The head of Chechnya and his associates are taking modern metallurgical equipment out of the city and selling it.
Russia is turning metallurgy into Street Journal.
The publication notes that the ruined port city is now a trophy of war, enriching Putin's allies.
Moscow's troops blew up one of the city's two giant metallurgical plants, Azovstal, while simultaneously defeating Ukraine's fiercest resistance.
According to factory managers and documents, Kadyrov and his associates have been exporting and selling advanced metallurgy equipment, shipping scrap metal to Russia for use by its sanctioned automakers and transporting industrial gases for Moscow's space program.
Numerous videos posted online show Chechen fighters in Mariupol, including Kadyrov's own teenage sons, laying claim to large parts of the city, Russian analysts say.
Kadyrov's biggest prize, the paper says, was the conquest of Mariupol, a prosperous port city of 431,000 before Russia invaded and a major industrial export hub on the Black Sea.
Before the war, taxes from the Ilyich plant and Azovstal financed more than a third of Mariupol's annual budget.
The Ilyich plant looked like an apocalyptic cathedral of twisted steel after the fighting, but it remained functional.
Russian authorities say Azovstal is too damaged to rebuild and will be converted into an industrial zone. But Kadyrov has big ambitions for the Ilyich plant.
Shortly after the Russians captured Mariupol, a newly created local company, Ilyich Iron and Steel Works LLC, began exporting steel taken from the defunct plant, according to Russian officials and plant executives quoted by Russian-controlled state media. The company was registered in August 2022 by two men, one of whom is identified in Russian corporate documents as Valid Vakhitovich Korchagin.
Korchagin is the 25-year-old son of Vakhit Geremeyev, an officer close to Kadyrov, according to Metinvest, Ilyich’s legal Ukrainian owner.
BBC News Russian previously reported that Korchagin is Geremeyev’s son.
Korchagin’s equal partner in the new company was Yuri Murai, a Russian businessman with ties to the military. According to an official presentation by another of Murai's companies, the cargo ship Alliance Service, it was transporting supplies for the Defense Ministry to occupied Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Kadyrov, Geremeyev, Korchagin, Murai and the Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.