The company placed in charge of Japan Tobacco International’s Russian assets is owned by Sergei Dremov (pictured), a former officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The company, Promyshlennye Aktivy (Industrial Assets), was identified in comments by its chief executive, Anton Pivovarov, to Russian business news outlet RBC. Agentstvo was the first to draw attention to the company.
What he said. «Speaking on behalf of the temporary administrator, I would like to explain our approach and priorities. Our task is to ensure the stable operation of these businesses in strict accordance with the presidential decrees and applicable legislation», Pivovarov told RBC.
The details. Promyshlennye Aktivy was registered in Moscow on September 16, 2026, with share capital of just 100,000 roubles. Its sole shareholder is Sergei Dremov, a former commander of military unit No. 68936 in Ufa.
- ️Dremov was born in Kursk and studied at the city’s agricultural academy, specialising in the servicing and maintenance of transport and industrial machinery, according to his official biography. He served in Russia’s state security agencies from 2000 to 2016. According to leaked records examined by Agentstvo, Dremov received income from the Kursk regional administration in 2008 and from the regional FSB directorate in 2010−2011 and 2014. In 2016, he served as deputy director for security at the port of Yevpatoria in Russian-annexed Crimea. From 2019 to 2024, he was a member of Crimea’s State Council, representing the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR).
- ️According to the SPARK corporate database, Dremov was also a co-owner of Ozero-M, a Crimean hotel company dissolved in 2021, and the owner of SMPS, a Crimean architectural design company that was also wound up that year. He remains a co-owner of the Lider boxing club in Crimea and Akatsiya, a local property management company.
- ️Leaked contact databases reviewed by Agentstvo show that other users had saved his telephone number under names including «Sergei FSB», «Sergei, Head of FSB Yevpatoria», «Rostec, apparently», «Sergei LDPR Yuryevich» and «Sergei from Umar».
- ️Agentstvo was unable to reach either Dremov or the company’s chief executive, Anton Pivovarov, for comment on Thursday.
Context.On Thursday, November 5, Vladimir Putin signed a decree placing the Russian operations of Japan Tobacco International (JTI), one of the world’s largest tobacco companies, under temporary state-appointed management.
- ️Control was assigned to a company called Promyshlennye Aktivy. According to SPARK, several Russian companies operate under that name, and the decree did not specify which one had been appointed.
- ️Under the November 5 decree, Putin placed 100% of the ownership interests in four Russian JTI businesses under the temporary management of Promyshlennye Aktivy. They include the Petro cigarette factory in St Petersburg and Donskoy Tabak in Rostov-on-Don, as well as two tobacco-processing companies, Kres Neva in the Leningrad region and JTI Yelets in the Lipetsk region.
- ️ A second decree, signed the following day, extended the arrangement to three more companies: 100% of the shares in Pereslavl-Tabak and 100% of the ownership interests in JTI Russia and JTI Innovative Products. These businesses serve as importing, trading, management and holding entities within JTI’s Russian operations.
- ️Russian business newspapers Kommersant and RBC had previously reported, citing unnamed sources, that the appointed manager was a different company with the same name, whose beneficial owner was Taimuraz Bolloev. The founder of Baltika, one of Russia’s largest brewers, Bolloev has known Putin since the 1990s. He returned to the helm of Baltika after the Russian authorities seized control of the business from Denmark’s Carlsberg in 2023.[Read more].
More. JTI distributed its cigarettes in Russia through Megapolis, a tobacco wholesaler controlled by businessmen Igor Kesaev and Sergei Katsiev. According to an investigation by the independent Russian outlet Proekt, Megapolis sold 500 billion roubles’ worth of products made by JTI’s Russian factories in 2023. Kesaev has longstanding ties to the FSB: he established a foundation that provided financial assistance to the families of security service personnel, while companies linked to him bought land from roughly 20 FSB generals. Read Proekt’s investigation
This article was translated from Russian into English using AI
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