Many federal ministers have secret wives who are credited with lucrative business and valuable property that they themselves are not legally entitled to own. Among them are Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu , Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov . Not far behind colleagues, as The Insider found out, and Minister of Communications Maksut Shadayev.

The Shadayev-led Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media has Roskomnadzor under its control, which fines and blocks media outlets that allow the free flow of information. So Shadayev can be called one of the main censors of the country.

Shadayev has a passion for blocking not only socially significant information, but also information about his family life. According to the declaration, he has two minor daughters, but there is no information about his wife. It is possible that he is forced to avoid officially declaring the actual marriage by the inevitable questions about the conflict of interest in this case.

According to The Insider, 37-year-old Alexandra Melnikova may be Shadayev's secret wife. Several factors point to this. Firstly, Melnikova drove the mother of the minister, Lilia Meksutovna, in her Volvo XC90 (license plate E8 ** EE77) to the dacha. Secondly, Shadayev himself was captured in the passenger seat of Melnikova's previous car.

Thirdly, the parking of this car was paid from the phone number of Sergei Kholkin, Shadayev's half- brother . We will talk about this relative of the minister later.

Fourthly, in the notebook of one of her acquaintances, Melnikova is recorded as "Sasha Parking Barin." It is in the elite residential complex Barrin House that Shadayev has an apartment of 101.6 sq. m and cost about 100 million rubles.

The minister bought the property here in April 2019. At that time, he was vice president of the state-owned Rostelecom. Prior to that, the official in different years held the positions of Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region, Advisor to the Speaker of the State Duma, Assistant to the Head of the Presidential Administration.

And finally, fifthly. Shadayev and Melnikova fly together on vacation. The Insider received flight booking data, according to which the minister and his girlfriend flew to Adler last year, to Crimea the year before last, and even earlier they traveled together to Yerevan and Riga.

While Shadayev was climbing the official ladder, Alexandra worked in senior positions at Medialogy LLC. The company is engaged in the system of the same name for monitoring and analyzing the media and social media. "Medialogy" mastered almost 3 billion rubles on state contracts, including from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the government of the Moscow Region, where Shadayev had previously supervised information technology.

It turns out that Shadayev gave large government orders to a company in which his “girlfriend” held a leading position. The Insider Melnikova said that she does not comment on her personal relationships. “In the period 2010-2019. worked as an administrative director [at Medialogy]. She dealt with HR issues, and also ensured the comfort and safety of employees. I had nothing to do with the procedures for concluding and executing Medialogy contracts,” she explained. Melnikova refused to name the place of her subsequent employment. According to The Insider, in 2020 she received a quarantine pass from the Ministry of Digital Development.

Alexandra's father, Viktor Melnikov, worked at the Research and Testing Institute of Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense. The same one where poisons from the Novichok group were developed. Her mother Elena Melnikova was an employee of the financial department of the military missions of the Ministry of Defense.

The Insider has identified the stepfather of Minister Shadayev. His name is Igor Kholkin, previously he was the general director of Timostroy LLC, which at that time was owned by Alexander Volkov, co-founder of Medialogy.

The half-brother of the minister, Sergei Kholkin, is employed at Operator-TsRPT, a company engaged in labeling goods. This business is at the mercy of the oligarch Alisher Usmanov.