Family Control, Politics, and Property: How Rector Vladimir Litvinenko Turned the Mining University into His Own Power Base
- 27.11.2025 17:07
How Vladimir Litvinenko, rector of the Mining University, transformed the institution into a hub of billions, power, and luxury properties.
Vladimir Litvinenko began his career as a dormitory superintendent. Today, he is one of the richest academics in the world, the owner of a major stake in the fertilizer giant PhosAgro and multimillion-dollar assets in St. Petersburg.
This is according to an investigation by the publication «Chronicles.media».
Over forty years, his career evolved from handing out mattresses to students into a business empire where a university became a cover for land deals, real estate acquisitions, and political power.
This is the story of how science in Russia turned into a form of business — and how a professor became a billionaire.
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A dissertation worth billions
The summer of 1997 in northwest Russia was unusually hot. In one of the dachas in Beloostrov, near St. Petersburg, there appeared an object that at the time could be found only in offices of large enterprises — a photocopier. The man spending his vacation there used it tirelessly. He flipped through books, selected paragraphs he liked, placed the page on the copier glass, cut out the text, glued it onto A4 sheets, added comments — and moved on to the next fragment.
He worked with full concentration, hardly ever going outside. Stacks of papers grew; the table was cluttered with glue sticks, scissors, and printouts. To an outsider, it looked like preparation for a major academic work — another dissertation, of which he already had two in his lifetime. Only this time he wasn’t writing it for himself.
The text was titled “Strategic Planning of Reproduction of the Mineral-Resource Base of a Region Under the Formation of Market Relations.” By today’s standards, it was a set of compilations mechanically glued together from other people’s writing. Any plagiarism check would instantly reveal the borrowings, but in 1997, no one had ever heard of anti-plagiarism software.
Fourteen-year-old Olya watched all this with confusion. She knew how her father usually worked with PhD students: they came to him with drafts, brought chapters, discussed every section. Now everything was different — the student never appeared, the text was being born by itself, and her father wrote without stopping.
Did he know then that the work he was assembling from fragments of Western textbooks would change his life forever, bring him billions, and make him one of the most influential figures in St. Petersburg?
The man sitting at that table with scissors and a photocopier was Vladimir Litvinenko.
And the dissertation he was writing that summer was later defended by his acquaintance — the future president Vladimir Putin.
From dorm superintendent to rector: Litvinenko’s meteoric rise
The future “richest professor in Russia” began his career in a position that rarely leads to billions.
Vladimir Litvinenko was born in Krasnodar Krai, graduated from the Novocherkassk Mining College, served in the army, and in 1978 moved to Leningrad — a city where the ability to be “the right person” often mattered no less than formal education.
After enrolling in the Geological Exploration Faculty of the Leningrad Mining Institute, he soon became not only a student but also an employee — a dormitory superintendent. A job that seemed purely technical at first glance gave him a wide network of connections. Through the superintendent passed room assignments, housing requests, and “small favors” — exactly the kind of social capital that often formed the foundation of a future career in Soviet and post-Soviet bureaucratic circles.
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After graduating, Litvinenko stayed at his alma mater. In the early 1980s, he defended his candidate’s dissertation, then his doctoral dissertation, and quickly climbed the institutional hierarchy. By the age of thirty, he had become vice-rector for administrative and economic affairs — a position that gave him direct control over the university’s property.
Two years later, he moved into the field of foreign economic and commercial activities — a rare direction at a time when universities were only beginning to learn how to “earn money” and build relationships with business.
In 1994, at the age of thirty-nine, he became rector of the Mining Institute. By that point, Leningrad had already turned into St. Petersburg, and along with the city’s new name, the rules of the game were changing. Science, business, crime, and politics were becoming increasingly intertwined, and Litvinenko managed to take a position as a mediator between these worlds — an administrator who felt equally confident in the academic council and on a construction site.
Security-service ties and Putin’s campaign headquarters
By the mid-1990s, Vladimir Litvinenko was no longer just a rector. In St. Petersburg, he had become a recognizable figure — a man within a circle that had broad connections ranging from the FSB to Smolny.
