The Roskosmos Research Institute in Nizhnyaya Salda has revealed new facts about the “disappearance” of federal funds allocated until 2020 for the development of space industry enterprises. While the prosecutor’s office of the Sverdlovsk region is trying through the courts to return tens of millions to the federal budget for the outstanding work on the reconstruction of NIImash, the enterprise itself, which manufactures engines for the Angara launch vehicle, is forced to seek termination of the contract with the contractor involved in the work by the former management.
The institute expected to spend almost 2 billion rubles on the modernization of workshops and equipment, but the contractor could not even work out the advance payment transferred to him in three years. To date, we are talking about hundreds of millions of rubles. Moreover, the general contractor himself did not actually appear on the site, attracting third-party companies to the site, which today are talking about a conflict and non-payments. The executors of the state contract assure that they purchased equipment and materials for Nizhnyaya Salda, and also performed a whole range of works that the replaced leadership of the Roscosmos structure refused to accept. At the same time, in parallel with work at a strategic enterprise in the Sverdlovsk region, the company appeared in a criminal case on fraud with money from the Housing and Utilities Reform Fund, in which three top managers of builders were taken into custody at once.
The prosecutor’s office of the Sverdlovsk region only in the court of cassation was able to achieve a second review of the case on financial fraud at the Roscosmos plant in Nizhnyaya Salda. Representatives of the supervisory authority demanded from NJSC Construction and Technological Engineering Administration (USTI, Moscow) to pay 77 million rubles, which the company received under a contract for the reconstruction and technical re-equipment of one of the production sites for small thrust engines of NII Mashinostroeniya JSC (NIIMash).
Earlier, Pravda UrFO talked about a state contract for 190 million rubles, concluded between research institutes and Moscow builders. In 2017, the leadership of the Roskosmos structure accepted all the acts without any complaints and paid for the contract, but later a prosecutor’s check found that in fact, work worth tens of millions of rubles was not performed. The damage to the federal budget, from which the technical re-equipment program was financed, in the opinion of prosecutors, amounted to the amount of claims stated above.
The press service of Roscosmos Pravda UrFO previously reported that materials for the prosecutor’s office were collected on their initiative by the security service and the internal audit service of NIImash back in 2020. This happened, probably, after a change in the management of the enterprise – the former head of Nizhny Salda, Elena Matveeva, was appointed general director. Her predecessor Anatoly Dolgikh, who headed the research institute since 2006, when it was still working in the status of a federal state unitary enterprise, since that moment has not received leadership positions either in the structure of a state-owned company or in commercial enterprises.
The courts twice denied the representatives of the prosecutor’s office requests for the return of funds, referring to the fact that when accepting the work, the NIIMash commission did not have any complaints about the quality of execution of the state contract, and the defendant was not involved in the audit in principle. Only at the appeal it was established that the judges did not take into account all the circumstances of the case. In particular, the USTI did not have to notify about the audit, since it concerned the expenditure of budgetary funds specifically by the Nizhny Salda enterprise.
“As a result, the question of whether there was an unreasonable waste of funds as a result of the execution of this contract did not receive a final judicial answer, as well as the question of the need to return disproportionately spent funds to the public budget of the state,” the Arbitration Court of the Moscow districts.
The case has now been remanded to the court of first instance for retrial. The problem is that during the protracted litigation, the contractor managed to go bankrupt. The bankruptcy trustee is currently selling the last liquid property, which is pledged to Bank DOM.RF JSC. Accordingly, even if the arbitration makes a positive decision on the suit of the prosecutor’s office, there will probably be nothing to pay debts to the bankrupt state.
It is worth noting that this is far from the only contract under which the facts of financial fraud at the “space” enterprise were revealed. In particular, in 2022, it became known about a criminal case under the article fraud, in which it was reported about the damage to NIImash for more than 100 million rubles. In this case, according to federal media sources, it was about cooperation with Cosmosaviaspetsstroy LLC, which also issued certificates to the state-owned company for outstanding work. The scheme was also implemented “at the time” of Anatoly Dolgikh.
Meanwhile, the current head of NIIMash is currently facing serious problems with spending federal funds allocated for the modernization of the production of engines for spacecraft. Back in 2019, the company signed a contract for the reconstruction of production facilities with USP Compulink LLC, which was later renamed Infralink LLC. The contractor was supposed to receive 1.9 billion rubles for the work. Moreover, the entire complex of works should be completed by 2021. To date, the contract has not been executed, the amount of the unworked advance payment exceeds 428 million rubles.
Since 2022, NIIMash has been trying to return unearned money and terminate the contract with the contractor. The defendant, however, insists on paying almost 200 million rubles for the equipment supplied and work performed, the acts for which Elena Matveeva refused to sign. The Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk Region has appointed an examination, which will determine the actually completed construction volumes. The press service of the Research Institute of Mashinostroeniya told Pravda UrFO that they would refrain from commenting until the court decides on this conflict.
Meanwhile, the situation with federal funds is aggravated by the fact that in this case, too, a monitoring procedure was introduced against the general contractor. On May 11 of this year, at the meeting of creditors, it was planned to hear the report of the external manager, as well as to decide on the further procedure for the bankruptcy of the legal entity. Then the meeting did not take place due to the temporary disability of the contestant. A new date has not yet been set.
In relation to the head management company Compulink Group, surveillance was introduced in April for a period until October 16. Moreover, a criminal case under part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Fraud on an especially large scale”) during the construction of boiler houses in the city of Kotovsk, Tambov Region. As part of this case, the former deputy head of the region, Igor Kulakov, as well as top managers of the Compulink holding, Yuri Danilyuk, Yuri Chernyshev and Oleg Popov (former head of Infralink), were taken into custody.
For the construction of modular boiler houses at the expense of the Housing and Utilities Reform Assistance Fund, LLC Compulink Infrastructure TO was created, which signed a concession agreement with the administration of Kotovsk. According to the Federal Treasury, the construction contractor was the same Infralink. An audit by the supervisory authorities showed that the cost of supplying equipment for block boilers under the concession was overstated by 111 million rubles. Currently, the fund’s lawyers are demanding that the administration of Kotovsk and the concessionaire return these funds to the federal budget.