“YuGK” refused to pay for the death of a worker due to claims from the Federal Tax Service. Rosprirodnadzor is preparing new claims against the company

The Arbitration Court of the Omsk Region has begun re-examining the claims of the Federal Tax Service for the Kemerovo Region – Kuzbass for the recovery of multi-billion dollar losses from companies and individuals associated with the business of the Chelyabinsk oligarch from the Forbes list, Konstantin Strukov.

As part of the bankruptcy procedure of LLC Shakhta im. Dzerzhinsky” budgets of all levels, according to fiscal officials, lost large amounts of money due to possible fraud involving bankruptcy trustees and companies of the Chelyabinsk businessman and his daughter Evgenia Kuznetsova.

Konstantin Strukov

Currently, tax officials are demanding recovery from the former bidders of the coal mine, MelTEK, Energia-NK, YuGK, UK YuGK, as well as Zvyagintsev A.V., Strukov K.I., Kuznetsova E.K. jointly losses in the amount of 3.15 billion rubles.

As Pravda UrFO reported, in the proceedings, in particular, documents were provided confirming the fact that the bankruptcy trustee had transferred a power of attorney to manage the mine to the director of the Energia-NK company. At the same time, fiscal officials insisted on the version that Strukov’s companies bought mined coal from the mine at a price below cost and resold it at market prices.

Currently, this conflict has reached a new level, and UGK has tried to use the court with the Federal Tax Service in its own interests. The company, challenging the decision of the Ural Department of Rostekhnadzor to bring to administrative liability for committing an offense under Part 3 of Article 9.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses “Gross violation of industrial safety requirements,” asked to reduce the already not very large fine of 750 thousand rubles. It should be noted that Konstantin Strukov was brought to justice due to a fatal emergency in the Tsentralnaya mine (Chelyabinsk region). In March 2022, a miner was buried under broken rock. The audit showed that UGK organized work with personnel unsatisfactorily – people were allowed to work underground without special training. Moreover, the victim was sent alone to excavate a remote vertical mine working. Despite obvious violations of industrial safety requirements, the gold mining company insisted on replacing penalties with a warning. As justification, the lawyers spoke about the difficult financial situation, possible losses and subsequent problems with the payment of wages due to interim measures taken as part of the dispute with the Federal Tax Service described above. Nevertheless, the court came to the conclusion that “the company did not provide evidence in the case materials confirming the difficult financial situation.”

Meanwhile, in the near future the size of the requirements for SGC may increase significantly. We are talking about the consequences of an emergency with probably major damage to the Kurasan River and a breakthrough of the sludge storage dam. After another audit, the fact of a spill of enrichment waste from the Kurasan gold recovery plant was confirmed. As observers note, at the same time, regional and municipal officials, as well as representatives of the environmental prosecutor’s office, for some reason for a long time could not detect the objects that local residents had been complaining about for more than a year.

According to the official response of the federal Rosprirodnadzor, signed by the deputy head of the department, Vladimir Chernyshev, in May-June 2023, inspectors went to the territory of the South Kurasan quarry, which is being mined by JSC UGK. Specialists took samples of water and soil in the area of ​​the enterprise’s economic activity for research. “Based on the results of laboratory studies of selected natural water samples from the Sukhoi Kurasan and Kurasan rivers, maximum permissible concentrations for a number of pollutants were exceeded. In the selected soil sample, excess pollutants were detected relative to the background concentration,” said a representative of Rosprirodnadzor.

Currently, the department is working to bring legal entities and responsible officials to administrative liability under seven articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses. In addition, to suppress illegal activities, the inspection materials were sent to the Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for the Chelyabinsk Region.

Photo: “UGK”

Officials did not disclose information about exactly what pollutants were discovered in the area of ​​activity of Konstantin Strukov’s asset. Meanwhile, a source from Pravda UrFO, familiar with the investigation, said that a large amount of heavy metals were found in the soils, the content of which is significantly higher than in background samples from neighboring plots of land. The most exorbitant indicators, exceeding hundreds of times, were allegedly recorded for the content of tin and chromium. In the Kurasan River, according to an insider, a five-fold excess of mercury content was found to be the norm. In the area where the sludge storage dam broke on the Sukhoi Kurasan River, laboratory research showed a more than nine-fold excess of copper content, in addition, the manganese content was 7.7 times higher.

According to the publication’s interlocutor, Rosprirodnadzor specialists are currently assessing the damage caused to the environment as a result of the emergency on the territory of the deputy speaker of the Legislative Assembly of the Chelyabinsk Region, Konstantin Strukov. In addition, after numerous statements from representatives of the federal department, specialists from the Ministry of Ecology of the Southern Urals also went to the SGC site in the Verkhneuralsky region with a scheduled inspection.