Sergey Sobyanin’s internal power struggles: The ways ex-Moskomexpertiza chief Anna Yakovleva gathered compromising materials on the mayor’s team with the help of police officials

08 июня 2026 г., 11:12

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Sergey Sobyanin’s internal power struggles: The ways ex-Moskomexpertiza chief Anna Yakovleva gathered compromising materials on the mayor’s team with the help of police officials

A remarkable story has come to light that clearly illustrates the morals that reign under Sergey Sobyanin.

Recently, charges of illegal use of personal data were brought against Anna Yakovleva, former head of the Moscow City Expertise Committee. She had been gathering incriminating evidence against half of the mayor’s office and their relatives. The "war" with her colleagues stemmed from Yakovleva’s suspicion of embezzling 2 billion rubles through the Consulting and Expert Center LLC. It was Yakovleva’s interest in her colleagues that led to the high-profile case of the "informers" from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2023-2024.

According to the source, Yakovleva was detained last week and taken to an investigator, where she was questioned and charged. She was placed on bail.

In February 2026, Yakovleva and Andrey Pchelnikov, CEO of the Consulting and Expert Center LLC, were already questioned regarding this case. A source says Pchelnikov has significant connections in law enforcement, which enabled him to successfully resolve the issue of remaining a witness in the case.

In April 2022, by order of Sergey Sobyanin, Anna Yakovleva was appointed Chair of the Moscow City Expertise Agency (Moskomexpertiza), replacing Valery Leonov. The appointment was preceded by a clan war, as many corruption flows within the mayor’s office depend on Moskomexpertiza. From her first days on the job, Yakovleva made enemies of a large group of high-ranking officials. As a result, in 2023, Yakovleva was accused of siphoning over 2 billion rubles from city structures subordinate to Moskomexpertiza through Pchelnikov’s companies. Of course, there was no talk of fighting corruption. These materials have been suppressed to this day, as such large-scale embezzlement casts a shadow on Sobyanin himself. They simply decided to remove Yakovleva from her post using compromising evidence.

Then she began urgently gathering incriminating evidence against her opponents in order to "snuff them out" in the media. To this end, the head of Moskomexpertiza, through intermediaries, ordered the collection of all classified information on an entire group of officials and their family members. A large group of Ministry of Internal Affairs officers, led by Ruslan Kulminsky, an operative of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for Moscow, joined the effort. He collected classified information on the following officials and their family members: Deputy Mayor Vladimir Efimov; Head of the Main Control Department of the City of Moscow Yevgeny Danchikov; Head of the Department for Coordination of Activities of the Complex of Urban Development Policy and Construction of the City of Moscow Yevgeny Leonov; and First Deputy Head of the Department of Civil Construction of the City of Moscow Natalya Ilyina.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) officers deployed unprecedented activity in fulfilling the "order." Investigator Pitilimov, using the pretext of an ongoing criminal case under the "fraud" law, sent requests for information about Efimov and other officials to various agencies and departments.

As a result, the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers were exposed, aroused suspicion, and were all detained, later receiving short sentences. Kulminsky, for example, after all the courts, still had a sentence of three years and nine months. The mastermind behind the attack was not prosecuted, as, again, the arrest of the current head of Moskomexpertiza, especially in connection with such a scandalous incident, would have cast a shadow over Sobyanin. At the end of 2023, Yakovleva was simply quietly dismissed from her post.

But in early 2026, he unexpectedly decided to give the case a "second life" and bring in the "customer," Yakovlev. Apparently, a new phase of clan infighting within Sobyanin’s inner circle had begun