Ilya Eliseev, a former university classmate of former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, is more than just a “wallet” holding the inexplicably wealthy civil servant’s luxury assets — he is also the owner of a firm that fulfills contracts for a sanctioned Russian company working in the field of missile production.
At the same time, Eliseev remains a shareholder in a winery in Italy, protecting the property from sanctions with the help of his secret wife, who enriches herself through state contracts while defending the Russian state in high-profile international cases.
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In the mid-1980s, Ilya Eliseev and Dmitry Medvedev studied together at the law faculty of Leningrad State University. “Of course we know each other very well; we meet when possible, and we congratulate each other on our birthdays,” Eliseev once described the nature of his relationship with the chairman of the United Russia party. In fact, Eliseev, now deputy chairman of Gazprombank, owes the rapid rise of his career to none other than his former classmate. He joined the state bank in 2005, when Medvedev was serving as chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors.
Today, Eliseev continues to manage Medvedev’s business assets in Russia and abroad — with help from his secret wife.
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According to data obtained by The Insider, a daughter named Taisiya was born to Ilya Eliseev in 2020. The girl’s mother is listed in civil registry documents as Natalia Malyamina, the managing partner of the law firm Ivanyan and Partners.
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Malyamina specializes mainly in lawmaking and government relations. The firm represented Russia’s interests in a case brought by Ukraine at the European Court of Human Rights over the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s violations of the Human Rights Convention on the peninsula.
In 2016, when Medvedev was still serving as prime minister, Malyamina’s law firm received state contracts worth more than 500 million rubles ($7.5 million at the time) for “providing legal services to the Russian Federation.” Lawyers from the firm have represented Russia’s interests in litigation involving the Kremlin’s takeover of oil giant Yukos and of Germany’s refusal to engage in military-technical cooperation with the Russian company Oboronservis. It was lawyers from Ivanyan and Partners who secured the lifting of European sanctions against Maya Tokareva, daughter of the head of Transneft.
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Another notable client of Malyamina’s is none other than Gazprombank. Eliseev’s own income at the state-connected financial institution is around 432 million rubles ($5.6 million) a year.
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Ilya Eliseev still has not been placed under EU sanctions, a fact that allows him to directly own a 9% stake in the Italian winery Fattoria della Aiola.
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As Alexei Navalny established back in 2017, the winery — nominally registered to Eliseev — in fact belongs to Dmitry Medvedev.
Fattoria della Aiola has continued making shipments to Russia even during the war. In 2025, for example, wine was supplied to the country through the Lithuanian logistics company Vinges Transsphere Logistika.
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