Rosneft's press secretary and former editor-in-chief of the magazine "However," Mikhail Leontiev deals not only with journalism. Leontiev is also a co-owner of two technology companies. One of them is a resident of Skolkovo, the alleged main owner of the second is a former official of the Federal Agency for Fisheries, who was accused of fraud for several hundred million rubles; The business of both is closely related to government orders. Special forces "Medusa" Ivan Golunov and Ilya Zhegulyov figured out what kind of company it was and what Leontyev was doing there.

Leontiev and aerodynamics of the wing

In the spring of 2013, the publicist Mikhail Leontiev made a sharp statement. He defended Skolkovo against the "raids" of the Russian Investigative Committee and the Accounts Chamber, which accused the innovation center of inefficiency. In the telecast "However" on the First Channel and an article in the magazine with the same title, the editor-in-chief of which he is, Leontyev explained that Skolkovo is the only venture fund in the world that does not "take the project away from the developer".

Leontiev is well acquainted with the principles of work of Skolkovo. He is co-owner of one of the residents of the fund, the company "Optimenga-777", which deals with the aerodynamic design of wings for aircraft.

It was founded in 2012 by a graduate of the Faculty of Mechanics of Tomsk State University Sergei Peygin and his Israeli partner Boris Epstein. A year after that, Mikhail Leontiev became the owner of 10% of the enterprise, and Optimuma-777 received about 80 million rubles from Skolkovo as part of a grant to create a software product that greatly reduces the cost and timing of the design of the aircraft wing. The company stated that the project was "revolutionary in nature": the test task for optimizing the wing was decided by the algorithm in 27 hours, and the Boeing program in 50 days.

In 2014, Optimenga won a 1.5 millionth tender from the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) to perform work on optimizing the aerodynamic surfaces of aircraft. Peygin said that their algorithms were tested on the wings of many aircraft, although all of them are produced by companies belonging to the state-owned United Aircraft Corporation (UAC): Sukhoi Superjet, Be-200 (produced only 10 aircraft) and MS-21 (Exists only as a prototype). "These are all real projects, for which we received money," explained Peygin. It was also alleged that the development of "Optimengi" is applied by the Chinese company Comac.

In JS "Medusa" confirmed that "Optimenga" performed a number of works on mathematical modeling of structures, but noted that such work is ordered by several companies.

"I know these guys [from Optimeng] since childhood, they are very talented, I tried to help them, but there is no business there, unfortunately," Mikhail Leontiev told Meduza. - No one ever loves innovators. It's all tears and groans, no word "business" is applicable to this story. Many people tried to somehow help, but you can not act against the system. The system can only produce a "Superjet". "

Leontiev and the fishing fleet

Aircraft are not the only area of interest for Mikhail Leontyev. He also has businesses associated with water transport. In April 2013, the journalist co-founded the company "Agro-Marine-LNG", which is engaged in the design of ships operating on liquefied natural gas. (The fact that Leontiev has stakes in "Optimeng" and "Agro-Marine-LNG", also told the "Rain" TV channel.)

The main owner of Agro-Marina is the British company Valser Oil, which, according to the UK's commercial register, belongs to two offshore companies registered in the Marshall Islands: Pintox Systems Limited and Syten Group Limited. Data on the directors and owners of these companies are not disclosed. Only in the Ministry of Justice of New Zealand 25 companies established by Pintox and Syten are registered; Some of them appeared in scandals related to money laundering through Moldovan banks.

In April 2017, Valser Oil published a notice on the inclusion of Valeriy Suraev, an Austrian citizen born in Russia in 1960, on the list of persons influencing the company's activities. He is a man known in the shipbuilding market: in the 2000s, Suraev headed the department of the fishing fleet, ports and ship repair in Rosrybolovstvo. During the audit of the department in 2010, the Chamber of Accounts discovered fraud around a billion rubles that were received in 2005 for the construction of scientific research ships in the Far East. One of the contracts was won by the Scientific Production Center for Industrial Fisheries, Exploration and Monitoring of Marine Bioresources (NPC), registered in Yaroslavl.

