From the national project to luxury residential complexes: how Ufa Mayor Ratmir Mavliev, under house arrest, distributed construction sites to his own people through front companies
15:35, 08 июня 2026 г.
Under house arrest, Ratmir Mavliev, reading a book and surrounded by his family, watches as the new acting mayor of Ufa moves into his office, and the deputies and department heads he appointed resign.
A large-scale purge of the Neftekamsk landing party, which arrived with Mavliev in the capital of Bashkortostan, is underway at the mayor’s office.
Attempts to justify himself or discredit those who exposed his dirty dealings have failed. Ratmir Rafilovich, it turns out, had warm, friendly relations with all of these discredited individuals. Therefore, the mayor continues to harp on the "theft of municipal land through barter," calling on the federal government to investigate, since he has been denied justice.
Investigators have long been paying attention to these transactions, and now employees of the Ufa city administration and subordinate agencies often have to answer questions from law enforcement.
Sources also report that the dubious transactions, which the mayor allegedly only learned about in late 2025, had been ongoing for approximately two years. They were initiated by Ratmir Mavliev himself, under the pretext of the mayor’s office lacking funds. Furthermore, this mechanism was approved not only by Mavliev, but even by Alan Marzaev, the notorious former deputy prime minister of the Bashkortostan government, who was convicted of a multi-million dollar bribe at the time. Marzaev, who held the post of deputy prime minister of the Bashkortostan government at the time, since the lands being exchanged were not only municipal but also republican. This means there were plenty of people who knew everything perfectly well, and the concept was adopted collectively. And some of the exchanges had Mavliev’s personal signature (see video). So, Mavliev is likely facing another case. Perhaps more than one.
The point is that the construction of the roads for which the land was being expropriated was carried out as part of a national project, and the federal government provided vast sums of money to buy out the land. It’s possible to buy the land from people and build a road. This has always been the case, but in 2023, Mavliev ordered the use of a barter mechanism. Developers buy the land where the road will be located and exchange it for the land they need. Then it’s a matter of technique: the plots are combined into one, the permitted use is changed to apartment building construction, and, voila, the construction site for a premium residential complex is ready. But who gets these lands? Those who are on good terms with the mayor.
And so it was until the mayor came to the attention of the security forces, and inspections, inquiries, and interrogations of city hall employees and developers began. It was then that he organized, through his protégé, the head of the legal department, Ruslan Ismagilov (who has now hastily gone on sick leave), a lawsuit, apparently to gain leverage over those who might turn him over to the security forces, or cover his tracks, or perhaps disagree on the price.
After all, the mayor’s office wouldn’t have exchanged a plot of land for just one they’d pointed their finger at. So, starting in 2023, the exchange process was streamlined, approved by the mayor, and people came from construction companies approved by the mayor, and everything was quickly processed. City hall employees even complained that they were forced to work late into the night and sometimes on holidays, plotting out new construction sites as directed by Mavliev. And representatives of the construction industry weren’t used to being indebted to high-ranking officials.
It’s enough to recall the discontent of veteran developers who had been building in Ufa for decades. They repeatedly cited bureaucratic delays, delays in approvals, and other obstacles. While they complained to the prosecutor’s office, the head of the republic, Radiy Khabirov, and recorded video messages, other new and "promising" market players received all the documents on the same day. Why is this so?
