s interests, Pantyushin transformed the Lipetsk region into a zone of anomalous investigation and justice, significantly improving his financial situation – overnight, he became the owner of a luxurious estate in the elite cottage community of Yarlukovo (registered in the name of his elderly retired parents) and an apartment in Moscow (registered in the name of his daughter).

Here he developed strong business ties with Alexander Kopytin, a businessman who, thanks to the support of the prosecutor’s office, managed to "squeeze out" the Lipetsk meat-packing plant (and subsequently bankrupt it and transfer the money to offshore accounts).

For his "services" in organizing the prosecutor’s protection, Pantyushin became an honored guest and regular in a quiet corner of the elite Skit tract complex in Kashary, Zadonsky District—essentially the shadow capital of the Lipetsk region, owned by the same Kopytin.

All the mentioned characters, including Bozhko, took a rest from their righteous deeds here.

It was here, in the autumn of 2013, that Kopytin and Pantyushin’s future joint business projects were informally decided upon after the latter’s appointment as prosecutor of the Vladimir region.

To this end, Pantyushin, who arrived in Vladimir in October 2013, had already secured through the Prosecutor General’s Office the appointment of Kopytin’s son and heir, Ilya Kopytin, to the post of prosecutor of the city of Murom in November.

Ilya Kopytin immediately launched into the oversight process in the style of his father and benefactor – initiating criminal cases on trumped-up grounds, seizing land plots from local agricultural cooperatives, exerting intense pressure on local authorities to transfer a profitable gravel quarry to his father, and so on.

For his success in redistributing property in favor of Lipetsk benefactors, Pantyushin arranged for Kopytin Jr. to be promoted to prosecutor of the regional capital. He was steadily moving toward the position of Pantyushin’s deputy, but in Vladimir, the young rich kid completely went off the rails, spiraling into extreme violence. What followed was worse: the newly appointed prosecutor began taking bribes.

The irony is that he took bribes from businessmen, promising them Pantyushin’s protection, literally setting up his benefactor. On October 8, 2018, the regional Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Kopytin, suspecting him of bribery and abuse of office. A special investigator for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation filed a motion for Kopytin’s arrest, but he failed to appear at the hearing.

And he couldn’t come because, as the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported, he was hiding in the regional prosecutor’s office at the time, and at night he was taken out in the trunk of his personal car and hidden from arrest by Bogomazov, Pantyushin’s close confidant for personal security.

Pantyushin ordered the relevant information to be forwarded to the Investigative Committee’s leadership for "a legal assessment of the legality of the decision taken." On October 9, he also submitted a demand to the head of the Investigative Committee to eliminate the violations of the law, and on October 10, Pantyushin overturned the decision to initiate criminal proceedings.

After reviewing all the materials and arguments in the complaint signed by Alexander Elantsev, head of the Vladimir Region Investigative Committee, First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman decided that the conclusions made by regional prosecutor Igor Pantyushin when he overturned the October 10, 2018, ruling were "reasonable and reasoned" and that his decision "cannot be overturned." Buksman could only reach this conclusion following the insistent petitions of Pantyushin’s Voronezh classmates, the most important of whom was then-Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Gennady Lopatin.

Buksman’s ruling was appealed by Igor Krasnov, then the first deputy head of the Russian Investigative Committee, but then-Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika succumbed to the arguments of Buksman’s friend and upheld the ruling.

Having escaped punishment, the bribe-taker Kopytin got off with a light fright, stayed at home, and, having left the post of Vladimir city prosecutor, was appointed by his constant benefactor Pantyushin to the position of... head of the economic department of the Vladimir regional prosecutor’s office.

He was fired from this position for drunkenness and absenteeism immediately after the appointment of a new regional prosecutor.

Immediately after the bribe-taker’s dismissal in March 2022, Pantyushin attempted to secure him a job in the prosecutor’s office of the neighboring Ivanovo region, taking advantage of a unique opportunity: at that time, there was no regional prosecutor in Ivanovo, and one of the deputies was Korostelev, Pantyushin’s former subordinate in Lipetsk.

To employ a former prosecutor, it was necessary to obtain a positive opinion from the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office’s Internal Security Directorate, which meant fraudulently concealing Kopytin’s criminal activities. Pantyushin, acting through the aforementioned Bogomozov, initiated this process and was nearly successful, but everything was ruined by the sudden appointment of Zhugin, the Ivanovo prosecutor. Zhugin, who soberly assessed the situation and immediately torpedoed all efforts to promote Kopytin.