"According to the documents, the scientific ship was built, Suraev signed the acceptance certificate, after which more than 283 million rubles were transferred to the accounts of the SPC," sources told the Izvestia. "Then the money disappeared on the accounts of one-day firms." During the audit of the Chamber of Accounts, it was found out that the skeleton of the ship remained standing on the shipyard of the plant in Khabarovsk among garbage and scrap metal. Three more unfinished vessels within the same project never left the factory slipways in the Kirov region.

Law enforcement authorities suspected that the real owner of the NPC was Valery Suraev. After the inspection of Rosrybolovstvo began, he resigned from the civil service and headed this Yaroslavl company. In 2011, as reported by Rosbalt, Suraev received a residence permit in Estonia; A year later a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of fraud, and a pledge was made from a former official not to leave the place. The Ministry of Internal Affairs did not respond to the request "Medusa" about the progress of the investigation.

In 2013, the NPC was declared bankrupt - it was due to a lawsuit filed by Marin-Invest, owned by Valser Oil, which later established Agro-Marine-LNG. "Agro-Marine" also bought most of the property of the NPC for a million rubles; In addition, the company is wholly owned by the Khabarovsk Shipyard.

Mikhail Leontyev was acquainted with Valery Suraev long before these events. In the early 2000s, he devoted a whole release of his author's program on the First Channel to problems of the fishing fleet - and published several Suraev columns about these problems in the magazine "However."

"He came to me [as a journalist] with problems [fishing] and impressed me. I had ten programs on this topic, - recalls Leontiev. "Suraev and I together were doing a very serious thing - if we have any fishing in Russia now and some prospects for the creation of Russian ships, then this country owes to Valery Suraev, whom I helped a little."

Another old friend of Leontiev is the general director of Agro-Marine-LNG - Vladimir Koloskov, the former first deputy general director of the Rodionov Publishing House, which published closed magazines Peasant and FHM in 2015. In the same publishing house worked and Leontiev - in the late 2000's, he led the magazine "Profile" for two years.

The first three years after the creation of "Agro-Marine-LNG" did not show itself. At the end of 2016, the company won two tenders at the Krylov State Research Center for the development and modernization of fishing vessels on liquefied natural gas. Both contracts were concluded under the procedure of "Purchase from a single supplier" - as their conclusion, according to the documentation, was necessary to prevent accidents and other emergencies of "force majeure".

The development of the two ships from Agro-Marine-LNG took only a week - concluding the state contract on November 25, the company gave the finished project to the customer on December 2. "Kommersant" explained that such a rush was explained simply: the financing of the works was carried out according to the federal target program "Development of Civil Marine Equipment for 2009-2016" and the officials could not postpone the deadlines for accepting ready works for the next year. As it turned out a little later, vessels on the project "Agro-Marina" will build on the hulls of those ships that once did not complete the company Valery Suraev.

According to a source familiar with the company's activities, Agro-Marine-LNG planned to take part in the construction of ice-class tankers-they are needed to transport liquefied natural gas through the Northern Sea Route, which Novatek mines in Yamal, Received from the National Welfare Fund.

Gas carriers need about fifteen. The first one (it was called "Christophe de Margery" in honor of the head of Total, who died in the Vnukovo plane crash) arrived in Yamal at the end of March 2017 from South Korea. However, it is planned that further gas carriers will be built in Russia, in the Far East shipyard "Star ". This shipyard belongs to Gazprombank and Rosneft, whose spokesman is Mikhail Leontiev. Leontiev himself told "Medusa" that "the project with gas carriers was, but I'm not in the subject".

Leont'ev asserts that "I never received a single penny from these [companies] in my life." "If someone wrote me to the founders for some purpose - God is their judge. I roughly remember what I'm talking about, but I will not even mention the names of these companies, "he said. - Who did I try to help? I've tried to help my friend make a film. Every person in life has an attempt to help someone, if he is not a finished scumbag. "