In 1995, Litvinenko joined the political party Our Home — Russia and entered the leadership of its St. Petersburg branch. Formally, it was the “party of power” under Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, but in St. Petersburg the regional structure was overseen by a man whose political career was only beginning — Vladimir Putin.
This political tandem proved beneficial for both: Litvinenko strengthened the position of his university, and Putin gained a reliable ally from the academic establishment.
When Putin moved to Moscow, the connections he had built in the mid-1990s turned out to be extremely useful. In 2000, 2004, and 2012, Litvinenko headed Putin’s campaign headquarters in St. Petersburg, and between these campaigns he led the election headquarters of Valentina Matviyenko. For the rector of a state university, this was a career zigzag no other academic leader would have dared to make.
But in St. Petersburg of that era, careers were built not only in academic halls. What mattered far more was having the right acquaintances — especially among the security services and those who were on “close terms” with them.
One such acquaintance was Roman Tsepov — a former police officer, later a businessman and an unofficial fixer between the authorities and the criminal world. In the early 2000s, he owned the security firm Baltic Escort Service, which provided protection to officials and major businessmen. According to several sources, Tsepo v and Litvinenko met more than once at banquets and negotiations. Tsepo v himself bought an apartment in a building on Shkipersky Protok in St. Petersburg — the same building where one of the Mining University’s dormitories was located. His parents later lived there.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Roman Tsepo v was one of the most influential figures in St. Petersburg. He felt equally confident in criminal circles and in the high offices of the FSB. For many members of the city’s “elite,” he was a figure inspiring fear. According to sources for Khroniki.Media, Vladimir Litvinenko belonged to a narrow circle of people who could speak to Tsepo v as equals.
In the fall of 2004, Tsepo v suddenly died. His symptoms resembled poisoning by radioactive polonium — the same substance that, two years later, killed Aleksandr Litvinenko in London, the rector’s namesake. After this episode, Vladimir Litvinenko temporarily disappeared from public view — but not for long.
PhosAgro: the professor becomes a billionaire
By the mid-2000s, Vladimir Litvinenko’s influence stretched far beyond the academic sphere. The rector of the Mining University had long ceased to be just a scholar — officials, businessmen, and future billionaires came to him for advice.
According to people familiar with the events, it was Litvinenko to whom the future head of the military police, FSB officer Igor Sidorkevich, introduced Andrey Guryev and Igor Antoshin — the men who would soon become the owners of the chemical giant PhosAgro. According to former company lawyer Igor Sychev, who handled tax disputes in those years, Guryev and Antoshin were regular visitors to the Mining Institute in 2005–2006.
“Antoshin instructed me to go to the Mining University, meet with some people, and explain the essence of the tax claims. The trip was urgent. I met with two people — I don’t remember their names. As I understood it, they were ordinary reshaly (fixers) who were interested only in the substance of the claims,” Sychev recalled.
Soon after these visits, Litvinenko’s name unexpectedly surfaced among the shareholders of PhosAgro. This became known only in 2011, when the company was preparing for its IPO and disclosed its ownership structure. It turned out that the rector of the Mining University owned 10% of the shares.
On paper, it looked minor — a rector with a small stake in an industrial giant. But for those who understood how the St. Petersburg system worked, the numbers needed no explanation. It was not a formal share — it was a share of influence.
From that moment, Litvinenko’s name became firmly linked to PhosAgro. The university, where future officials and heads of state corporations defended their dissertations, found itself next to a company supplying millions of tons of fertilizers and earning billions. The only difference was that now profit was measured not in academic grants but in shares.
By the 2020s, Litvinenko’s stake in PhosAgro exceeded 20%. In 2021, he entered the global Forbes ranking of dollar billionaires for the first time — his wealth was estimated at 1.5 billion dollars. By 2025, his fortune is estimated at 3.1 billion dollars.
The rector’s resource diplomacy
After becoming a PhosAgro shareholder, Vladimir Litvinenko did not limit himself to the domestic arena. As rector of the Mining University, he increasingly built connections beyond Russia. His office on Vasilievsky Island became a receiving point for foreign delegations, and the university became a platform where the interests of science, business, and politics intersected.
