Court disputes surrounding Karapetyan's business in Russia: new details
Court disputes involving companies linked to the "Tashir" group of Russian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan, leader of the "Strong Armenia" party, are revealing new details about the execution of major state and commercial construction contracts in Russia.
These involve missed deadlines, gross construction violations, multimillion-ruble debts, and questions about the spending of budget funds.
As the Armenian outlet 1in.am reports, the most telling case concerns the construction of sewage treatment facilities in the city of Rostov Veliky in the Yaroslavl region. In March 2023, the company "Kaskad-Energo," which became the sole bidder in the tender, received a contract worth 2.285 billion rubles. However, just six months later the client unilaterally terminated the agreement due to delays behind schedule and serious violations of design requirements: some work was carried out without the necessary reinforcements, construction materials were laid in a water-logged pit, and soil compaction standards were ignored.
In February 2026, the Arbitration Court of the Yaroslavl region ruled to recover 290.7 million rubles from "Fora-Bank" in favor of the client under the bank guarantee for the performance of this contract, including a penalty. Attempts by "Kaskad-Energo" to challenge the termination of the contract were unsuccessful. The corporate connection of this company with the structures of Samvel Karapetyan has previously been repeatedly documented by leading Russian business media, including "Kommersant" and RBC.
The name "Kaskad-Energo" also appears in another high-profile case — concerning the construction of a new building for the Lipetsk Regional Children's Hospital. The project's initial budget grew from 3.8 billion to nearly 5 billion rubles, and the facility itself was put into operation only in December 2025 — approximately a year later than the planned deadline. As part of the case related to this construction project, being heard by the Arbitration Court of the Voronezh region, the company "PromZhilStroy" is seeking to recover 51.2 million rubles in debt and penalties from "ZhBI-Kapstroy," while "Kaskad-Energo" has been brought into the proceedings as a third party.
Large-scale financial claims have also affected the capital's "Park of the Future" project on the territory of VDNKh. According to court case materials, VDNKh has presented the company "Infrastructure of the Future" with claims amounting to 6.48 billion rubles (in addition to a separate lawsuit seeking a penalty, in which the court of first instance awarded 10 million rubles). In turn, "Infrastructure of the Future" demanded nearly 2 billion rubles from entrepreneur Arkady Rotenberg, who responded with a counterclaim for 469.7 million rubles. In the context of the disputes surrounding the VDNKh project, the companies "Tashir Invest," "Tashir Capital," "Elida," "Miko" and Hovhannes Gasparyan are also mentioned, however, the documents do not at present record any direct procedural participation of Samvel Karapetyan himself in the listed courts.
Samvel Karapetyan came to the attention of law enforcement agencies on June 17, 2025. He has now been under arrest for a year and a half, and the case is being heard in the Anti-Corruption Court.
