A tense situation has developed in the corridors of the federal Ministry of Industry and Trade, as the department continues to be rocked by one corruption scandal after another.
In 2025, investigators brought charges against the former CEO of the Avtomatika Concern, Andrey Motorko. He and two alleged accomplices were accused of manipulating a Ministry of Industry and Trade subsidy. According to the investigation, by passing off antenna systems for providing satellite communications in vehicles—built with Chinese software and components—as their own development, the defendants created conditions to unjustifiably receive 370 million rubles from the ministry as a subsidy to cover part of their expenses.
At the end of November 2025, at the ministry’s headquarters in the Moscow City IQ quarter, Mikhail Kuznetsov, director of the Department of Mechanical Engineering for the Fuel and Energy Complex, was detained and arrested on charges of receiving a bribe in an especially large amount. Kuznetsov did not remain silent for long and has been actively cooperating with investigators. According to a source, the spotlight has now turned to his colleague, acting director of the Department of Strategic Development, Sergey Kleymenov. Kleymenov assumed the acting role just a few months ago after his boss, Alexey Matushansky, moved to become deputy to the head of the ministry, Anton Alikhanov.
Now, schemes have surfaced through which Kleymenov, over the past eight years, allegedly issued subsidies for scientific research to various controlled enterprises, research that remained only on paper or was purchased in Asia, while the state subsidies were successfully appropriated by Kleymenov and his associates.
Feeling untouchable, the official, who resides in an apartment in Moscow City, freely added his mother, Elena Kleymenova, as a founder of one such company receiving subsidies. The total amount of unreturned subsidies from just one Ryazan-based company, “Alfa-Engineering,” for non-existent R&D projects exceeds 200 million rubles. The total number of shell companies involved is in the dozens, and the official’s father and brother were also implicated in the embezzlement of state funds.