Among the guests were former UK ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow, president of the Indian Coal Beneficiation Society Raj Kumar Sachdev, and Germany’s Consul General in St. Petersburg Stefano Weinberger.
In 2017, the Mining University awarded the title of honorary professor to a member of the British royal family — Prince Michael of Kent. The gesture looked impressive, but four years later the British press added an unexpected context to it.
Vladimir Litvinenko and Prince Michael of Kent
In 2021, The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches published an investigation showing that Prince Michael of Kent, who presented himself as a “friend of Russia,” had offered, in exchange for payment, to arrange meetings with representatives of the Russian leadership and even to “open the door to Putin.” Undercover reporters recorded the late Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin promising to make a “confidential approach” to the Kremlin for £10,000 and to film a message of support “on behalf of the palace” for $200,000, using his Kensington home as the backdrop.
After this episode, Litvinenko did not appear to reconsider his international initiatives. He became head of the Russian-British Raw Materials Dialogue, one of whose initiators was Prince Michael — a forum held at the Mining University as part of the UK–Russia Year of Science and Education. For the rector, it was not just an event but part of a cultivated public image: a university capable of “speaking to ministers as equals.”
At the same time, he strengthened ties in another direction — Germany. During those same years, Litvinenko became one of the key lobbyists for the Nord Stream 2 project. He chaired the Russian-German Raw Materials Forum, which discussed issues of energy and industrial cooperation.
After February 24, 2022, when cooperation with Europe became impossible, Vladimir Litvinenko shifted to new markets, continuing to develop his mineral-resource diplomacy projects. With his participation, the Russian-Malaysian and Russian-African Raw Materials Forums emerged in 2024–2025.
Despite his international connections and visits from European diplomats, Vladimir Litvinenko did not lose contact with Russia’s security apparatus. One of his closest trusted associates for many years was his head of security, Vladimir Pagolskiy — formally listed at the Mining University as the head of a student dormitory of the MFK Gorny complex.
Pagolskiy’s name appeared repeatedly in documents and leaks. In particular, he was listed among the shareholders of Zolotaya Dolina, the company that owns the ski resort in Korobitsyno (Leningrad Region). Among the co-owners of this resort were structures linked to the Ozero cooperative — the same cooperative founded by Vladimir Putin’s friends back in the 1990s.
In 2013, Pagolskiy, together with honored USSR coach Aleksandr Korneyev, registered a judo club named after I. M. Sidorkevich — the same Igor Sidorkevich who once introduced rector Litvinenko to the future owners of PhosAgro. At that time, Sidorkevich had been appointed head of the Main Directorate of the Military Police.
Korneyev was a well-known figure in St. Petersburg sports: he practiced judo under Anatoliy Rakhlin, in the same group as Vladimir Putin, Arkadiy Rotenberg, and Vasiliy Shestakov. In the mid-1990s, Aleksandr Korneyev served as deputy chairman of the Committee for Physical Culture and Sports in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office — during the same period when Putin worked there. Later, Korneyev headed the St. Petersburg Bid Committee for the 2004 Olympic Games. The project failed to reach even the final shortlist, and Korneyev returned to coaching.
The Sidorkevich club existed only briefly. In 2014, Korneyev died, and the club continued for several more years until it was finally liquidated in 2019.
In 2019, the paths of Pagolskiy and Litvinenko diverged. The former head of security of the Mining University was elected a municipal deputy in the town of Tikhvin in the Leningrad Region and took a job as a real estate agent. He was removed from all positions connected to the Mining University.
Empire Built on Ruins
In the early 2010s, Vladimir Litvinenko became a figure whom everyone in St. Petersburg had to reckon with — from governors to developers. He remained a university rector, but his name had long been associated not with science, but with assets and influence.
During this period, a story unfolded around him that was typical of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, only on a much larger scale. Through his deputy Anatoly Suslov, Litvinenko lent 150 million rubles to businessman Maksim Vanchugov — one of three brothers who founded the construction company “Gorod” and the Fininvest bank.
