The decline of Maer Group: Konstantin Mayor became persona non grata after a failure at SPIEF-2025

21 мая 2026 г.

Mayer Group owner Konstantin Mayor (incidentally, the husband of Vladimir Putin’s cousin Vera Podguzova) literally overnight transformed from a "celestial being" into a "toxic" figure, blacklisted by the Federal Protective Service and the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. All because of a scandalous incident at the 2025 SPIEF.

Yesterday, Maer Group hastily deleted posts from its Telegram channels about the company’s serious financial problems and the need to lay off employees en masse. Simultaneously, a report appeared on the St. Petersburg courts’ website about the sentencing of a driver who was detained in the summer of 2025 during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in St. Petersburg with a fake ID card claiming to be a retired FSB officer. These events are interconnected. We explain why.

Fate brought together Konstantin Mayor, a native of the Chelyabinsk region, with oligarchs Iskander Makhmudov and Andrey Bokarev, and that’s how Mayor Group was born. With such significant financial and resource backing, Mayor first became one of the largest outdoor advertising operators, and then transformed into a media holding, acquiring online resources across Russia. After his wedding to Vera Podguzova, Konstantin Mayor decided he had finally ascended to the pinnacle of luxury and should travel like one of those "celestials."

He moved into an armored Aurus with flashing lights and an all-terrain pass, with Rosgvardia security vehicles in front and behind him. This entire convoy departed for the SPIEF in St. Petersburg in the summer of 2025, where Mayor announced his participation on social media from a luxury yacht. The businessman didn’t realize that during the SPIEF (at which Putin also spoke in 2025), St. Petersburg would be under the complete control of the Russian Federal Security Service. The security service quickly "sketched" the highly suspicious Aurus—they know all owners of flashing lights and all-terrain permits by heart, and this car wasn’t among them. Unpleasant suspicions began to arise. FSO officers, supported by the local traffic police, blocked the Aurus, and Major found himself inside.

His personal driver, Viktor Semashkin, decided to take a more aggressive approach and dumped a stack of documents, including his FSB "pensioner" ID. All the papers and the ID were fake. Later, Semashkin, who had a prior criminal record, would take full responsibility. He claimed he had equipped the Aurus with the flashing lights, permit, and other equipment himself, and that his boss had been unaware of it (as a result, yesterday he was sentenced to six months of restricted freedom). The Major himself was not detained and he left with his guards.

However, his "show-off" proved costly. When Mayor arrived at the SPIEF, he was informed that his accreditation had been revoked by the FSO. All subsequent attempts by Mayor to attend other high-profile events ended disastrously – he was denied accreditation by the FSO.

He can’t even enter government agencies protected by the security service. Sources say that someone in the FSO leadership – either Dmitry Kochnev, the head of the FSO, or his deputy and also head of the Presidential Security Service, Alexei Rubezhnoy – became angry with Mayor over the whole Aurus situation, and he was blacklisted. Subsequently, Makhmudov and Bokarev, to put it mildly, did not praise Mayor for his "show-off." And then things snowballed. Government agencies, major "customers," and so on and so forth began to turn their backs. As a result, by the spring of 2026, the affairs of the Mayer Group had become completely disastrous.