The head of the Sixth Court of Cassation Alexandra Efanova in Samara was known for having expensive cars and watches. However, his son is truly wealthy. Where did the family acquire hundreds of millions in assets?
The most compassionate court
Across from Samara on the Volga River is Podzhabny Island. It's known for its ancient forests and diverse wildlife, including species listed in the Red Book. The Samara company “Era” obtained 40 hectares here for very little through a questionable privatization scheme. Initially, the company leased the land to build a recreation center, then set up several wooden houses and used this as the basis to request ownership of the land. After years of legal battles, “Era” finally succeeded. The Eleventh Court of Appeal, headed by Alexander Efanov at the time, ruled in favor of the company.
Today, the judge heads the Sixth Court of Cassation of General Jurisdiction, which reviews decisions from courts in Bashkiria, Mari El, Tatarstan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia, Kirov, Orenburg, Samara, and Ulyanovsk regions. Local media has observed that under Efanov's leadership, the court sometimes makes unclear decisions in business disputes, and even for well-known criminals.
For instance, the arrest of the leader of the local Samara gang, Andrey Filimoshin, was overturned. His group was accused of nine gang attacks, including on the head of the Samara department of the Federal Property Management Agency. The court annulled the verdict and released the former general director of TsSKB Progress Alexandra Kirillina , who had previously been found guilty of embezzlement amounting to 126 million rubles. The sentence and fine of the former deputy head of the Russian Guard in the Samara Region, Dmitry Sazonov, convicted of bribery, were reduced by 10 times (from 220 to 22 million rubles) How can a judge have extravagant assets?Alexander Efanov The judge's official biography appears nearly perfect: he is an Honored Lawyer of Russia, an honorary judiciary worker, a recipient of the Order of Friendship, 11 departmental medals, and various honors..
Efanov’s income statement also doesn't resemble that of a corrupt official: last year, he earned 8.6 million rubles. The judge and his wife own a 160-square-meter apartment, two storage rooms, and two parking spaces. The chair's family has only one car (registered to his wife Olga Efanova) – a Lexus LX450 SUV.
The judge has an unblemished official biography: he is an Honored Lawyer of Russia, an honorary judiciary worker, and he holds the Order of Friendship, 11 departmental medals, and various honors.
The judge's income statement also doesn't indicate corruption: last year, he earned 8.6 million rubles. The judge and his wife own a 160-square-meter apartment, two storage rooms, and two parking spaces. The chairman's family has just one car – a Lexus LX450 SUV, registered to his wife, Olga Efanova.
However, this year, Alexander Efanov was involved in several scandals, potentially resulting in corruption cases.
Recently, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein noticed a person who looked very similar to Judge Efanov driving a huge Toyota Sequoia jeep around Samara. The car is registered to the company of the former mayor of Zhigulevsk Alexandra Kurylina.
Notably, shortly before this, the Sixth Court of Cassation signed three government contracts with the company of the former mayor for the supply of official cars.
Earlier, the Samara journalists investigated the judge's watch and found it to be very similar to the Swiss Breguet Classique Grande Complication made of 18-carat pink gold with a tourbillon, which is valued at 16 million rubles in the market.
How the island on the Volga is linked to the judge’s son
The Samara company "Era" faced challenges after obtaining a plot on Podzhabny Island following the Sixth Court of Cassation's decision.
According to the SPARK database, one of its founders was Ivan, the son of Alexander Efanov, who used to be a businessman and is now an official in the Administration of the Governor of the Samara Region. In 2016, he joined the civil service and sold his stake in the company.
Era's legal address is registered in an apartment owned by a certain Dmitry Polyansky. Life discovered that the 34-year-old met Ivan in 2014 while both were working at a subsidiary of the Volga generating company PJSC T Plus – Samara Utility Systems.
Afterwards, Polyansky drove the judge’s son in his own Toyota Land Cruiser 200 SUV and seemingly carried out various household tasks, such as registering on a free classifieds site and renting out numerous apartments of Efanov Jr. and his wife, office spaces, parking spots, family fleet cars, and other spare parts for the cars. Since 2017, Dmitry Polyansky has been the permanent CEO of Era.
Ivan Efanov's stake in the company also stayed within the family: it is currently owned by a 75-year-old Samara entrepreneur Vera Kazacheva, who is also Efanov Jr.'s mother-in-law. Additionally, the woman owns the Samara Intersectoral Institute and three companies related to providing vocational education services. Therefore, “Era” is not a foreign entity to the court chairman.
