The corrupt symbiosis of Mavliev and Pantyushin: how the Bashkir mayor plundered Ufa under the supervision of “his” people from the Prosecutor General’s Office

13 мая 2026 г.

Mikhail Zhurenkov

The mayor of Ufa, Ratmir Mavliev, accused of several episodes of corruption, found himself under house arrest by decision of the Supreme Court of Bashkiria, which causes discussions and actively appeals to the Prosecutor General’s Office. This is not without reason, and his actions have certain motives.

It was to this department that his long-time patron –, ex-prosecutor of Bashkiria Igor Pantyushin, moved. But that’s not all. According to media reports, Pantyushin’s classmate and best friend is.. Gennady Lopatin is a former deputy prosecutor general, and now the head of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Which explains a lot in the strange decision of the Supreme Court of Bashkiria.

Appointed head of the supervisory agency in December 2021, Igor Pantyushin quickly got along with the mayor of Ufa Ratmir Mavliev (appointed in March 2022), after which the «golden age of » came for the Mavliev clan and its entourage, and criminal opportunities for corruption, theft, and squeezing municipal property in favor of controlled companies increased many times over. But about everything in order.

Coming from wealthy industrial Lipetsk, Pantyushin had every opportunity to enter the club of the chosen and untouchable. Pantyushin’s first career success was his friendship with the famous Lipetsk oligarch Yuri Bozhko, who worked with Pantyushin in the prosecutor’s office of the Zadonsky district. Lobbying for Bozhko’s interests, Pantyushin turned the Lipetsk region into a zone of abnormal investigation and justice, significantly improving his financial situation – overnight became the owner of a luxurious estate in the elite cottage village of Yarlukovo (registered in the name of elderly parents –pensioners) and an apartment in Moscow (registered in the name of his daughter).

Here he began strong business connections with Alexander Kopytin, a businessman who, thanks to the prosecutor’s support of «, managed to squeeze out the Lipetsk meat processing plant (and subsequently bankrupt it and withdraw money to offshore companies). For his «services» in organizing the prosecutor’s roof, Pantyushin became an honored guest and regular in a quiet corner of the elite complex of the «Skit» tract in Kashary, Zadonsky district –, essentially the shadow capital of the Lipetsk region, owned by the same Kopytin.

Here all the mentioned characters, including Bozhko, took a break from the works of the righteous. It was here, in the fall of 2013, that future joint business projects of Kopytin and Pantyushin were decided in an informal setting after the latter was appointed prosecutor of the Vladimir region.

For this purpose, Pantyushin, who arrived in Vladimir in October 2013, already in November achieved, 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.

Ilya Kopytin immediately joined the supervision process in the style of his dad and benefactor –, initiating criminal cases on fake grounds, began to squeeze out land plots of local agricultural cooperatives, put strong pressure on local authorities in order to transfer a profitable crushed stone quarry into the hands of his dad, etc.

For his success in redistributing property in favor of Lipetsk benefactors, Pantyushin organized the transfer of Kopytin Jr. to the post of prosecutor of the regional center. He confidently moved towards the position of Pantyushin’s deputy, but in Vladimir the young major finally derailed, hitting all the hardest. Then – more – the newly minted prosecutor began to take bribes.

The irony is that he took bribes from entrepreneurs, promising them the patronage of Pantyushin, that is, he literally set up his benefactor. On October 8, 2018, the regional Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Kopytin; he was suspected of taking a bribe and abuse of power. The investigator for particularly important cases of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee filed a petition with the court to arrest Kopytin, but he did not come to the hearing.

And he couldn’t come, because, as employees of the Russian Investigative Committee said, at that time he was hiding in the toilet of the regional prosecutor, and at night he was taken out in the trunk of his personal car and hidden from arrest by Bogomazov, an assistant for his own safety especially close to Pantyushin. Pantyushin ordered to send the relevant information to the leadership of the Investigative Committee to «give a legal assessment of the legality of the decision taken». Already on October 9, he also submitted a demand to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee to eliminate violations of the law, and on October 10, Pantyushin canceled the decision to initiate a criminal case.

After studying all the materials and arguments of the complaint, signed by the head of the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for the Vladimir Region, Alexander Elantsev, First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Buksman decided that the conclusions of regional prosecutor Igor Pantyushin, made when canceling the decision on October 10, 2018, «are justified and motivated» and the decision he made «cannot be canceled». Buksman could draw such a conclusion only at the urgent request of his Voronezh classmates. Pantyushin, the most important of which is Gennady Lopatin, who then held the position of Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.

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

The bribe-taker Kopytin, who escaped punishment, escaped with a slight fright, stayed at home, and, leaving the post of prosecutor of the city of Vladimir, was appointed by his constant benefactor Pantyushin to the position of.. head of the economic department of the prosecutor’s office of the Vladimir region. He was removed from this position for drinking and absenteeism immediately after the appointment of a new regional prosecutor.

