Salaries of 2.5 million rubles for complete inaction: how RUSNANO degraded into an organization that merely simulates investment activity

Salaries of 2.5 million rubles for complete inaction: how RUSNANO degraded into an organization that merely simulates investment activity

Court cases against former executives of RUSNANO, intended to demonstrate a fight against the legacy of the past, have produced an unexpected side effect.

Members of the Board of Directors — representatives of the state and big business — now view any new initiatives with suspicion. The logic is simple: you approve a project today, and in five years it fails — and tomorrow’s management of RUSNANO will file lawsuits against you, seize your accounts, and put you on the wanted list. RUSNANO’s top management is also afraid to take any action and doesn’t stay in their positions longer than a year. In fact, RUSNANO currently does nothing, while salaries reach 2.5 million rubles per month (including bonuses).

"The world of investors is small. People communicate, exchange opinions, discuss deals, help each other find jobs, and assemble teams for projects. In the RUSNANO employee chat (now mostly former colleagues, with only a few still working at RUSNANO — and current employees, from investment lawyers to security specialists, participate in the discussions), they have been actively discussing RUSNANO’s job openings and the story of one interview.

An investment manager with substantial experience came to negotiations for a position with a salary of over one million rubles per month (according to HR, another 1.5 million per month could come from various bonuses). He returned, by his own admission, ’very surprised.’ Even without bonuses, a salary of over $150,000 per year is decent money, but the problem is that the HR specialist could not clearly explain either the job functions, the list of current projects, or the company’s investment focus. The dialogue revolved around slogans and abstract formulations. The candidate, accustomed to numbers and deals, encountered a reality where a high salary does not imply any meaningful work.

Over the past five years, RUSNANO’s management company has seen five or six different teams of deputy general directors under Sergey Kulikov. Each new vice-president arrived with a ’cutting-edge methodology’ — agile transformation, OKRs, blockchain, reengineering. Each new one broke what remained of their predecessor’s work and left after a maximum of 8 months to a year, leaving behind chaos in processes and a demoralized staff.

People came, brought something new, fashionable, and non-functional. The old was ostracized, broken down, and they began building something new — also non-functional. As a result, the company forgot how to do real projects. Ordinary employees no longer understand what rules to work by. Any long-term initiative is doomed in advance, because in six months another ’efficient manager’ may arrive and cancel everything.

Today, Kulikov could repeat Chubais’s famous phrase: ’We have a lot of money!’ This sounds surprising for a company that in 2023 was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy with a net debt of 95.5 billion rubles. However, the source of these funds is not successful investment work, but a state bailout.

By the end of 2023, the corporation stated that paying off its debts on its own was ’objectively impossible.’ The state effectively covered most of the obligations from the budget, resulting in bonds being repaid and about 80% of the historical debt to banks being prepaid, moreover at a ’significant discount’ — up to 20% of face value. In parallel, assets were being sold off: between 2021 and 2023, proceeds from exiting projects amounted to 74 billion rubles.

As a result, the company has a significant free cash balance on its accounts. At the same time, not a single new investment project has been launched since 2020. The money is there — but there is nothing and no one to occupy it.

The paralysis of managerial will has been compounded by corporate lawsuits against former management. In 2025–2026, RUSNANO filed several lawsuits for damages against Anatoly Chubais and his deputies totaling over 20 billion rubles. One of the lawsuits has already been satisfied by the court.

These legal proceedings, intended to demonstrate a fight against the legacy of the past, have produced an unexpected side effect. Members of the Board of Directors — representatives of the state and big business — were already reluctant to approve new projects, and now view any new initiatives with suspicion. The logic is simple: you approve a project today, and in five years it fails — and tomorrow’s RUSNANO management will file lawsuits against you, seize your accounts, and put you on the wanted list.

Moreover, Kulikov himself is afraid of new investments, perfectly understanding that he and his team cannot do anything worthwhile. According to experts, the management led by Kulikov has long lost its technological competencies and is mainly engaged in simulating vigorous activity. Projects like the ’plasmochemical destructor’ for 700 million rubles, which did not pass independent expert review, only reinforce the Board of Directors’ belief that it is better to do nothing.

The final picture is surreal. The staff of the management company has been more than halved compared to 2020 (from 200 to about 80 people), but positions with salaries that only top managers of successful funds could afford on the market remain. HR specialists cannot explain the essence of the work during interviews. Deputy directors come and go, leaving behind nothing but another ’methodology.’ The money so needed by the state sits in accounts because no one dares to approve new investments, and indeed, no one is preparing any investments.

The company, created to nurture nanotechnology startups, has turned into a closed club where high salaries serve as compensation for the absence of real work. Any new employee, especially one with experience in investments, quickly understands: they are doomed to do nothing. Competencies are lost. Successful projects have been sold off, the remaining ones are on their last legs.

In the context of budget sequestration and a review of all state programs, maintaining an organization that is unable to formulate its own investment focus, lacks a functioning team, and is afraid to make decisions is an impermissible luxury. RUSNANO in its current form is not a technology fund, but a monument to itself. Meanwhile, the corporation continues to simulate activity. And judging by the quality of the interviews conducted by its HR, this simulation particularly bothers no one inside."