A billionaire built Russia’s mayonnaise empire, then bankrolled its battlefield drones. Now Valery Kustov is under arrest on major fraud charges.

Valery Kustov, the billionaire chairman of Russia's EFKO—a food company that makes mayonnaise, cooking oils, and the Sloboda brand—has been arrested on suspicion of large-scale fraud, per Meduza. Kustov, worth an estimated one point one billion dollars, also bankrolled Transport of the Future, a drone-development project that spun off from EFKO in twenty twenty-three. The project's S-eighty agricultural drone has seen extensive combat use at the Ukrainian front, but Russian military officials have criticized its reliability. The investigation has also ensnared other EFKO executives and government officials, including the drone project's former director, whose testimony helped trigger the arrests.

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