Dmitry Kamenshchik: How the Domodedovo Owner Lost His Airport

Sanctions status — checked 18 October 2026

Not found on the OFAC SDN, UK OFSI or EU consolidated lists.

Absence from these three lists does not mean no restrictions apply elsewhere. Checked against the OFAC SDN list, the UK OFSI consolidated list and the EU consolidated list. Sanctions lists change without notice — verify against the primary source before relying on this.

No current figure: Forbes no longer publishes a live net worth estimate for Dmitry Kamenshchik; its last posted valuation dates from 1 April 2025 (Forbes profile).

Dmitry Kamenshchik built a business empire around Domodedovo, one of Moscow’s main airports, starting with cargo flights in the early 1990s. He was its main owner until a Russian court transferred the airport to the state in June 2025. In 2016 he was arrested over security failures before the 2011 terrorist attack at the airport. The case was dropped in September 2016, and he was never convicted. He is not on the sanctions lists of the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or Canada.

Born: 26 April 1968 in Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg (Kommersant)
Known for: former main owner of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport
Domodedovo today: transferred to the state by a court ruling of 17 June 2025; sold at auction to Perspektiva, a subsidiary of Sheremetyevo Airport, in January 2026
Sanctions as of October 2026: not listed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or Canada

Early life and education

Kamenshchik was born in Sverdlovsk, today’s Yekaterinburg, on 26 April 1968 (Kommersant, Meduza). According to Meduza, by the time the Soviet Union collapsed he had studied power engineering, served in the army and worked in the Urals, and was studying philosophy at Moscow State University. Kommersant reported that he graduated from the university’s sociology faculty in economic sociology.

From cargo flights to Domodedovo

In the early 1990s Kamenshchik and his partners began building cargo operations out of Domodedovo with leased Soviet-built Ilyushin aircraft (Meduza). According to Kommersant, he was the Moscow representative of the air transport joint venture East Line in 1992–1993 and its general director in 1994–1995. In the late 1990s East Line took a 75-year lease on airport property and acquired the airport’s terminal complex, and Kamenshchik became chairman of the airport’s board of directors (Kommersant, Meduza).

In the 2000s the state tried to take the airport back. In 2005 the Federal Property Management Agency sought to return it to state ownership, but the Supreme Arbitration Court upheld private ownership (Asia-Plus). Meduza reported that the state later raised the lease payments for the runways. Domodedovo kept growing: it handled more than 33 million passengers in 2014, compared with 22.3 million in 2010 (The Moscow Times).

For years the airport’s ownership was not public. The Moscow Times reported in 2016 that Kamenshchik had for more than a decade held it through a series of offshore companies to reduce his vulnerability to takeovers. Documents for a planned stock market listing in 2011 identified him as the 100 percent beneficial owner of DME Limited (The Moscow Times). In September 2013 the airport officially named him as its ultimate owner (Kommersant). He later acknowledged that the airport belonged to two people, himself and the businessman Valery Kogan. The size of their stakes was never made public (Meduza).

The 2011 attack and the 2016 case

On 24 January 2011, a suicide bombing in Domodedovo’s arrivals hall killed 37 people (Al Jazeera). In November 2013 a Moscow court sentenced four men for helping to carry out the attack, three of them to life in prison.

In 2015 investigators opened criminal cases against former managers of the airport over security failures before the attack (The Moscow Times). Kamenshchik was arrested on 18 February 2016 (The Moscow Times). He was charged under Article 238 of the Criminal Code with providing services that did not meet safety requirements and resulted in the death of two or more people. He was placed under house arrest and was denied bail of 50 million rubles (The Moscow Times). All four defendants said they were innocent (TASS).

The Prosecutor General’s Office opposed the case. In June 2016 Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Malinovsky called on investigators to close it (The Moscow Times). The defendants were released from house arrest in July 2016, and on 23 September 2016 the Investigative Committee terminated the prosecution of all of them (TASS, Kommersant). Kamenshchik was never convicted.

How he lost the airport

On 28 January 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office sued to take over Domodedovo. The lawsuit named 32 defendants, among them the airport’s operating companies, Kamenshchik and Kogan (Meduza). Prosecutors argued that the airport was under foreign control. They said Kamenshchik held Turkish and UAE citizenship and Kogan Israeli citizenship (Meduza). In court, prosecutors later cited Kamenshchik’s residence permits in Turkey and the UAE (The Moscow Times). The airport said that it “strictly complies with all legal requirements” (Meduza).

On 17 June 2025, the Moscow Region Arbitration Court ordered ownership of DME Holding, the group that runs the airport, to be transferred to the Russian state (The Moscow Times). The appeal and cassation courts upheld the ruling (RAPSI). On 10 March 2026, the economic disputes chamber of Russia’s Supreme Court rejected Kamenshchik’s appeal (The Moscow Times).

In the meantime the state had sold the airport. After a first auction failed, the price was halved, and on 29 January 2026 Perspektiva, a subsidiary of Sheremetyevo Airport, won the auction for 66.1 billion rubles (The Moscow Times). According to the company register, Perspektiva has owned 22 companies of the Domodedovo group, including DME Holding, since 11 February 2026 (RIA Novosti, Interfax).

In October 2025 a court froze money and property of Kamenshchik and Kogan worth more than 6.5 billion rubles as an interim measure in a damages claim brought by the airport’s companies (Interfax, RAPSI). No ruling on that claim had been published by October 2026.

Sanctions

Kamenshchik does not appear on the US Treasury’s SDN list, the UK sanctions list, the EU’s consolidated sanctions list or Canada’s consolidated autonomous sanctions list (checked on 4 October 2026).

About this profile

This profile was rewritten in October 2026. An earlier version from 2022 described Kamenshchik as the current owner of Domodedovo and contained statements about his business, his political ties, the 2016 case and his private life for which we found no source or which were wrong. They have been removed. The net worth figure in the box at the top of this page comes from Forbes and dates from before the airport was nationalized.