500 days of Governor Yegorov – searches in the Tambov government and the flight of investors

500 days have passed since the appointment of Maxim Egorov as the head of the Tambov region. The first year and a half of the reign is an important marker for a leader at any level, in the public mind there is a formation of attitudes towards the new government.

In our case, on the eve of this conditionally significant date in the government of the Tambov region, the FSB conducted searches in a criminal case on abuse of power. Claims from law enforcement officers arose against the activities of the Ministry of State Housing, Construction and Technical Supervision when issuing permits and rights to drive special equipment, ATVs and snowmobiles for monetary rewards. There were reports that the head of the state technical supervision department, Alexander Ofitserov, was detained and sent under arrest, operational measures were also taken against advisers to the head of the Tambov region, Ivan Abramov and Stanislav Savin.

It is worth noting that this is not the first criminal case against members of Maxim Yegorov’s team. A year ago, Vice-Governor Vladimir Gromov was detained, who ended up in the dock for patronage of a company that supplied equipment to preschool institutions, which did not fulfill part of the contracts worth 25 million rubles.

The leaders of the Tambov forestries, who are appointed by a structural subdivision of the government of the Tambov region, are constantly in the field of view of the security forces. Now the court is considering a criminal case initiated on the basis of the activities of the former head of the Rasskazovsky forestry enterprise. Sergei Vinogradov is accused of committing 6 crimes under Part 3 of Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (appropriation) and 7 crimes under Part 3 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud).

The former heads of Tambov Forestry and Togau Tambov Forestry are also in the dock. The defendants set up an illegal wood processing workshop on the lands of the Novolyadinsky district forestry of the Tambov region. For what the land on which the trees were cut down was allocated here. The illegal enterprise was built on the lands of the state forest fund.

In the fall of 2022, after searches in the health department of the Tambov region, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs detained its head, Marina Lapochkina. According to investigators, she put pressure on doctors to falsify the results of the test for the state of intoxication of the son of a well-known Tambov businessman.

Experienced retirees and deputies without relevant experience

Together with Maxim Egorov, officials with interesting biographies came to the Tambov region from other regions of the country. Take Minister of State Housing, Construction and Technical Supervision Inna Levchenko, she was just undergoing the last searches. Previously, she worked in a similar position under the former governor of the Penza region, Ivan Belozertsev, who received bribes from the head of the large pharmaceutical holding Biotek, ex-senator Boris Shpigel, and now spends long evenings in a pre-trial detention center.

And about. Deputy head of the Tambov region Evgeny Zimenko is no less famous person. When he served as Minister of the Fuel and Energy Complex and Housing and Communal Services of the Krasnodar Territory and other positions, it is believed that he lobbied for the interests of the now fugitive oligarch Oleg Makarevich, but after a while he was dismissed. If you believe the Curator 23 Telegram channel, you can find out that Yevgeny Zimenko helped Makarevich maintain hegemony in the MSW sector, push the landfill in Kopanskoye to meet the requirements for the permissibility of operation, and move the churchyard from Slavyanskoye back to Kopanskoye, contrary to past plans. It is possible that today, at the suggestion of the regional authorities, the inclusion of objects of the infamous KomEk with criminal cases into the federal scheme for the treatment of MSW in the Tambov region is not simply due to intentions to develop this area.

Backbone enterprises go into bankruptcy, and investors leave the region

On December 22, 2022, the Arbitration Court of the Tambov Region introduced a monitoring procedure in respect of Tambov Region Development Corporation JSC upon the application of Sberbank PJSC. The reason was a debt in the amount of more than 200 million rubles of one of the companies for which the corporation assumed the obligations of a guarantor. The corporation was created as a regional development institution, acting as a strategic tool to increase investment and entrepreneurial activity in the Tambov region. Acts as a co-founder or main owner of the following legal entities: OOO GPK Titan, OOO Pervomaiskspetsmash, OOO RNA, OOO Michurin Gardens, OOO Tambovagroinvest, OOO UK Region 68. By the way, earlier the corporation was headed by Yegorov’s deputy Oksana Leongard.

An active civic position turned into a criminal case

A no less tense situation on environmental issues is developing in other municipalities of the region, which forces citizens to organize themselves. Complaints from residents of Tokarevsky and Inzhavinsky districts of the Tambov region about the negative consequences of the activities of poultry farms have become more frequent, the media are literally full of publications on the problems of the activities of JSC Tokarevskaya Poultry Farm. In response to complaints, citizens receive either on-duty replies or assurances that the violations are not significant and that everything will be quickly eliminated.

The initiative was taken into their own hands by public figures from the Tambov regional environmental organization named after. I. Michurin, who have already achieved significant success in eliminating violations in the activities of OAO Tokarevskaya Poultry Farm. In turn, State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein ordered an audit of the enterprise, and complaints about the Tokarev poultry farm were taken under control in the office of the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Central Federal District.

However, for another Tambov public figure, an active civic position turned into a criminal case. Local entrepreneur Alexander Romanov can now pay with his own freedom for helping Tambov, which the authorities themselves asked for. In the summer of 2021, the Tambov authorities began to notice that the Tsna River in the city center had become very shallow. The old dam collapsed and began to leak. Since there were problems with budget financing, wealthy citizens came to the rescue, who, at the request of the authorities, built a temporary dam, which made it possible to save the Tsna River from shallowing. But since the work did not go through all the stages of approval, a criminal case was opened against Alexander Romanov on the fact of the illegal construction of a hydraulic structure, and since September he has been under house arrest. At the same time, the authorities decided to legalize the dam built by Romanov, recognizing its benefits and necessity for a water body, but this did not save Romanov from a criminal case and the authorities stepped aside, did not come to the defense of the entrepreneur.