Immediately two stations of the Moscow metro with a difference of a day were flooded. We are talking about MCD-2 “Shchukinskaya” and “Nizhny Novgorod”. Both of them were opened just a couple of years ago, and were erected under Mayor Sergei Sobyanin by companies from the outline owned by the Moscow government, Mosinzhproekt.
Recently, a similar situation with leaks occurred at the Dynamo station. At the same time, nothing like this has ever happened at many of the oldest stations built back in the pre-war period.
Why this has become the norm under the current head of the capital Sobyanin, and who is to blame for everything – in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post.
How Khusnullin’s acquaintances earn
Mosinzhproekt has been building the metro in Moscow for a good ten years. The company is associated with the interests of the Deputy Prime Minister and former Construction Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. The management of the design organization now includes former subordinates of Khusnullin from his work in the government of Tatarstan or businessmen close to him.
Mosinzhproekt was accused of giving contracts to “its own”, killing competition in the market. Among such firms was also MIP-Stroy No. 1, the scandalous contractor of the National Space Center, the commissioning of which is constantly being postponed.
At the same time, MIP-Stroy No. 1 has long been sitting on “pre-bankruptcy indicators.” Her accounts have been blocked by the tax authorities, and interim measures have been introduced in relation to 107 objects of her property. And the head of the company, Konstantin Maslakov, is Konstantin Grigoriev, previously convicted of embezzlement, who changed his last name.
In addition, a hefty 85 million rubles for construction and installation work on the section of the Third interchange circuit of the capital’s metro was earned by Marat Safaev’s E-line LLC, which worked with Khusnullin in the construction complex back in Kazan.
Another former colleague of Khusnullin in joint work in the construction complex of Tatarstan, Marat Kamalov, director of the Electrooptima company, signed contracts with Mosinzhproekt for the installation of an electrical substation at the metro stations Okruzhnaya, Maryina Roscha, and Seligerskaya in the amount of more than 160 million rubles .
On the construction of the Salaryevo electric depot in Moscow, another acquaintance of Marat Khusnullin from joint service in Tatarstan earned almost 500 million – Boris Tikhomirov, director of JSC Kazan Giproniyaviaprom. And there are many such cases.
At the same time, the same Dynamo leaked just a few months after the opening, after the Chinese contractor CRCC, attracted with the help of the scandalous Chinese investor Sam Pa, worked there. The latter was arrested by Chinese law enforcement for corruption in the oil corporation Sinopec.
At the same time, it turned out that, by a strange coincidence, he enjoyed the special location of the state-owned companies of the PRC. Apparently, in Russia, he cranked out similar schemes. Khusnullin and Sobyanin were ready in advance to remake the metro after him, having allocated more money?
“Brawlers” from Russian Railways in share
Participation in the creation of the injured this time MCD-2 “Shchukinskaya” was taken by another no less scandalous company – “SpetsCityStroy” from the contour of the “Group of Companies 1520”.
The latter belongs to Alexei Krapivin and Boris Usherovich, who have repeatedly become the heroes of The Moscow Post investigations.
On the market, Krapivin was associated with a high-profile corruption scandal in the case of state contracts from Russian Railways, received by the 1520 Group of Companies. The now convicted former head of department “T” of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, ex-colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, was involved in the same scandal.
As for Usherovich, he himself is a defendant in a high-profile criminal case on corruption in the contracts of Russian Railways and has been put on the wanted list. In 2019, several addresses associated with the 1520 group of companies were searched. The investigation suspected that the company’s funds (mainly received on contracts from Russian Railways) were withdrawn abroad according to the “Moldovan scheme”.
The essence of the scheme was to create loan agreements, according to which Russian companies – intermediaries for the withdrawal of money through Moldova – allegedly received loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars or acted as guarantors for them. Obligations on these fictitious debts were not fulfilled.
Despite all the scandals, Krapivin and Usherovich continue to own the 1520 Group of Companies and receive large government contracts. Recently, Krapivin generally headed the Roads and Bridges company, which became a stage in increasing the share of 1520 in the joint venture between VEB.RF and Arkady Rotenberg – the Natsproektstroy holding, where Krapivin’s company now has 4%.
It was assumed that the structure will be engaged in infrastructure construction for Russian Railways. The expected amount of assets is 100 billion rubles. Planned contracts – 140 billion rubles. Does Krapivin’s past bother anyone?
What’s the benefit, brother?
Everything would be fine, but accidents in the Moscow metro are not limited to simple leaks. Echoes of the 2014 disaster are still heard, when several train cars derailed on the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line. As a result, 24 people died. The culprits were Valery Bashkatov, senior road foreman of the track service, his assistant Yuri Gordov, as well as Anatoly Kruglov, production director of the subcontractor LLC Spetstechrekonstruktsiya, and Alexei Trofimov, deputy head of the metro track overhaul department.
They were charged with “violation of traffic safety rules and the operation of the subway, which resulted in the death of two or more persons.” But given what we know about the subway contractors, doubts arise that all the blame for what happened lies with individual subway workers.
While the subway lines are “sinking”, state millions continue to be allocated for their re-equipment, which then go to Mosinzhproekt and the contractors it hires. And if a leak has formed at a newly repaired station, it means that the money allocated for the repair has “leaked” to the wrong place. It is obvious.