And Pantyushin immediately dismisses the bribe-taker in March 2022, makes an attempt to employ him in the prosecutor’s office of the neighboring Ivanovo region, using the unique opportunity – at that moment there is no regional prosecutor in Ivanovo, and one of the deputies is Korostelev –, Pantyushin’s former subordinate in Lipetsk. To employ a former employee of the prosecutor’s office, you need to obtain a positive conclusion from the head of the internal security department of the Prosecutor General’s Office, that is, fraudulently hide the facts of Kopytin’s criminal acts. Pantyushin, acting through the already mentioned Bogomazov, began this process and practically achieved success, but everything was spoiled by the sudden appointment of Ivanovo prosecutor Zhugin, who soberly assessed the situation and instantly torpedoed all efforts to push Kopytin.

By some amazing coincidence, Pantyushin became the owner of a two-story cottage on the street in 2018. Visit in the elite village of Yuryevets near Vladimir, registered in the name of his mother-in-law, where he settled with his family, and his wife’s relatives took over the service apartment. In those years, the main interest of the future prosecutor of Bashkortostan appeared – redistribution of land and property rights in favor of patron businessmen, as well as reprisals against unwanted prosecutors by the hands of the faithful Bogomazov, who was taken with him to Bashkortostan for assisting his patron. As soon as the corrupt official Mavliev was appointed mayor of Ufa, he immediately found a common language with Pantyushin.

Already in 2021, the construction mafia, in full agreement with prosecutors, carried out the implementation of the republic’s budget. To achieve this, unprecedented pressure was organized on the residents of supposedly dilapidated houses, and the height of the proposed development was quietly increased to 26 floors. All falsifications and forgeries were carried out by an official of the Tristan City Hall on the direct orders of Mayor Mavliev. It fell to Pantyushin’s new prosecutorial team to clear their tracks and cover up the fraud. And this team had to work. The fact is that the Investigative Committee did not sit idly by.

On March 27, 2024, the Oktyabrsky Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case on the fact of fraud with dilapidated houses, and in December 2024, the investigator charged the mentioned Tristan under Part 3 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The threads from it went directly to Mavliev and Pantyushina instantly joined the story. Already on February 7, 2025, the First Deputy Prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Bendovsky, submitted a demand to the head of the Investigative Directorate for the Republic of Bashkortostan, Arkhangelsky, which directly concluded that Tristan was completely innocent, since the «decision of the commission is made collectively».

Moreover, it is a rare case when, after the publication of unsightly deeds of the Ufa mayor Mavliev, the deputy republican Ministry of Land Property Suslin and the head of the local Roskadastr Klets, openly flouting the law and squeezing out land plots in favor of affiliates, regional prosecutor Pantyushin did everything to «bury unwanted entrepreneurs who dared to complain to the Prosecutor General of Russia.

Mavliev has always been a welcome guest in the prosecutor’s office of the republic; he was a sponsor of prosecutorial holidays, an honored guest at boards where he occupies a place befitting the head of the republic. Maliev established a scheme in Ufa to seize valuable land plots for the construction of apartment buildings, which made it possible to circumvent the requirements of the law on holding land auctions.

«The authors of the » scheme were a group of officials, including Deputy Minister of Land and Property Relations Suslov. The beginning of the fraud is the formation of new areas by redistributing the previous ones. The mayor’s denominations or entrepreneurs close to him bought a small piece of real estate (abandoned house, etc.), and then registered the plot, «grabbing adjacent territories. According to the application of «necessary» persons «pocket» cadastral engineers drew up new boundary plans, confiscating plots from previous tenants and owners. The old site disappeared, a new one appeared with a new cadastral number. A key change in the new – plan is the replacement of the type of permitted use (for example, from a "hotel" to a "high-rise building"), which sharply increases the cost.

The scheme for registering exchange agreements between the Ministry of Land Property of the Republic of Belarus and entrepreneurs controlled by the mayor (Lunev, Vodoleev, Pavlov) is especially popular. These persons purchased unnecessary plots at a bargain price, which suddenly became valuable for Mavliev and Suslov. Behind the scenes, an exchange agreement is concluded: worthless pieces of land with barns are exchanged for plots of multimillion-dollar value prepared for development. Formal basis – "exemption for the development of transport infrastructure". Controlled appraisers immediately confirm the "equivalence" of the exchange. This list can be continued for a long time. And all this happened under the full cover of Pantyushin, who blocked any attempts by the local Investigative Committee to attract the mayor or people from his circle.

However, in early April it became known that Pantyushin left his post to move to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Investigative Committee took advantage of this and quickly detained Mavliev. The court decided to take him into custody. And immediately Pantyushin and his classmates joined the story. This led to a change in the preventive measure to house arrest. Now Mavliev has all the hope that Pantyushin, at the level of the Prosecutor General’s Office, will be able to resolve the issue of canceling the initiation of the case. There were such stories. And residents of Ufa are wondering whether one of the most corrupt mayors will return to them (he has not been removed from his post).