How businessperson Roman Yavorsky took control of the iGooods service, claiming it as a rescue while its originator Kunis was detained

The grocery delivery service iGooods came under the control of entrepreneur Roman Yavorsky while its founder, Grigory Kunis, was under arrest in a case related to donations to the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).

Grigory Kunis, who was fined 350,000 rubles on charges related to FBK donations, left Russia in mid-December and moved to Lithuania. There, he gave an interview to the outlet Slovo Zashchite in which he said he lost his business because of the criminal case. According to Kunis, the new owner was a business partner he had brought into the company shortly before his arrest.

“This person transferred the entire business to his own companies under the pretext that all our accounts were about to be frozen and that we would otherwise lose the business altogether,” Kunis said. He added that they initially agreed on a 50% stake, but the partner “decided he wanted 100% and took everything.”

Kunis’s brother Dmitry, who was a co-founder of the service, tried to speak with the partner who took over the business but received the response: “The business is ****** (finished), Grigory deceived us, his situation ruined everything, so we’re not going to present any plan — get lost.” By “situation,” Kunis explained, they meant his time in pretrial detention.

In the interview, Kunis did not name the entrepreneur, but later told Fontanka that it was businessman Roman Yavorsky. The outlet noted that Yavorsky is one of the shareholders of the Detsky group of companies, which once operated around 200 stores under the brands Deti and Zdorovy Malysh and was one of the leaders of the Russian children’s goods market.

Grigory Kunis is a St. Petersburg entrepreneur. From 2003 to 2014, he was the publisher of the newspaper Moy Rayon, and in 2015 he founded the grocery delivery service iGooods. He is also one of the organizers of the first “Immortal Regiment” march in St. Petersburg.

In July 2025, Kunis was detained on suspicion of financing an “extremist” organization due to donations to FBK and was placed in pretrial detention. On December 8, a court in St. Petersburg fined him 350,000 rubles, although prosecutors had sought a six-year prison sentence. The prosecution later appealed the verdict as “excessively lenient,” after which Kunis left Russia.

Author: Maria Sharapova