The lifestyle of Ivan Efanov
The judge's son rapidly built his career. A lawyer by profession, he began working at prominent generating companies in the region: Samara City Electric Networks, Samara Utility Systems, and the Srednevolzhskaya Gas Company.. He rose to the level of a top manager at each place before entering the civil service. At the beginning of 2018, at 35 years old, he became the Deputy Minister of Construction of the Samara Region, and a few months later he was appointed acting Governor of the Samara Region. Currently, Efanov Jr. is the head of the Digitalization Department (project office) of the Administration of the Governor of the Samara Region.
In 2021, the 40-year-old official emerged as the wealthiest among the regional administration's employees. In his income statement for the previous year, he declared ownership of 11 apartments totaling nearly 850 square meters, two land plots covering over 11 thousand square meters, seven non-residential spaces totaling more than a thousand square meters, and two parking spaces. Additionally, Ivan Efanov possesses a BMW car, a trailer, and a snowmobile. His income, however, was the second highest at "only" five million rubles. Only the governor's assistant had more. Natalia Khlopunova – over seven million, but a woman does not have such an abundance of real estate.
Ivan Efanov also indicated in the declaration his wife – a notary of the Notary Chamber of the Samara Region Anna Efanova (Kazacheva). Work with documents in 2021 brought the official’s wife 17.5 million rubles, she owns two apartments with a total area of 180 square meters, 570 square meters of underground parking and more than 300 square meters of non-residential premises.
Life managed to find out what one of the apartments of the Efanov family looks like. This is a spacious 142-meter apartment with a panoramic view of the Volga, located in the very center of the city, on Tolstoy Street. With a considerable area, housing has only three rooms, judging by the photographs, it is quite possible to play football here. The Efanovs have not lived in it since 2015, and since then the living space has been rented out at the Moscow price tag. Era CEO Dmitry Polyansky negotiates with potential tenants, and during this time he rented an apartment at least twice.
Now the family of the judge’s son lives in one of the best areas of Samara – in Barboshina Polyana. In Soviet times, the area was known for the filming of scenes from the movie “Timur and his team”, and now – an abundance of chic mansions of local moneybags.
Anna Efanova is also registered on the ad site and often sells personal items here. Some of the things are sold at the place of work of the notary, the rest – at the addresses in Barboshina Polyana. From this we can conclude that here a family can own several mansions at once, and not always officially.
In the family, by the way, they prefer to drive premium foreign cars, on which the same beautiful number with three sevens is hung. With him in Samara saw cars Toyota Land Cruer 200, Lexus Rx350, Lexus LX450, BMW X6, and more recently, a brand new electric crossover BMW IX appeared on city streets, the cost of which reaches 17 million rubles.
How an official Efanov can be connected with the executor of large government contracts
For different cases, Ivan Efanov uses different phone numbers of mobile operators – he has, perhaps, a dozen of them. Once a man registered in an Internet service, where he indicated one of the numbers as a home phone. The same number is formally recorded on a certain Anatoly Kononenko.
This person is very similar to the face value. Kononenko is 37 years old, until recently he worked for hire in various divisions of the Akron chemical enterprise, drove the domestic Lada – VAZ-21099, is currently registered in a nine-story panel building and is listed in the stop lists of bank customers as an unreliable borrower.
In 2018, when Ivan Efanov became the head of the Ministry of Property Relations of the Samara Region, the man was very lucky: somehow he became the sole owner and general director of the local company MK Proton, which combines the wholesale sale of medicines with construction activities.
By the time of the change of ownership, the company was barely afloat, earning only two million rubles a year. After the acquisition, Kononenko re-registered the company to his home address and already in the first – incomplete – year of work he managed to earn 22 million rubles, and in 2021 he already earned almost 80 million.
The engine of growth was numerous government contracts for the supply of medicines and medical equipment from public healthcare institutions. The need for MK Proton products among doctors during the pandemic turned out to be so great that last year the company’s portfolio of orders has already exceeded 100 million rubles.
At the same time, MK Proton is the only successful business project of the merchant. Prior to this, Anatoly Kononenko formally held the company, which the Federal Tax Service liquidated as inactive. With the same success, the man worked as an individual entrepreneur: he sold newspapers and magazines and repaired cars. Judging by the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the entrepreneur only had enough strength for four months.
