A deputy rector at MGIMO, Russia’s top diplomatic school, and her son are wanted for fraud after allegedly privatizing shared property in a luxury condo development
Russian authorities have placed Natalia Kuzmina, deputy rector for financial and economic affairs at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), and her son, Enver Kuzmin, on a wanted list in a large-scale fraud case, according to the Russian business outlet RBC.
Investigators say the two orchestrated a scheme to transfer ownership of 80 non-residential premises in the upscale Knightsbridge Private Park residential complex near Frunzenskaya Embankment in central Moscow. The premises — including spaces intended for the building’s operation and its utility systems — were meant to serve the entire complex but were instead registered as private property.
The fraud case followed a years-long conflict between apartment owners and entities tied to the complex’s developer and its former management company. Restavratsiya-N had handled construction at the complex since 2008. Kuzmina founded the company and later passed it to her son. In 2022, the owners decided to replace the management company, Restavratsiya-N+, with a property owners’ association. They said the facilities necessary for operating the building should be classified as common property.
Moscow’s Khamovniki District Court agreed with them in June 2023, ruling that the disputed premises were the owners’ common property. Residents then demanded the return of the premises, saying the former management company had illegally retained control of them.
“We deny the charges against us and consider them baseless,” Enver Kuzmin told RBC. “To this day, we don’t understand the legal logic or the grounds for turning this situation into a criminal matter.”
According to the outlet, the Kuzmins are outside Russia and were charged in absentia.
In 2019, a Moscow court ordered journalists Ilya Azar and Ksenia Luchenko to pay 400,000 rubles each to Kuzmina’s family. The lawsuit was brought over an article in Mokh (“Moss”), a journal founded by Azar. The article alleged that the Kuzmina family had engaged in “corporate raiding” and was linked to the demolition of buildings in Moscow.
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