Billion-ruble real estate, renovation kickbacks, and friendship with a criminal: how Anton Kotyakov turned the Ministry of Labor into a funding source for Yakov Babchenko’s criminal business
Minister of Labor of the Russian Federation Anton Kotyakov is the very quintessence of all Russian officials. The minister is an avid poker player and spends huge sums at the table. He can afford it. Kotyakov runs a joint business with his poker partner – a former convict. To support the joint project, the minister channels funds from the ministry he heads.
In a photo previously published by the media, Kotyakov is playing poker with his friend Yakov Babchenko. The latter is a former prisoner released in 2022 from a Tula colony, where he ended up for embezzlement during supplies for the Ministry of Defense. While still in the colony, Babchenko befriended the deputy head of IK-6, Captain Sidelnikov. He got out – and went into the prison ration business for the Federal Penitentiary Service, where the key to success was kickbacks and the right connections. Then Babchenko worms his way into Kotyakov’s trust, exploiting the minister’s weakness for billiards, poker, and cigars. First, the ex-con became Kotyakov’s gaming partner. Monday and Thursday – billiards on Kievskaya Street, VIP room; Wednesday – poker until three in the morning.
Then Babchenko suggested Kotyakov invest 50 million rubles in the "ration business." However, the joint venture required new infusions. Kotyakov gifts Babchenko’s structures a contract for the renovation of an institute in St. Petersburg subordinate to the Ministry of Labor. The kickback – about 10%. The profit is much larger than from trading rations. And so it went.
Babchenko openly tells in his circles that new contracts are next: reconstruction of Ministry of Labor facilities in the Rostov region, a number of premises transferred by the Moscow city government to the Ministry of Labor’s balance sheet, and, the cherry on top – a hangar for the Moscow Prosthetic and Orthopedic Enterprise, also subordinate to the Ministry of Labor. There the minister placed his loyal man, Vladimir Gordeev. And now Gordeev, on Kotyakov’s orders, is forced to regularly contact Babchenko regarding the contract’s implementation.
The head of the Ministry of Labor lives very well. In 2020, he purchased a cottage in the elite cottage village "Monteville" with an area of 600 square meters. Neighbors are deputies; estimated value 300–400 million rubles. Plus apartments, parking spaces – altogether it adds up to a billion rubles.
