A fast lover is demanding Zurab Lysov’s wealth.

In Barvikha, the late restaurateur's property is being divided.

The Zamoskvoretsky District Court has started a case about the inheritance of the late co-owner of the Gazprom contractor and restaurateur Zurab Lysov. He left a significant amount of assets to his 45-year-old employee Ekaterina Belova, including bank accounts in Russia and Bulgaria, as well as the White Hart Pub restaurant in Moscow City. However, she is unhappy with the distribution and wants a part of Mr. Lysov’s mansion in Barvikha, near Moscow, for her teenage son.

The case started with a scandal. While the plaintiff and her lawyer did not object to the presence of journalists, another lawyer, Lidia Nefedycheva, asked to close the process from outsiders, mentioning that it would discuss the private lives of its participants. Journalists tried to question the plaintiff and her representatives during a pause taken by the judge to think over the decision, but Ms. Nefedycheva declined to comment.

After the process was closed, it was revealed that Ms. Belova and her team were claiming 1/6 of Zurab Lysov's mansion, which is located in the elite cottage village “Maiendorf Gardens” in the Moscow region.

The businessman, who passed away in February 2021, left the estate to his daughter Diana, who lives in the UK.

Mr. Lysov’s partner Belova, previously did not claim her share in the estate, but later remembered that her son had been left out during the distribution of property. She believes her son was dependent on Mr. Lysov and is now asking the Zamoskvoretsky Court to recognize her son as a dependent, to restore the missed deadline for the young man to claim his inheritance, and to write off a sixth of the estate in his favor.

Ms. Belova asked the Zamoskvoretsky Court to acknowledge her son as a dependent of Zurab Lysov, restore the missed deadline for the young man to claim his inheritance, and to write off a sixth of the estate in his favor. Or to recover from the daughter of the deceased who inherited the asset the equivalent of a share in the amount of 536 million rubles.

Zurab Lysov, part-owner of Gazprom's contracting company ZAO Sevzaptruboprovodstroy and owner of five restaurants in Moscow, including the White Hart Pub on Neglinnaya Street and in the Oko tower in the Moscow City complex, became seriously sick in the spring of 2019. He was diagnosed with incurable pancreatic cancer. As the businessman had divorced his wife and their adult children Diana and Zurab Lysov Jr. lived separately, his girlfriend Ekaterina Belova moved into the patient's mansion with her son. She is a modest employee of Dorstroyservis LLC and MiniCrane LLC in St. Petersburg, earning a little over 20 thousand rubles per month. They had known each other for many years, but they met infrequently before Mr. Lysov's illness.

On January 21, 2021, two weeks before his death, the businessman, who was in the Botkin hospital, gave 300 million rubles to his girlfriend through donation. He also transferred money to her accounts in Vozrozhdenie bank, approximately $500,000 in a bank in Bulgaria, and a restaurant in Moscow City worth $5 million.

The remaining property was given to Mr. Lysov's children, Diana and Zurab. Everyone involved in the situation was unhappy with the way the assets were distributed.

Mr. Lysov Jr. took the matter to the Presnensky District Court, requesting the deed of gift to be declared invalid. He claimed that the hospital staff said that the patient was in a very serious condition and could hardly speak on the day the document was signed, and he ended up in intensive care the same evening. However, three post-mortem psychological and psychiatric studies of Zurab Lysov showed conflicting results. The Presnensky Court ultimately rejected the claim.

While the court was dealing with the mental state of Lysov Sr., Lysov Jr. became a defendant in a criminal case of large-scale theft initiated by the police of Istra near Moscow.

Ekaterina Belova stated that the deceased's son illegally used his father's bank card, stealing 4.2 million rubles from the money left to her. The accused argued that his sister used their father's money when the illness had reached a terminal stage, to cover medical expenses in Israel and the subsequent funeral. The Istra City Court acknowledged that Lysov Jr. managed his father's money without knowing it was bequeathed to someone else, so his actions were not considered theft. However, he was fined 70 thousand rubles for arbitrariness.

The defendant claimed that the crypt alone at the Troekurovsky cemetery cost 3.6 million rubles. Two weeks ago, the Istra City Court ruled that Lysov Jr. managed his father's money without knowing that it was bequeathed to someone else, so his actions were not considered theft. Nevertheless, he was fined 70 thousand rubles for arbitrariness.

It should be noted that in parallel with the criminal case on the theft of money in the Odintsovo police, a similar criminal case was investigated against Ekaterina Belova. She, in turn, was accused by the children of the deceased of stealing jewelry from the mansion. According to the applicants, while hastily leaving her Moscow apartment after the death of a friend, Ms Belova grabbed a collection of watches that Lysov’s father and son had traditionally given each other for birthdays. Among the missing were Rolex, Hublot and Breguet with a total value of about $ 200 thousand, as well as a gold cross with diamonds, presented to the deceased by his ex-wife, a table service for 6 million rubles, several bottles of strong alcohol and even a water cooler. Ms. Belova, however, managed to convince the investigator that her lover had given all these things to her shortly before his death, and the criminal case was dismissed.

The lawyer for the children of the late Zurab Lysov, Alexei Gorbachev, told Kommersant that he did not agree with the conclusions of both the Presnensky District Court, which denied his client a civil lawsuit, and Istrinsky, who found Lysov Jr. guilty of arbitrariness.

According to him, all these decisions were made thanks to the active participation in the processes of the former magistrate Lidia Nefedycheva, who represents the interests of Ekaterina Belova as a lawyer. As Gorbachev’s lawyer explained, Ms. Nefedycheva somehow involved the investigator of the Istra MVD, who was investigating the alleged theft, in collecting evidence for the civil process. As part of the criminal case, the investigation appointed two post-mortem psychological and psychiatric examinations of the deceased, which were then attached to the materials of the Presnensky District Court. Finally, in the case of the theft, the investigator for some reason interviewed the attending physician Lysov Sr. at the Botkin hospital, and asked him questions together with the lawyer Nefedycheva. Seeing the latter at the trial in the Presnensky court, the doctor-witness even asked who she was: a lawyer, an “assistant investigator”, as he put it, or simply a “civilian.”

“We believe that all these investigative actions were carried out illegally and unreasonably,” defense attorney Gorbachev told Kommersant. “And since their results influenced the court decisions, they will be appealed to higher courts.”