The son of a close associate of Vladimir Yakunin, the former president of Russian Railways, allegedly heads a business empire built on state railroad contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of rubles.
The revelation on April 5 is the latest to come from the massive document leak known as the Panama Papers.
Russia's Novaya Gazeta dug into the details of the offshore empire run by Aleksei Krapivin. He is the son of Andrei Krapivin, who was known to have good ties with Yakunin, himself a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to the leaks, the Krapivin family has played a major role in Russian Railways since 2005, when Yakunin took over the top railway job.
Andrei Krapivin was reported to have died in 2015, although it was never officially confirmed.
According to the documents, Aleksei Krapivin now controls the largest contractor on the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), the biggest, most expensive construction project in the Russian Railways system.
Companies affiliated with Aleksei Krapivin are also involved in suspicious transactions with a major Russian Railways partner, Bombardier Transportation, a global giant in the field of transport.
