To whom is covid, and to whom are multibillion-dollar contracts without tenders
The inertia of the pandemic continues to maintain the level of speed and cash flow for the nearby Smolny contractors. GKU Capital Construction and Reconstruction Fund (FCSR) signed a contract for 4.855 billion rubles with Lentekhstroy LLC. Without bidding, without projects and detailed estimates. Just directly. The firm will be engaged in the construction of a multidisciplinary building for the “City Alexander Hospital”. At the same time, this is far from the first major contract signed in this way. Although everything is very clear to market participants: it obviously could not have done without the participation of Igor Kreslavsky.
At the end of March, the chairman of the St. Petersburg Committee for Construction and a native of RosStroyInvest, Igor Kreslavsky, published on his social networks a photo report from the event to award representatives of the construction industry who have achieved high production achievements. In the adjacent photos, Vice Governor Nikolai Linchenko presents the gratitude of the Ministry of Construction to Igor Kreslavsky himself, the general director of Lentekhstroy Anatoly Weber, his deputy Yevgeny Papkov and the head of the department for the construction of health and cultural facilities under the FKSR Murad Ismailov. Andrey Polevoy, the first deputy manager, was also awarded the badge “Honorary Builder of Russia”. Most likely, entrepreneurs and officials planned to wash the received regalia the next day – April 1 on Friday. And not because of the ironic holiday, but because at the end of last week, the FKSR published the same contract for 4.855 billion rubles in the UIS and registered it with the Federal Tax Service.
This contract was not preceded even by a conditional purchase from a single supplier. The contract appeared by itself. The only prelude can be called the position of the schedule of December 30, 2021, in which there is a reference to the purchase. However, if you go through it, no EIS will give any results.
Although the cat cried in the information contract card, what is there literally destroys all the usual ideas about the contract system. For example, an advance payment of 77.69%, that is, 3.772 billion rubles, is provided for the contractor.
The timing of the work is also impressive. Lentehstroy will need to develop all project documentation, including engineering surveys, surveys, development of an information model, and carry out construction work by December 31, 2022.
There are only three documents in attachments to the EIS. Two are notifications about the passage of control, one is a scanned contract. The latter in additions has a table of contents for local estimates. It is possible to judge the volume of construction only by them. For example, it is planned to spend 99.4 million rubles on elevator equipment, and 121.2 million rubles on the Innova IGS 5 angiograph. A few lines about the future object can also be isolated from the design task. However, there is only about the fact that in the six-story medical and diagnostic building it is required to design a reception department, a clinical diagnostic laboratory, a block of premises for placing a disinfection chamber, neurological departments, a cardiology department, as well as departments for vascular surgery, resuscitation and intensive care, an operating block, auxiliary, technical, administrative and household premises. Finishing will be mainly improved (except for technical rooms), and facades will be ventilated. By the way, according to this document, the work should be completed even earlier – by December 15.
If you look closely at the immediately selected performer, then of course there will be no suspicions of a lack of experience. The company exists since September 22, 2011 and is based in St. Petersburg. In 2020, according to Kontur.Focus, it reported revenue of 7.2 billion rubles (which is four times more than in the previous period) and net profit of 906.5 million rubles. The portfolio of state orders, excluding the current one, includes fourteen contracts for 10.5 billion rubles.
As we have already noted, Anatoly Weber is the general director of Lentekhstroy. At the same time, he has held this post almost from the very foundation of the company. However, only recently, in July last year, he received at his disposal all 100% of the authorized capital, while becoming the sole founder. It is interesting that the previous beneficiary, Dmitry Yablokov, simultaneously managed the company Gorizont LLC, which belongs to Victoria Kreslavskaya.
Now, of course, the affiliation chain has been broken, but in a conversation with representatives of the St. Petersburg construction market, it is obvious to our interlocutors: Lentekhstroy is in the interests of RosStroyInvest, the Kreslavsky-Turkins. We are not completely sure of this, but we only recall that, for example, Anatoly Weber also manages the Meridian and Azimut-Stroykompleks firms, where Aleksey Gruzinsky is the only interested person. In the past, this businessman also had a direct relationship with the RosStroyInvest construction empire, when he headed and co-founded RTI CJSC.