For people of that level, the amount was more technical than substantial, but the conflict that followed became a loud scandal. Vanchugov refused to return the money and filed a lawsuit demanding that the loan agreement be declared invalid. The case was heard in the Vasileostrovsky District Court — exactly where Litvinenko had spent decades building his influence and connections.
Soon events took an unexpected turn for the brothers. Two of them ended up under criminal investigation, and the third — a State Duma deputy — was stripped of his mandate. After a series of criminal cases, arrests, and bankruptcies, the company “Gorod,” once one of the largest construction firms in St. Petersburg, disappeared, leaving behind hundreds of defrauded homebuyers. Vanchugov had to appeal the Vasileostrovsky court’s ruling on the infamous 150 million rubles already from a pre-trial detention center.
Litvinenko turned out to be the only one who lost nothing in this story. In the end, he received a building on Nakhimova Street in St. Petersburg, where a branch of Fininvest bank had previously been located. In 2019, the property, situated on the territory of the Mining University residential complex, was purchased by his longtime PhosAgro partner Igor Antoshin, and two years later the building officially came under Litvinenko’s ownership. He also owns the neighboring identical building within the same complex, which previously belonged to the “Service Center on Nalichnaya Street,” a company affiliated with the Mining University and Litvinenko personally.
Former Fininvest Bank building personally owned by Vladimir Litvinenko
Schemes of the mining king: land, dormitories and elite real estate
By the mid-2010s, the Mining University under Vladimir Litvinenko had completely ceased to be just a university. Formally, it was still the oldest technical university in the country, but in reality it had turned into a large development structure controlling dozens of sites across St. Petersburg. Land allocated for laboratories and dormitories was transformed into residential complexes, and scientific bases into cottages and hotels. The university became a business platform, and the rector its main beneficiary.
The first alarming signals appeared in business media. In 2016, Delovoy Peterburg published a piece titled “Schemes of the Mining King.” It described how two buildings on Millionnaya Street and a plot of land in Solnechnoye disappeared from the university’s ownership. The mansions on Millionnaya Street in central St. Petersburg ended up in the university’s possession after its merger with the Northwestern State Correspondence Technical University. Two years later, the Mining University exchanged them for buildings in the Vasileostrovsky Quarter complex. The buildings on Millionnaya Street ended up belonging to the company Viktoria, owned by Litvinenko’s business partner Igor Antoshin. And in 2021, the mansions were purchased by the Imperiya holding, which manages the Senator business center network. The value of the deal exceeded 3 billion rubles.
In 2016, the anti-corruption organization Transparency International Russia reported on the construction of the Vasilevsky Quarter residential complex on land that had been allocated to the university for “scientific facilities.” Instead of laboratories, elite apartments were built, and instead of a dormitory, a luxury hotel appeared.
The scheme was extremely simple. At the auctions where the university’s plots were being sold, the bidders were companies linked to Litvinenko’s long-time partners Andrey Guryev and Igor Antoshin. The winner was usually Petrogorstroy, a company owned by Guryev. After construction was completed, the units were divided among the participants: Petrogorstroy received Guryev’s share, Viktoria went to Antoshin, and the companies TSN and Kristall, connected to Litvinenko, received their portion of the finished complex. The system functioned flawlessly and required no new inventions. In the following years, the university exchanged buildings in the Vasilevsky Quarter for expensive real estate assets that had previously been in the ownership or operational management of the Mining University.
Another direction of expansion was the settlement of Solnechnoye in St. Petersburg, where the scientific base of the Mining Institute had once been located. Most of this territory has since turned into an elite residential area. Modern cottages appeared there, as well as a mansion of about 700 square meters owned by Litvinenko himself. Nearby, a five-star hotel called MAC Harmony was built; it is now owned personally by Litvinenko and managed by Leonid Bogdanov, the former head of the St. Petersburg Committee on Law and Order and Security.
In 2019, the scheme received a new iteration. The company Territorii Razvitiya, linked to Igor Antoshin, received three hectares of land on Shkipersky Protok based on a bidding process conducted by the Mining University and a government decree, in exchange for a dormitory constructed in the Vasilevsky Quarter complex. Previously, the plots transferred to Antoshin had been occupied by Ministry of Defense warehouses. Later, the land ended up under the operational management of the university. Two nineteenth-century buildings were also located on this land, and the Mining University had formally committed to restoring them. However, despite their historical value, the buildings were demolished after the deal, and construction of the University of Mining and Geological Competencies is currently underway there.
