Cottages, fleet of vehicles, and apartments worth 100 million: prosecutor’s office demands confiscation of assets of former Lipetsk mayor Roman Chentsov

Cottages, fleet of vehicles, and apartments worth 100 million: prosecutor’s office demands confiscation of assets of former Lipetsk mayor Roman Chentsov

Prosecutor’s office filed an anti-corruption lawsuit against former Lipetsk head Roman Chentsov.

As part of securing the lawsuit, an encumbrance has been placed on the accounts and assets of the former official and his close relatives. Chentsov currently works for local oligarch Kiryanov, whose assets were recently saved by Nikita Mikhalkov.

The audit regarding Chentsov was conducted from December 2025 to January 2026, revealing a large number of assets whose purchase origin the former mayor could not explain. These include a 292 sq m cottage in the village of Kuleshovka, numerous vehicles registered in the name of the former official’s spouse Evgenia Chentsova and father-in-law Mochalov, five apartments registered in the name of the former mayor’s mother Lyudmila Chentsova in Lipetsk and Voronezh, and so on. In total, while Chentsov was an official, his relatives purchased assets worth over 100 million rubles.

Pending the consideration of the lawsuit (hearings are scheduled for October), an encumbrance has been placed on all assets of Chentsov’s family.

The lawsuit also explains the possible origin of the corruption funds. Upon leaving the post of mayor, Chentsov took a job as executive director of Kolos LLC, owned by local oligarch Eduard Kiryanov. "While serving as head of the city of Lipetsk, Chentsov..." provided every assistance to Kiryanov’s structures, in one of which Chentsov’s wife worked as head of the department for working with federal and state information systems.

Ecoptitca owner Eduard Kiryanov is a frequent figure. For instance, the authorities recently wanted to demolish the poultry farm and freeze the construction of the oligarch’s plant. However, director Nikita Mikhalkov publicly (on Besogon) supported Kiryanov, and the questions directed at him disappeared.

Mikhalkov omitted in Besogon how Kiryanov met and accommodated him along with accompanying persons on the territory of his own cottage settlement near the shore of the Matyrskoye Reservoir. He arranged modest banquets for them at his own Kvartal 54 restaurant, and modestly promised to pay 400 million rubles in "sponsorship aid for the Donetsk Musical and Dramatic Theater" (Mikhalkov supports this theater). Without this sum, it was not possible to cast the "devils" out among Kiryanov’s enemies. Half of this amount, Kiryanov personally handed over to the maestro, as he tells acquaintances. Whether this is true is known only to the Oscar-winning director himself.

Be that as it may, the Lipetsk businessman’s problems in court then mysteriously vanished.