On 2 April 2026, it became known that a criminal case against former Chelyabinsk Oblast governor and former principal owner of the Makfa agricultural holding, Mikhail Yurevich, had reached the court.
In spring 2024, the state nationalised the Makfa agricultural holding — a pasta producer, one of the largest in the world and the largest in Russia, which previously belonged to former Chelyabinsk Oblast governor Mikhail Yurevich and the family of former State Duma deputy Vadim Belousov. Before that, criminal cases had been opened against Belousov and Yurevich, and Belousov had even been stripped of his deputy’s mandate, had been convicted, and had his sentence overturned.
Yurevich, Belousov and Makfa
In 1993, Mikhail Yurevich, who had recently graduated from university, became director of Chelyabinsk’s Bread-Baking Plant No. 1. Two years later, Vadim Belousov became deputy director for commercial matters. Together they modernised production, organised a retail network and ultimately created the Makfa agro-industrial holding. A large share of the ownership belonged to Yurevich. In 1997, Yurevich was named “Person of the Year” as the best organiser of industrial production in the city of Chelyabinsk. That same year, 1997, Vadim Belousov joined the board of directors of APO Makfa, and in 2004 he headed the holding’s management company.
Makfa’s assets include not only the largest pasta production (20% of all Russian pasta), but also the largest flour-milling complex in Russia, cereal production, its own logistics network and agricultural assets. The holding’s production facilities are located in Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk and Kurgan oblasts and in Stavropol Krai. The company is included in the list of systemically important enterprises of the Russian agro-industrial complex.
The “Yurevich–Belousov” pairing became defining for both men for decades. The leader was unquestionably Yurevich. In 1999, he was first elected to the State Duma in a single-mandate constituency; in 2003 he was elected again and was a member of the United Russia faction. In 2005, he won the Chelyabinsk mayoral election, and in 2010 he accepted Dmitry Medvedev’s proposal to head the oblast.
However, after the 2011 “castling”, he clearly did not work well with the new-old president Vladimir Putin: already in 2014 he left the post “of his own accord”. He took part in the United Russia primaries in 2016, but announced he was withdrawing his candidacy due to a “clash with a powerful administrative resource”. He tried to run as an independent, but was not admitted. A year later, he won a case in the Constitutional Court concerning his exclusion from the election.
Belousov began his political career in 2010, when he was included on the United Russia list for the Chelyabinsk Oblast Legislative Assembly election, running second on the list after State Duma deputy Alexander Berestov. After the victory on 10 October, Berestov declined the mandate, and it passed to Belousov. In the Legislative Assembly, he worked on the construction policy committee and headed the commission for oversight of the party project “New Roads of Russia’s Cities” — it is the roads theme that would subsequently become the reason for his criminal prosecution.
In December 2011, Belousov was elected to the sixth convocation of the State Duma from United Russia, and in 2016 he left the party following Yurevich, entering the seventh convocation from A Just Russia on the list for Kirov Oblast and Udmurtia. He received the mandate after the territorial group leader Sergei Doronin declined it. In September 2021, he was elected to the eighth convocation for the third time, despite the criminal prosecution already underway.
Criminal cases
Yurevich was the first to face criminal prosecution. In March 2017, the billionaire and former governor was accused of receiving a bribe of 26 million roubles from the region’s health minister, Vitaly Teslenko. In addition, he was charged with inciting his first deputy, Oleg Grachyov, to spread slander about the activities of the chairman of the Chelyabinsk Oblast Court, Fyodor Vyatkin: allegedly on Grachyov’s instructions, the programme “Man and the Law”, aired on 8 December 2012, reported on the links between the leaders of the Chelyabinsk criminal group the “Kalinin family” and Vyatkin. Yurevich was put on the wanted list, but by that point he was already abroad. The criminal case is still dragging on.
In 2018, a new criminal case became known, in which Yurevich’s partner Vadim Belousov, at that time a State Duma deputy, was now also implicated.
The criminal case is based on events from 2010–2014. Initially, the Chelyabinsk Oblast Investigative Committee investigated the embezzlement of 9 billion roubles during the construction and reconstruction of oblast highways. The main figures were the ex-director of Chelyabinskavtodor, Konstantin Ovchinnikov (the client’s representative), and the owner of the Yuzhuralavtoban holding, Alexei Bashayev, who carried out the main contracts.
