Russia’s billionaire mayonnaise king is under arrest, reportedly over a drone project Vladimir Putin toured in 2025

Valery Kustov, chairman of the board and principal shareholder of the Efko group of companies, a Russian vegetable oils and fats producer, was detained in Moscow on suspicion of large-scale fraud, sources told the business news outlet RBC.Efko’s general director, Yevgeny Lyashenko, was detained along with Kustov, and investigators are now seeking court orders to arrest both men.Two other Efko executives had already been named in the case: Yekaterina Kustova, deputy director for development, and Vladislav Romantsev, director of strategic development at the group’s management company. A court ordered their arrest a day earlier.Sources told RBC that the security officials’ allegations stem from a drone-development project called Transport of the Future. As part of the same investigation, the project’s general director, Yuri Kozarenko, a former adviser to the governor of the Samara region, had previously been arrested.Separately, Alla Polovchenya, deputy head of the unmanned systems and robotics department at Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry, was placed in a pretrial detention center on embezzlement charges connected to Transport of the Future.Kustov ranks 144th on Forbes Russia’s 2026 billionaires list, with the magazine estimating his fortune at $1.1 billion.Efko, one of Russia’s largest food producers, makes oils, mayonnaise, and other products under the brands Sloboda, Altero, DeOlio, and Fresh. In 2025, the company acquired Oleyna, a vegetable oil producer.The Transport of the Future project was launched in 2021 with Efko’s involvement and later became an independent company. In 2023, it opened the first phase of a plant producing unmanned aerial systems in the Tolyatti special economic zone; Vladimir Putin visited the plant in 2025.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.