Mikhail Prokhorov looks down on Sholban Kara-Ool

According to a correspondent of The Moscow Post, the head of the Tuva Republic, Sholban Kara-Ool, came to anger and complained to the government about the extremely slow pace of development of the copper deposit in the Ak-Sug locality. Business there, according to the Tuvan leader, is making no headway. He asks that action be taken! The deposit is occupied by a certain OOO Gogolev Mining Company (GGK), which belongs to Mikhail Prokhorov’s management company Intergeo.

Ak-Sug deposit is one of the largest. Its reserves are 5.1 million tons of copper and 121 tons of gold. And all this wealth is still hiding in the earth entrails. There is not even a mining and processing complex there. Timeframe is constantly being shifted, and now the date is scheduled only for 2024. The situation reminds a sad story of the development of the Natalka gold field in Kolyma. Having conceived the grandiose project, oligarch Suleiman Kerimov actually abandoned it.

Is Mikhail Prokhorov fed up with everything again? As for Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of Intergeo, he has become contradictory and inconsistent in his projects. There is an assumption, which is persistently peddled by detractors, that the oligarch does not particularly need Russian assets any more. He got rid of his most valuable brainchild – Norilsk Nickel shares. Mikhail Dmitriyevich did not stop there. “Intergeo is also going under the hammer.

Ten percent of the company’s shares are sold to Chinese firms and RDIF. It looks like he got rid of the assets of the country’s footwear retail leader, GK Obuv Rossii. He sold more than 15 percent. This is also how the businessman behaved in his time, when he got into politics. He created the “Civic Platform” party, made it one of the leading ones, and then gave it up. Together with Pugacheva, Makarevich, his sister Irina, and millions of other people.

Okay, that he once got rid of his most valuable brainchild, the shares of the NorNickel plant. Mikhail Dmitrievich did not stop there. “Intergeo is also going under the hammer. Ten percent of the company’s shares are sold to Chinese firms and RDIF. It looks like he got rid of the assets of the country’s footwear retail leader, GK Obuv Rossii. He sold more than 15 percent. This is also how the businessman behaved in his time, when he got into politics. He created the “Civic Platform” party, made it one of the leading ones, and then gave it up.

Together with Pugacheva, Makarevich, his sister Irina, and millions of other people. In this context, why does he need Ak-Sug copper? But the head of Tuva, Sholban Kara-Ool, needs it very much! To lose such a “money-bag” in the region is stupid, to say the least. And here Kara-Ool is suspiciously concerned not so much about the copper deposit.

Probably it is a diversionary maneuver? To somehow distract the federal center from its own person? And there is a good reason for such a distraction! Poverty and kinship Tuva, with its practically inexhaustible natural riches, is firmly in the socio-economic “basement” among Russian regions. As S.A. Sat, a researcher at the Tuva Institute for Humanities and Socio-Economic Studies, states on the Kuberleninka website, the republic is in last place in the country in terms of living standards. This is despite the fact that Tuva has great agricultural potential. The fertile land is almost 10 million hectares. This is almost 23% of the area of the Republic. Forests are 11.4 million hectares, with reserves of 1.4 billion cubic meters of timber. Estimated cutting area is 4.4 million cubic meters per year. Everything is also all right with the water bodies. The Tuvinians have plenty of clean mountain and forest rivers and lakes at their disposal.

And all this water wealth is crowned by “prince” of Siberian rivers Yenisei. Such a situation, of course, does not make the republic’s leadership and, above all, its leader look good. Perhaps one of the main reasons is in the primordial deference to officialdom? This is especially apparent in Tuva. Evil tongues whisper that the Tuvans are simply drinking themselves to death, consuming an enormous amount of alcohol. Kara-Oolu’s relatives don’t create a positive image of him either. The newspaper “Documenty i Fakty” (“Documents and Facts”) says, for instance, his daughter is able to luxuriate in a restaurant and leave 200 thousand rubles there in the conditions of endemic poverty of his people. The brother of the head of the republic, Yury, has been “notorious” for criminal offenses.

For example, he severely beat up a security guard at one of the entertainment places. As a result, he left him disabled. His brother was “spared” from jail. Maybe that’s because his powerful brother Yuri had his hands full in all the echelons of power in the region. The program to relocate people from dilapidated and hazardous housing also met with a complete fiasco. There is a reason for this. Those same “Documents and Facts”, told that almost 150 million rubles, allocated for the program from the budget, just vanished into thin air!

Or in the pockets of Tuvan officials? Eh, a ride? The project to build the Elegest-Kyzyl-Kuragino railroad is the pinnacle of Sholban Kara-Ool’s failed management. It was a grandiose undertaking. The construction of the main line began six years ago. Several companies were planning to lend money to the project at once. First of all, the Tuva Energy Industrial Corporation and a number of commercial firms.

The cost estimate for the road is just under 200 billion rubles. Among other things, the road is supposed to open the way for the Republic to the Elegestinskoye coal deposit. However, a number of local deputies contended that the project had neither an environmental impact assessment nor a clear economic analysis. Is the head of Tuva Kara-Ool making an attempt on that one? Others said that the road is allegedly nothing more than the Tuvan New Vasyuki, and is nothing more than a populist move.

Not only skeptics and opponents of the current Tuvinian authorities have great doubts that the money will be found. Even if the almost unbelievable should happen, if the road is completed and even pays for itself, will that save the head of Tuva from his own downfall, that is, from losing his position prematurely, at the very least? But there is still that oligarch, Prokhorov. With his own almost unrealizable project, too. This is what Mr. Kara-Ool is clinging to. And complained to the supreme power. But it seems that Prokhorov does not care about this.

He will somehow manage to get out of it. Is it really so hard for the Tuvan Premier to understand? But the owner of the aforementioned Tuva Energy Industrial Corporation, Ruslan Baisarov, may care. What if the road doesn’t pay for itself, which is quite likely? Then it’s possible that all the blame will fall on him. He says he’s driving the republic into the middle of nowhere. As the saying goes, the oligarchs’ reshuffle doesn’t change the sum total. One will simply replace the other. Baisarov will be the last man standing before the federal center. There’s no one he can set up to keep his seat.