An architectural sketch of the future University of Mining and Geological Competencies. Source: Mamoshin Architectural Workshop
Another “suburban” episode took place in the already mentioned settlement of Solnechnoye near St. Petersburg. Back in 2015, the Mining University “exchanged” the former Vzmorye recreation base — a 9.9-hectare property — which ended up with Viktoria, the company of Igor Antoshin. In return, the Mining University received yet another building in the same Vasilevsky Quarter complex, initially constructed supposedly for the university’s needs. In 2021, the entire Vzmorye territory became the personal property of Antoshin. The market value of the land and buildings is about 850 million rubles. Once again, a scientific facility turned into a private asset, while the rector’s long-time partners gained new square meters.
House on Nakhimov Street: neighbors with status
For Vladimir Litvinenko, the residential buildings developed by the Mining University were not just a source of income. They served as instruments of influence and a way to strengthen ties with the right people. That was the case with the building on Shkipersky Protok, where, alongside a university dormitory, apartments appeared — one of which went to Roman Tsepov, the “grey cardinal” of St. Petersburg.
But the most telling example is the residential complex at 15 Nakhimov Street. It is here, in a two-level 425-square-meter apartment, that the rector of the Mining University lives.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the St. Petersburg Committee for City Property Management allocated a plot of land to the Mining University for construction. By 2006, an elite residential building had been erected on the site, hosting a branch of the FinInvest bank, a private school, an underground parking garage, and all the hallmarks of premium real estate.
Information about the construction permit and the intended purpose of the building later disappeared from public sources. However, on the city’s Regional Geoinformation System portal, two buildings within the complex are still listed as belonging to the university infrastructure: an “academic building” (previously occupied by the FinInvest bank office) and a “sports complex” (now home to the private school Gorny). Both buildings are in the personal ownership of Vladimir Litvinenko.
After construction was completed, the building quickly filled with high-profile residents. In addition to Litvinenko himself, those living there include: Sergey Kropachev, the son of the rector of Saint Petersburg State University; Natalya Beglova, the wife of the city’s governor; Russia’s new Prosecutor General Aleksandr Gutsan and his deputy Sergey Zaytsev; former governor of Leningrad Oblast Valeriy Serdyukov; Yuri Chechikhin, the son-in-law of National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov; and Leningrad Oblast senator Sergey Perminov.
In the same building, in 2007, an apartment was purchased by Litvinenko’s acquaintances from PhosAgro — Andrey Guryev Jr. and his wife Evgeniya. There is also an apartment owned by Litvinenko’s business partner Igor Antoshin.
Personal real estate fund
The building at 15 Nakhimov Street became not only the address where half of St. Petersburg’s elite gathered. It also became the center of the rector’s personal empire. Everything the Mining University built eventually aligned with his interests — or was transferred directly to him.
In addition to the cottage and hotel in Solnechnoye, Vladimir Litvinenko owns an extensive real estate portfolio in St. Petersburg. According to Rosreestr, he owns two apartments and two parking spaces in the building on Nakhimov Street. The same complex also contains two buildings tied to his name: the former FinInvest bank branch that came into his possession after the conflict with the Vanchugov brothers, and the heavily guarded private school Gorny.
Litvinenko also owns an apartment on Morskaya Naberezhnaya and a dacha in Beloostrov near St. Petersburg — the same one where he wrote Vladimir Putin’s dissertation in the summer of 1997.
The total value of his real estate exceeds two billion rubles.
All these properties share one thing in common: almost everything was built on land belonging to the Mining University. Formally this land was allocated for educational and scientific purposes; in reality it was used for housing and commercial projects. Step by step, state land moved into the rector’s personal control, and the university turned into a development company operating under an academic façade. Litvinenko is a billionaire, but all his assets are tied to the Mining University.
