Ex-Deputy Prytykin Charged in 700M Ruble Tax Fraud
The entrepreneur currently under investigation by the Voronezh Investigative Committee (SKR) for tax evasion of 700 million rubles (about $7.8 million at current rates) is none other than Andrey Prytykin, founder of the Russian Appetite group of companies and former deputy of the regional Duma. Voronezh1.ru confirmed this with its own source in the region’s law enforcement structures. The current criminal case is already the second for Prytykin. The first — an attempted bribery during the 2020 election campaign — is now being heard by the Kominternovsky District Court.
The news that the entrepreneur — a participant and beneficial owner of a group of companies (GC) in the public catering sector — is suspected of tax evasion on an especially large scale became known on 3 February. According to the investigation, he created a «business splitting» scheme through the formal registration of employees of his enterprise and their relatives as individual entrepreneurs (IP). According to the SKR, the scheme operated from 2019 to 2021. Investigators, together with the police and the FSB, conducted searches at the GC’s offices and seized the accounts of companies linked to the businessman. He denied his guilt during interrogation.
According to the counterparty verification service Rusprofile.ru, Andrey Prytykin directly owned LLC Russian Appetite from 2014 to 2023, and now owns it through the consumer exploitation cooperative Uprimkhoz, registered in November 2023. The company is listed as the founder of Rusap, and Prytykin is its director, while there is no information about the founders of the cooperative itself. The director of Russian Appetite is Tatyana Nikolayevna Prytykina. She also heads LLC Moskovsky Prospekt, whose founders are Uprimkhoz and Russian Appetite. As they write on social media, it is all complicated. Notably, no financial reporting for 2024 was submitted to the Federal Tax Service (FNS) from Uprimkhoz. The other two firms are profitable and were not in tax arrears as of November 2025.
Meanwhile, on the official website of Rusap, the legal name is listed as LLC Center for the Provision of Services, and the Prytykin surname does not appear among the top managers. Andrey Alexandrovich, besides being director of Uprimkhoz, is a current individual entrepreneur, officially engaged in «provision of auxiliary services for business».
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If Andrey Prytykin’s guilt in the tax fraud is confirmed in court, he will face up to three years in prison. And he already faces up to nine years in the case of attempted bribery during the high-profile 2020 election campaign. According to investigators, Prytykin was among nine deputies who paid former Vice-Mayor of Voronezh Yuri Bavikin and his assistant Svetlana Vaskova for «assistance» but never received it. Bavikin was sentenced to 10 years for fraud, Vaskova to five. All deputies except Prytykin confessed to the financial offerings, so they were shown leniency and made victims instead of bribe-givers. This norm is directly prescribed in Article 291 of the Russian Criminal Code on bribery. The unyielding Andrey Alexandrovich ended up as the accused; in August 2025 he was sent to a pre-trial detention center (SIZO). On 30 December, a preliminary hearing on his attempted bribery case was held at the Kominternovsky Court. At the hearings on 30 January, he unexpectedly confessed; the next hearing is scheduled for 10 February.
It is possible that the new criminal case prompted Prytykin’s repentance. Perhaps it will count as a mitigating factor — the final sentence may be shorter. And by the way, the maximum punishment for bribery on a large scale is 12 years in prison. But since the ex-deputy is charged with an attempt, our humane legislation automatically cuts it by a quarter.
