The first deputy head of the Ministry of Economics runs the risk of becoming a defendant in the report of the Prosecutor General on the fight against corruption.
In mid-December, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation was supposed to submit proposals on it. The department oversees the implementation of Federal Law No. 230-FZ “On Controlling the Correspondence of Expenses of Persons Holding Public Positions and Other Persons with Their Income”, which provides for a very specific punishment – confiscation of property in favor of the state. However, cases when the expenses of civil servants do not coincide with their real incomes are still a common phenomenon. Moreover, some federal officials do not even hesitate to hide their financial situation.
From “Summa” and prison
Thus, Andrey Ivanov, First Deputy Minister of Economic Development, is known for his passion for expensive cars and non-compliance with traffic rules. In just a few pandemic months last year, he collected dozens of speeding tickets in his luxury Porsche Macan Turbo. The facts of the official’s ownership of apartments in Zvonarsky Lane worth 60 million rubles and on Nakhimovsky Prospekt, the market price of which is about 25 million rubles, have also become public. At the same time, the declaration indicated only housing in Maly Gnezdnikovsky Lane, which, as reported, the unmarried deputy minister uses for all sorts of “intimate meetings”.
Also, the income statement, for example, for 2016, did not include a residential building with an area of 62.6 sq. m and a plot of 2000 sq. m in the Vladimir region. In 2018-2020 Ivanov, it turns out, hid the presence of eight accounts opened in different years, including in large and state-owned banks. But even the official movable and immovable property of the Deputy Minister of Economics in its total value – 150 million rubles – significantly exceeds the official’s annual income. For example, in the Ministry of Finance, where he served as deputy minister from 2012 to 2020, Ivanov earned about 14 million rubles a year. Information was made public that the official registered his numerous property for his parents, and later transferred it to himself through donation agreements.
The biography of Andrei Ivanov is generally full of episodes qualifying for one or another anti-corruption article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The media reported that he, as Deputy Minister of Finance, lobbied for the interests of the owners of the Summa group, the oligarch brothers Ziyavudin and Magomed Magomedov. In particular, with his mediation, the Magomedovs, who are currently accused of fraud on an especially large scale and organizing a criminal community, in 2017 achieved a delay in the transfer of tariffs for stevedoring work in their Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port to Russian currency, which led to businessmen receiving excess profits .
In the arsenal of the official and other serious misconduct. So, didn’t he, last March, he received a loan from Rosselkhozbank in the amount of 10 million rubles at a low interest rate of 8.5%? There can be two violations here at once: firstly, the bank’s loan programs do not provide for the issuance of a loan to an individual in such a huge amount. Secondly, Ivanov is a member of the supervisory board of a credit institution, and this can be qualified as the use of his official position for personal gain. And this is clearly not the first time that the current First Deputy Minister of Economic Development uses his connections.
Official without trust
In 2015, Andrey Ivanov employed his sister Elena Chernikova at the FBU “State Institute of Medicines and Good Practices”, and her wife, Andrey Chernikov, at the FSUE “CITO”, according to some information, using his acquaintance with Sergey Tsyb, then Deputy Head of the Ministry of Trade and Trade, under which both organizations are located. Some details of the protection of relatives became known from Ivanov’s correspondence with his sister, which got on the Internet. For example, it turned out that the deputy minister tried to get Chernikova a chief accountant or administrator in a sanatorium near Moscow when she had just moved to Russia from abroad.
Other messages of the Deputy Minister from his personal mail and phone hacked were also published there, from which it follows that Ivanov had long ago put the provision of intermediary services using his official position on stream. So it is possible that the profit from intermediary services settled on those very undeclared accounts. From the correspondence in the messenger, it became clear that the official was trying to achieve a mitigation of the administrative penalty for his friend, who was involved in driving under the influence of alcohol and without a license. In one of the published e-mails of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, it is said that a certain Stantex LLC was chosen as the sole supplier of catheters. In another, representatives of the three largest Russian banks are discussing the issue of approving an increased tariff for electricity in the Republic of Crimea. Later it was assumed that Andrey Ivanov bought the compromising material from the resource that distributed it for 35 million rubles, but you can still get acquainted with it today.
The media also got information about numerous episodes of the withdrawal of budget funds through deliberately unprofitable projects carried out by JSC Russian Venture Company (RVC). Its CEO was Ivanov’s longtime colleague, Alexander Povalko (in different years they together served on the boards of directors of Rosnano, the Skolkovo Foundation, and the Supervisory Board of the Industrial Development Fund). Currently, Povalko is under house arrest, he has been charged under a criminal article on abuse of power – violations were found in the activities of RVC when concluding transactions, as well as fraud with authorized capital. They wrote that law enforcement officers also had questions to Ivanov himself as part of this investigation.
However, as we see, the official is still getting away with schemes with declarations, and the use of his official position for lobbying and personal purposes. The unsinkability of Andrei Ivanov is explained by his involvement in the “Krasnoyarsk clan” of the ex-governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Khloponin, who headed the region in 2002-2010, and in 2014-2018. who served as Deputy Prime Minister. Ivanov was born in the city of Dudinka, Krasnoyarsk Territory. After graduating from the local state university, he quickly moved up the career ladder – he was also an adviser to the governor, and was a member of the Administration Council of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In 2004, he formally moved into business, becoming vice president of the Siberian Machine-Building Holding, one of the region’s strategic assets.
Meanwhile, at least two of the listed violations – an unprevented conflict of interest and the provision of false information about income and property – are already grounds for prosecution under the article “Dismissal due to loss of confidence.” And Andrei Ivanov’s work biography is so replete with stories dubious from the point of view of the law that the best option for the development of events for him is to write a statement “of his own free will”, and that his candidacy would never again be considered for appointment to high posts. So far, the facts that have been made public have not been given a full judicial process, and there is no record of dismissal “for loss of confidence” in the labor record. Otherwise, he risks becoming another figure in the report on the fight against corruption by Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, who previously noted that “one of the key points for us is the real recovery of unearned income, which most effectively lands negligent officials.”