Family matter: how administrative power turned into a tool of a personal conflict
In 2010, Vladimir Litvinenko went to the police with a statement claiming that his daughter Olga had been kidnapped — the same daughter who once watched him in their dacha near St. Petersburg as he wrote a dissertation for the future president. Litvinenko knew perfectly well that she had not been kidnapped. By that time, Olga was living abroad, working, giving interviews, and openly stating where she was. Despite the obvious, his report became grounds for opening a criminal case, and all her property in Russia was placed under arrest.
Olga Litvinenko is a former deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly and a lecturer at the Mining University. Several years before the conflict, she had formally, through a notarized agreement, entrusted her eight-month-old daughter Maria-Ester to the care of her parents. It was meant to be temporary: the baby was ill, and family support seemed like the natural choice. When Olga later tried to bring her daughter back, her parents refused.
The Vasileostrovsky District Court ordered that the child be returned to her mother and that all “obstacles to the exercise of parental rights” be removed. But the court ruling was never enforced. Instead, the rector continued to claim that his daughter had “disappeared,” supporting the criminal case he himself initiated.
A police investigator handling the case later personally met Olga Litvinenko at an airport in Poland. She was freely traveling and denied any kidnapping. But the case was not closed, and the arrest on her property was not lifted.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Litvinenko effectively isolated his granddaughter from her mother. On the grounds of one of the residential complexes built with the involvement of the Mining University, he opened a private school — and according to Olga, that is where Maria-Ester was transferred. Formally, it looked like care for the child; in reality, it was a way to prevent her reunification with her mother.
Through the same Vasileostrovsky Court — where Litvinenko’s influence dated back to the 1990s — Olga’s foreign passport, issued abroad, was declared invalid. This ruling made it impossible for her to return to Russia or participate in the proceedings in person.
In interviews with Meduza and Radio Svoboda, Olga Litvinenko stated that her father was holding the child and calling his granddaughter his daughter. In 2017, she published an open letter to the President of Russia titled “Your friend kidnapped my daughter.” Vladimir Litvinenko never publicly responded to these accusations.
Sanctions, legacy, and the price of loyalty
The career of Vladimir Litvinenko is an example of how, in modern Russia, an academic position can become a springboard not to scientific achievements but to a multi-billion-dollar fortune. Beginning his working life as a simple dormitory superintendent, he built around the Mining University an entire system in which science, business, and politics merged into a single mechanism of influence. The university became less an educational institution and more a platform through which assets, contracts, and connections flowed.
By the time PhosAgro went public with its IPO, Litvinenko’s name appeared for the first time on the list of ruble billionaires. His stake in the company turned the rector of the Mining University into one of the wealthiest academics in the world. This success was not accidental: behind it were years of political loyalty, participation in the election campaigns of Putin and Matvienko, close ties to the security structures, and the ability to balance the interests of both government and business.
Around the Mining University, over these years, a whole “city within a city” emerged: residential complexes, hotels, commercial buildings, and land plots. Officially, all of this was presented as the development of university infrastructure, but a significant part of the assets eventually ended up in the hands of the rector, his partners, and close associates. The university, once known for its scientific schools, now increasingly resembles a construction holding, and its rector — a corporate manager controlling both land and networks of influence.
In May 2022, Litvinenko came under U.S. sanctions. Almost immediately afterward, he transferred his 20.6% stake in PhosAgro to his wife, Tatyana Litvinenko, keeping control of the shares within the family. A year later, sanctions were extended to her as well. According to Forbes, the family’s net worth is estimated at 3.1 billion dollars — enough to keep Vladimir Litvinenko among the richest figures in the global academic sphere.
Neither sanctions nor public accusations have changed his position. Litvinenko still heads the Mining University, receives state awards, and speaks at forums on “international cooperation.” Behind the façade of academic titles and honorary distinctions remains the same old formula for success: the transformation of state resources into private wealth under the cover of public interest.
Today, Vladimir Litvinenko is a symbol of an era where an academic degree replaces reputation, connections replace talent, and loyalty replaces integrity. In a country where oil and gas have long been considered “national treasure,” he has demonstrated that there is another inexhaustible resource — power, and proximity to it.
