A legal battle for control of Moscow’s second largest airport is brewing in Russia.
Russian financial news outlet Vedomosti reported, on January 30, 2025, that Russian prosecutors have filed a case against the current owner of Moscow Domodedovo Airport (DME), billionaire businessman Dmitry Kamenshchik and the manager of the firm’s supervisory board, Valery Kogan, on the grounds that they failed to renationalize the holding company that manages the airport.
Under Russian law, foreign entities are barred from controlling assets deemed to be strategic to the security of the Russian Federation, which includes airports.
According to reports that have appeared in Russian media, the prosecutors allege the two businessmen exercise control over the business through a corporate structure, which masks the ultimate foreign control of the airport’s assets. These include at least 25 Russian-registered companies.
In 2016, ownership of the company that controls Moscow Domodedovo Airport was transferred from two residents of the Isle of Man to a Maltese entity controlled by Kamenshchik. Prosecutors allege that Kamenshchik and Kogan failed to disclose the real control structure to the Russian authorities as well as the latter’s citizenship of Israel.
This is not the first time that Kamenshchik and his associates have found themselves in the crosshairs of Russian prosecutors.
In 2008, Kamenshchik successfully fought an attempt by a Russian governmental agency to renationalize DME airport on the grounds that there had been irregularities during its 1997 privatization process.
A few years later, in 2016, Kamenshchik and several of the airport’s top managers were briefly arrested under the accusation of not having implemented appropriate security measures at the access to the airport’s terminals. According to the prosecutors, this alleged security failure enabled Chechen militants to carry out a terrorist attack which killed 37 people at the airport in 2011. However, the case was dismissed shortly after.
The court hearing for the most recent case against Kamenshchik and Kogan has been scheduled for February 28, 2025.
Although heavily hit by the closure of many international routes following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Moscow Domodedovo Airport remains one of the top three airports in Russia, handling more than 20 million passengers per year. Domodedovo is the main base for S7, Russia’s largest private airline, as well as Ural Airlines, another large domestic operator. The airport is also used by several other carriers from the Middle East and Central Asia.