At the final stage of the investigation, Ovchinnikov and Bashayev stated that the money had not been embezzled but spent on bribes. According to them, after Mikhail Yurevich was appointed governor, the official’s team demanded that the road builders pay 20% of their profits to “curators” every month. To secure these percentages, Yurevich and Belousov (then a Legislative Assembly deputy) initiated a “road revolution”: through biased media they promoted the idea of road reconstruction and secured the allocation of large funds from the federal budget. Ovchinnikov organised tenders so that they were almost always won by Bashayev’s Yuzhuralavtoban.
After this testimony, the investigation sharply changed course: interest in the embezzlement disappeared, and the corruption component became the main target. Ovchinnikov and Bashayev left Russia and did not take part in the trial. In 2017, Mikhail Yurevich also went abroad; he now lives in London and is listed as wanted internationally.
Only Belousov and his family had to answer. According to the investigation’s version, Belousov, his mother-in-law Margarita Butakova (chief accountant of the First Bread-Baking Plant), Governor Yurevich and others, as part of an organised group, received 10 million roubles (20% of profits) from Bashayev and Ovchinnikov every month. The total bribe amount came to 3 billion 253 million roubles, which set a new record in Russia’s history.
On 6 December 2018, State Duma deputies consented to the lifting of Vadim Belousov’s immunity and the opening of a criminal case under Part 6, Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (receiving a bribe). Three months later, on 15 March 2019, the deputy was detained in Yekaterinburg. Formally, he had come to coordinate a trip to Belarus, but instead ended up in court. The investigation demanded arrest, but the Leninsky District Court of Yekaterinburg released Belousov on a written undertaking not to leave the area.
The trial in the Moscow City Court began in December 2020 and dragged on for 18 months. On 3 August 2022, the Moscow City Court handed down a sentence in absentia: 10 years in a strict-regime penal colony and a fine of 500 million roubles. Belousov did not appear at the hearing and was put on the wanted list; Butakova, meanwhile, received a 5-year suspended sentence with a fine of 500 million roubles. On 16 May 2023, the appeal confirmed the sentence.
On 27 December 2023, it became known that the Supreme Court of Russia had overturned the sentence and returned the case for a new trial.
In March 2025, lawyer Igor Trunov filed a cassation appeal with the Presidium of the Supreme Court against the refusal to restore Belousov’s deputy powers. The point is that, in the interval between the first court hearing and the handing down of the sentences, Belousov had managed to be re-elected as a State Duma deputy. However, on 1 November 2023, the State Duma stripped Belousov of his mandate, but on the formal grounds of missing sessions. The Ethics Commission established more than 30 days of absenteeism; after being put on the wanted list, the deputy did not appear in parliament. Later, on 27 December 2023, the Supreme Court overturned the sentence and sent the case for a new trial with a different panel of judges. All procedural coercive measures against Belousov were lifted, and he acquired the status of a person with no criminal record. However, the wanted listing continued, since the case is not closed but merely being reviewed.
Nationalisation of Yurevich’s and Belousov’s assets
It is possible that the main goal of the attack on the tandem of entrepreneurs-politicians was their property from the very beginning. At least, while both were busy defending themselves against criminal charges, preparations were underway for the nationalisation of one of Russia’s largest companies.
In January 2024, 19.7 billion roubles in dividends and a 100% stake in Mishkinsky Product LLC were recovered from the families of Belousov and Yurevich. In May 2024, shares in Makfa and 26 related companies, totalling over 46 billion roubles, were turned over to the state’s revenue.
According to the court ruling, Belousov, while a deputy, and Yurevich, during his governorship, continued to manage the business through relatives. In October 2025, 63 apartments belonging to the holding’s former owners were added to this.
The owners call what happened a raider seizure. The assets are now managed by structures linked to the state-owned Rosselkhozbank. The chairman of the board of Rosselkhozbank since 2018 has been Dmitry Patrushev, a former minister of agriculture who now holds the post of deputy prime minister and is the son of former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev.
As a result of the prosecutions, which have been dragging on since at least 2017, the “Yurevich–Belousov” tandem has been squeezed out of federal and regional politics, Vadim Belousov has lost his State Duma deputy mandate, and their property has passed under the de facto control of the family of the powerful former FSB director.