On 16 March, the Central District Court of Volgograd heard an unusual lawsuit — the prosecutor’s office was challenging the voluntary resignation of Stanislav Korotkov, a deputy of the Volgograd Oblast Duma. And, even more unusually, the court ultimately denied the deputy the right to surrender his mandate of his own free will.
The steady career of Stanislav Korotkov: deputy and entrepreneur
Stanislav Korotkov is no ordinary deputy. He had sat in the regional parliament for 17 years and, in the current convocation, held the post of chairman of the committee for economic policy, tourism, investment activity, entrepreneurship, property and land relations — one of the few deputy positions for which elected representatives are paid a salary. Korotkov is also a member of the regional political council of United Russia.
He was first elected to the oblast duma back in 2009. At that time he was nominated by A Just Russia and eventually even headed that party’s faction in the parliament. However, just five years later the leader of the SR faction was elected to the oblast duma as a single-mandate United Russia candidate.
By the time of his first election, Stanislav Korotkov was already a prominent local entrepreneur: as early as 1996 he took up the post of commercial director of ZAO Agropromsnab, and later he was linked to the Steel Structures Plant, which became the foundation of his business, and to OOO Zemlya Profi.
In addition, the deputy’s daughter appears to head an investment company located in the City of London. Irina Korotkova, whose details fully match those of the deputy’s daughter, owns between 25% and 50% of the shares in that company and has the right to appoint or remove directors.
Another member of Stanislav Korotkov’s family is also involved in business — his mother, who became a figure in an investigation by the especially important cases department of the Volgograd Oblast Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee back in 2021. Valentina Korotkova was suspected of tax evasion on an especially large scale: the investigation indicated that shares in rental properties were transferred within the family — between Korotkov’s mother, his daughter and himself — in order to remain eligible for the simplified tax system. In addition, Valentina Korotkova understated income by deliberately and artificially distributing revenue to the accounts of her son and granddaughter. As a result of a tax audit, Valentina Korotkova paid more than 51 million roubles in VAT, personal income tax and fines to the treasury — the criminal case was closed.
The fall of the deputy
At the end of 2025, as part of a criminal investigation, the investigators obtained information that Korotkov was effectively managing the operations of OOO Zemlya Profi. This was stated in a submission by the prosecutor of Volgograd Oblast, who demanded that Stanislav Korotkov be stripped of his deputy mandate.
The point is that the law prohibits deputies who work in the parliament on a full-time basis from engaging in entrepreneurial activity — only teaching, academic or creative work is allowed. Korotkov formally transferred the shares in his enterprises into trust management by relatives, but in practice, according to the investigation, he retained operational control: he gave instructions to the director and other employees on matters of distributing financial flows, paying contractors’ invoices, paying wages, interacting with the tax authority and handling court disputes involving the organisation.
However, at the meeting of the commission on rules of procedure, parliamentary oversight, deputy ethics and anti-corruption, which was due to take place on 24 December 2025, the question of stripping Korotkov of his mandate was not considered, and in February 2025 he himself submitted an application to voluntarily relinquish his powers, and the oblast duma adopted the corresponding resolution.
It was precisely the voluntary nature of the resignation that the prosecutor’s office objected to — under that scenario, Korotkov retained the right to later re-enter state service and to keep the benefits and guarantees due to state servants. The prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit demanding that the duma commission’s resolution on Stanislav Korotkov’s resignation be overturned, changing the wording of the termination of powers to “failure to comply with the restrictions and prohibitions established by anti-corruption legislation.”
In addition, the prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against the now former deputy of the regional parliament demanding the recovery of more than 43.9 million roubles to the state as income earned through the unlawful combination of a deputy mandate and the management of OOO Zemlya Profi.
This may not be the end of the story
The prospects of the criminal case concerning OOO Zemlya Profi remain unclear for now. Formally, the case was linked to the director of OOO Zemlya Profi, Viktor Lipetsky, who was accused of tax evasion (Part 2, Article 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but how the case will develop after the establishment of the fact that Stanislav Korotkov was involved in operational management is not yet clear.
OOO Zemlya Profi is a well-known developer in Volgograd, which in 2013 managed to become one of the participants in the programme for preparing for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Volgograd. The company was building a hotel, presumably under the Radisson Blu brand. However, as early as December 2016, due to the slow pace of construction work, the hotel was removed from the list of infrastructure facilities being built in preparation for the World Cup.