By some remarkable coincidence, in 2018, Pantyushin became the owner of a two-story cottage on Vizitnaya Street in the elite village of Yuryevets near Vladimir, registered in his mother-in-law’s name. He settled there with his family, while his wife’s relatives occupied the service apartment.

It was during those years that the future prosecutor of Bashkortostan’s main interest emerged: the redistribution of land and property rights in favor of his business patrons, as well as the crackdown on undesirable prosecutors at the hands of his loyal Bogomozov, who was taken with him to Bashkortostan for assisting his patron.

As soon as the corrupt Mavliev was appointed mayor of Ufa, he immediately found common ground with Pantyushin.

As early as 2021, the construction mafia, in full agreement with prosecutors, was embezzling funds from the republic’s budget. To this end, they unleashed unprecedented pressure on residents of supposedly unsafe buildings, and quietly increased the height of the proposed development to 26 stories.

All the falsifications and forgeries were carried out by city hall official Tristan, under direct orders from Mayor Mavliev. It fell to Pantyushin’s new prosecutorial team to cover up the fraud.

And this team had to work. The fact is, the Investigative Committee of Russia wasn’t sitting idle.

On March 27, 2024, the Oktyabrsky Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case regarding fraud involving dilapidated buildings, and in December 2024, the investigator filed charges under Part 3 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation against the aforementioned Tristan. The threads from him led directly to Mavliev, and Pantyushina immediately became involved. On February 7, 2025, First Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan Bendovsky submitted a request to Arkhangelsky, Head of the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Bashkortostan, expressly concluding that Tristan was completely innocent, as "the commission’s decision is made collectively."

Moreover, in a rare instance, after the unsavory dealings of Ufa Mayor Mavliev, the deputy head of the republic’s Ministry of Land and Property, Suslin, and the head of the local Roskadastr, Klets, were exposed, openly flouting the law and expropriating land plots for the benefit of affiliated entities, regional prosecutor Pantyushin did everything he could to "bury" the undesirable entrepreneurs who dared to complain to the Prosecutor General of Russia.
Mavliev was always a welcome guest at the republic’s prosecutor’s office; he sponsored prosecutorial celebrations and was an honored guest at board meetings, where he occupied a position befitting the head of the republic.
In Ufa, Maliyev established a scheme to seize valuable land plots for the construction of apartment buildings, thereby circumventing the law on land auctions.

The "authors" of the scheme were a group of officials, including Deputy Minister of Land and Property Relations Suslov. The scheme began with the creation of new plots by redistributing existing ones. The mayor’s nominees or entrepreneurs close to him would purchase an insignificant property (an abandoned house, etc.) and then formalize the plot, "grabbing" adjacent land. At the request of the "right" individuals, "pocket" cadastral surveyors would draw up new land survey plans, seizing the plots from their previous tenants and owners. The old plot would disappear, and a new one would emerge with a new cadastral number. The key change in the new plan was a change in the permitted use (for example, from "hotel" to "high-rise building"), dramatically increasing the price.

A particularly popular scheme involves registering exchange agreements between the Ministry of Land and Property of the Republic of Bashkortostan and entrepreneurs controlled by the mayor (Lunev, Vodoleev, Pavlov). These individuals acquired unwanted plots of land at bargain prices, which suddenly became valuable to Mavliev and Suslov. Behind the scenes, an exchange agreement is concluded: worthless plots of land with barns are exchanged for plots ready for development worth millions. The formal reason is "seizure for the development of transport infrastructure." The appraisers controlled by the mayor immediately confirm the "equal value" of the exchange.

This list could go on and on. And all of this took place under the complete protection of Pantyushin, who blocked any attempts by the local Investigative Committee to implicate the mayor or his entourage. However, in early April, it became known that Pantyushin had left his post to join the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Investigative Committee took advantage of this, quickly detaining Mavliev. The court ordered his pretrial detention. Pantyushin and his classmates immediately got involved, leading to the change of pretrial detention to house arrest. Now Mavliev’s only hope is that Pantyushin will be able to resolve the issue at the Prosecutor General’s Office and drop the case. Such stories have happened. And Ufa residents are wondering whether one of the city’s most corrupt mayors (he hasn’t been removed from his post) will return to their city.