Why, Lentehstroy itself is registered at Dobrolyubov Avenue, 17C. His roommates there are a whole bunch of companies with the letter combination “RSTI” in the name and the names of Kreslavsky and Turkin in the extracts from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
In any case, it was not the first time that those gathered at the presentation of thanksgiving letters from the Ministry of Construction saw each other. After all, the practice of signing contracts without bidding began even earlier. In the period from 2014 to February 2020, Lentehstroy participated in tenders on an equal basis with everyone else. That is, he prepared applications and traded. True, it is worth noting that he always won, but we will attribute this to professionalism. With the advent of the ubiquitous covid, the rules of the game for this particular company have become noticeably simpler.
So, the company was entrusted with the arrangement of Lenexpo for an emergency hospital. First, in March 2020, a contract for 416 million rubles was signed with Lentekhstroy directly, without previous bidding, then, in April, a contract for 164.6 million rubles was added to it. True, records of these agreements appeared in the EIS only in the summer of that year.
Of course, then there were reasons to act immediately. We only note the level of trust in Lentekhstroy at that time. Moreover, in the aftermath, trust has not evaporated anywhere. Indeed, in August of the same year, also without bidding, the company received a contract already for 842.9 million rubles for the construction and full equipment of the fifth pavilion at Lenexpo for the same purposes.
However, it is interesting that at the same time, Lentekhstroy already received a contract for 3.083 billion rubles for the design and construction of a medical and diagnostic building for the Hospital for War Veterans on Narodnaya Street. And again, no even limited purchases. Immediately a contract with the signatures of the representative of the FKSR Andrey Polevoy on the one hand and Anatoly Weber on the other, an advance payment of more than 70% and a limited time frame. Nevertheless, the contract was executed on time, by December 31, without accrual of fines, the entire amount was paid in full.
The situation repeated itself in February 2021. A contract was signed with Lentekhstroy already for 3.562 billion rubles for the construction of a multidisciplinary building on the territory of the City Hospital of St. George the Great Martyr on Severny Prospekt. True, this time the execution is a bit delayed. According to data from the UIS, in fact, only 3.222 billion rubles have been completed to date. The contract has not yet been rescheduled from December 31, 2021, but there are no penalties. Perhaps, of course, a bureaucratic hitch.
By the way, Weber’s firm didn’t refuse trades at all. In July of the same year, the company participated in a tender for the construction of a school building for 1,100 students on Petrovsky Prospekt. Bypassing LLC “Tonnelgeostroy”, she took first place, without even dropping a penny from the initial tender rate. Thus, the FKSR signed another contract with Lentekhstroy for 1.793 billion rubles.
We contacted Igor Kreslavsky, who is formally subordinate to the FKSR, and asked if such a direct type of cooperation with Weber’s company was taken as a rule and according to what criteria they chose it in general. In response, the official told us that there was some selection due to the fact that the money was allocated from the reserve fund. And the rush is determined by the complication of the situation with CoVid-19. In order to get a more detailed description of the procedure, in which, according to the chairman of Komstroy, potential contractors were evaluated, we were asked to send a request to the press service. We did it and we plan to tell you about it as soon as we get the information at our disposal. After all, we were assured that everything is according to the law.
Nevertheless, we cannot but agree that Lentehstroy really looks like a conscientious performer. Fulfills contracts on time, takes on complex projects and does not let customers down. However, in some cases, justified haste significantly complicates the lives of doctors and residents of the city. Thus, Fontanka journalists noted that the road to the morgue at the War Veterans Hospital had turned into a mess of mud and puddles. This is due to the use of all possible entrances.
Recall that Igor Kreslavsky himself is a person who knows firsthand the sphere he leads. Talking about his appointment right before the start of the pandemic, in addition to mentioning his position in the Rosstroyinvest Group of Companies, we also recalled another organization from his interests – BaltInvestStroy LLC. For a couple, these two companies alone have more than 25 billion rubles in government orders. Is it worth adding to them the portfolio of “Lentekhstroy”, which recently exceeded 15 billion rubles, is an open question. Rosstroyinvest unequivocally denies any involvement in this miracle performer.
However, it is difficult to deny the success of the current situation, when the FKSR clearly does not put a spoke in the wheels of its contractor, all permits and preliminary documentation are ready even before the signing of the contract, and entrepreneurs are distracted only by the presentation of thanks from the Ministry of Construction. After all, they can when they want. Or, more accurately, when needed. The main thing is that no one interferes.