The Insider says that at the time of publication, LLC Marathon Retail directly owned 26.66% of PJSC Magnit, and through related companies the total stake reached 37.91%. The publication links this package to Alexander Vinokurov, the son-in-law of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and calls him the largest private beneficiary of Russian grocery retail.
According to The Insider, in 2018 Marathon Group received 11.82% of Magnit shares, and in 2021 another 17.28%. In both deals, VTB acted simultaneously as the seller and the buyer’s lender, and the financing was structured as a repo transaction secured by the acquired stake.
Through Magnit, the group then entered the capital of Dixy, Samberi, and Azbuka Vkusa. The purchase of Azbuka Vkusa cost 29.65 billion rubles, and the combined revenue of Magnit and these chains in 2025, according to the publication’s estimate, amounted to about 3.509 trillion rubles.
The Insider writes that the ownership-weighted value of Vinokurov’s business is about 1.33 trillion rubles. For comparison, the publication cites Igor Kesaev: he owns 73.03% of Mercury Retail Group, and the weighted value of his stake is estimated at about 1.25 trillion rubles.
Separately, the investigation claims that Logistik Alternativa, a company controlled by Magnit, received 220 shipments of alcohol from the United States worth $17.07 million and 26 shipments of New Zealand wines worth $897,000 from March 2022 to September 2026. Among these supplies, The Insider names Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam, and Bulleit Bourbon and says they were delivered in circumvention of the U.S. and New Zealand embargoes.
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