Christ the Savior Cathedral has more than 50 commercial companies registered on it's premises, but only 15 of them have signed rental agreements with the cathedral, the Society for Consumer Rights Protection said Monday.
According to the watchdog, the majority of the 57 firms in question are not even on the books of the State Registration Chamber, while rental agreements are signed without a tender.
The information was revealed by lawyers of the consumer watchdog's head Mikhail Anshakov in an official press release.
Anshakov was a defendant in a slander case brought against him by the Christ the Savior Cathedral Foundation and it's acting director Vasily Poddevalin. The director was accused by Anshakov in a newspaper interview in September 2012 of having turned the cathedral into a business center.
In May he was found guilty and was ordered by the court to pay 100,000 rubles ($3,000) in damages.
The foundation that runs the cathedral counts Patriarch Kirill and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin among it's members.
The cathedral records losses of hundreds of millions of rubles every year and receives subsidies from the city budget, including 372.5 million rubles in 2012, the watchdog said.
