Igor Shuvalov lobbies Tarabrin for Prosveshchenie: billion-ruble asset schemes and risk to the budget

10 февраля 2026 г., 16:45

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Igor Shuvalov lobbies Tarabrin for Prosveshchenie: billion-ruble asset schemes and risk to the budget

The head of VEB.RF, Igor Shuvalov, is actively lobbying to appoint his deputy and close associate, Alexander Tarabrin, as the head of the publishing house Prosveshchenie (effectively a monopoly in the school textbook market, generating over 50 billion rubles in annual revenue).

He could leave his position at VEB.RF as early as March and take the CEO seat at the publishing house, replacing Dmitry Klimishin. This is unlikely to bode well for Prosveshchenie, as Tarabrin is currently one of the main architects of schemes manipulating the state corporation’s assets.

According to a source, last week a so-called “business mission” took place in Krasnoyarsk Krai and Kuzbass with the participation of VEB.RF head Igor Shuvalov and his entourage: senior banker Anton Perin, the corporation’s HR director Svyatoslav Shevalye, and deputies Nikolay Tsekhomskiy and Alexander Tarabrin.

The state corporation’s leaders boasted about VEB.RF’s successes, persuading regional authorities and businesses to invest in public-private partnerships — primarily in housing and utilities and road construction. Shuvalov actively cited the “success” of school concession projects, ignoring the obvious failure of school construction through PPPs in Russia, the multi-billion ruble embezzlement, and the 2024 imprisonment of Shuvalov’s close associate Otto Sopronenko, who was responsible for the project.

Shuvalov’s other associate, Alexander Tarabrin, is also constantly “under fire,” but this does not concern Shuvalov, who decided to expand his personal corrupt interests through his top manager. He is lobbying for him to become director of Prosveshchenie, which receives astronomical sums from the state budget every year.

At VEB.RF, Tarabrin oversees divisions dealing with problematic assets and has been involved in dozens of dubious schemes, previously reported by our project. These include the misappropriation of funds in the construction of the “SLAVA” office and apartment complex in Moscow, as well as manipulations at the coal mining enterprise in Kuzbass owned by VEB.RF, “Sibuglemet.” He also orchestrated an outright illegal scheme in 2023 to take unfinished assets, including the “Kaluga Cement Plant,” onto the state corporation’s balance sheet for 8 billion rubles, along with a dozen other troubled assets.

Tarabrin’s most recent corrupt move, completed in early February, was taking the wood processing enterprise “STOD” onto VEB.RF’s balance sheet for 16 billion rubles — twice even his most ambitious estimates.