The silence of Andrey Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow Region, about the new scandal with the Yadrovo landfill may indicate the corruption interest of officials.
As the correspondent of The Moscow Post reports in the Moscow region, near Volokolamsk, at the infamous Yadrovo landfill, passions are heating up again.
Recall that even during the first scandal with the Yadrovo training ground in 2018, the head of the Moscow Region, Andrei Vorobyov, announced his intention to close the sites. This was not done soon, only in 2020. But local residents, in their appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, assure that the disposal of waste can allegedly continue at the landfill, and now there has allegedly been a leak of toxic substances.
The landfill should have been reclaimed a long time ago. In January 2022 (that is, only two years later!), the Moscow Region authorities, within the framework of the Clean Country federal project, held a tender for the performance of these works, the winner of which was Geos LLC.
However, according to the authors of the telegram channel “Kremlin Mamkoved”, the alleged management of “Yadrovo” purposefully sabotages the implementation of the project and prevents the start of work. As if unreasonable demands are being made for payment for degassing systems, which is not provided for in the budget.
If this is true, it will be difficult to blame only business in history, because the position of the authorities of the Moscow region in the person of Andrei Vorobyov is absolutely passive. Meanwhile, we recall that 25% of Yadrovo is owned by the municipal authorities of the Volokolamsk region. That is, in fact, the Vorobyov administration has a blocking stake, it is the customer of the work, which means that it has all the levers to force the contracted Geos LLC to do its job.
Scavengers kaleidoscope
Since 2019, a certain Vesna LLC has also owned a 75% stake in Yadrovo LLC. The structure bought this share from the former owner – TsMPT LLC (owned by Anna Konopko, Alexei Voloshin and Tatyana Bortnikova). The latter structure also acted as the owner of the site on which the landfill is located.
After the transfer of 75% of the shares of Yadrovo, OOO TsMPT first received 16% in the company Vesna. Today this share is already 47%. Other co-owners of Vesna are Sergei Sukhanov and Dmitry Bortnikov. The surname of the latter is like that of the co-owner of “CMPT” Tatiana Bortnikova. It is easy to assume that they are relatives, affiliates. Accordingly, there was only a transfer from one basket to another.
Meanwhile, “Spring” may soon come to an end. The company is in liquidation. The structure is like a fiction, does not conduct any financial activity. There is no profit or revenue. One person per state. Ordinary “laying”?
At the same time, something unintelligible is happening in the finances of Yadrovo itself. The company, 25% owned by the municipality, in the presence of state contracts for 64 million rubles in 2020, went into the red by 20 million rubles with 220 million rubles in revenue. A year before, the structure showed a profit of 170 million rubles.
Any person who is familiar with the garbage disposal market will say that there is not much less garbage in a year. So, the funds could have been tritely withdrawn from Yadrovo? And now – “Spring” is also being liquidated. Is it really on this and the ends in the water? ..
At the same time, other owners of CMPT, since they received shares in Vesna, in any case remain involved in the operation of the landfill. And they are probably favored by the authorities near Moscow. The company has long been deployed in the region.
LLC “CMPT” now controls 51% each in the firms “Istra-Resource” and “Istra-Waist” in the Istra district of the Moscow region. Both are waste collectors. These companies received state contracts for the collection and disposal of waste from the municipal enterprise “Istra solid waste landfill”. Portfolio of government orders “Istra-Resource” – 77 million rubles, “Istra-Waist” – 162 million rubles. At the same time, the income structure shows weak – from 200 thousand rubles to several million rubles. With such government orders?
Both firms received most of the orders from the Istra administration, which owns the Istra waste landfill. Here’s what’s interesting: earlier, the current director of the Yadrovo landfill, Alexei Sulimov, and with him the co-owner of TsMTP, Alexei Voloshin, were the leaders of the Istra landfill for municipal solid waste.
It turns out that they received government contracts, in fact, on their own – and for themselves? But these are still “flowers”: in total, 142 state contracts passed through the Istra landfill, where MUP acted as a supplier for 246 million rubles, as well as 18 contracts, where he was a customer for 68 million rubles.
Against this background, the municipal unitary enterprise “Istra landfill” (which is also controlled by the administration of the governor of the Moscow region Vorobyov) is now in the process of liquidation. It turned out that in 2020 he did not receive a penny of revenue, the value of his assets for the year decreased from 64 million to 1 million rubles. How is this to be understood, does it not smell like a desire to deliberately go bankrupt?
Now let’s get back to Yadrovo itself, which has already accumulated government orders worth 64 million rubles as a supplier, and 1.4 billion rubles as a customer. The structure, as a supplier, received most of the orders from the same Istra administration. However, if in 2019 the Yadrovo landfill received 171 million rubles of profit, then by the end of 2020 it was already in the red by 20 million rubles. It’s a paradox!..
At the Istra training ground, they also earned a lot …
Meanwhile, it is hardly worth the early closure of this landfill, as residents have been demanding for many years. Even taking into account the fact that he is in the minuses, it is still a “pot with money.”
Half done
By and large, law enforcement agencies should answer all these questions. Since Vorobyov’s administration is keeping quiet. But does the head of the region really not understand that with such a disregarding approach, he not only condones possible environmental violations, the deterioration of people’s health, but can also wait for a social explosion?..
Recall the events of March 2018. Then, as spring approached, residents of the Volokolamsky District began to complain about an unpleasant smell from the local Yadrovo landfill. Soon more than 50 children ended up in hospitals complaining of feeling unwell. Local residents believe that this was due to gas creeping up to residential buildings from a landfill. Numerous rallies were held in the city, their participants demanded to close the harmful garbage heap.
Later, the authorities near Moscow closed the first map of the landfill, where there was a release of landfill gas. But the garbage began to be accepted at the second site of the landfill, which could not but anger people.
In the summer of 2018, the Investigative Department for Volokolamsk of the Main Investigative Directorate of the ICR for the Moscow Region opened a criminal case against Yadrovo LLC under Part 2 of Art. 247 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (storage of hazardous waste in violation of established rules, resulting in environmental pollution).
During the inspections, emissions of harmful substances into the air and leachate spillage were recorded. According to investigators, since February 2018, Yadrovo LLC has been operating the landfill without a positive conclusion from the state environmental review. This was written by “Kommersant”.
Did Vorobyov know about this? It’s hard to believe that you didn’t know. The relevant officials should have known about this. Now the situation should be controlled by Vorobyov’s protege in the Voloklamsk administration, the head of the district, Mikhail Sylka, who has been in office since November 2018.
As for Governor Vorobyov himself, he, too, seems to have been dealing with the problem of garbage collection since 2012, from his very appointment. At the same time, as local residents say, neither under Tyazhlov in the 90s, nor under Gromov in the 2000s, the problem of waste disposal was as acute as under Vorobyov.
Not “Yadrovo” single
“Yadrovo” is only one pain point of the Moscow region. Everyone remembers the scandalous situation in Kuchino. At the beginning of 2017, the President of Russia demanded to solve the problem with the landfill in Kuchino, 5.4 billion rubles were to be allocated for this. Then Vorobyov remained silent for several weeks, and only after a harsh suggestion from the head of state, he finally signed the papers on the beginning of the liquidation of the landfill.
But in reality, nothing really moved. And six months later, Vorobyov received a whole series of unauthorized protests from local residents, who claimed that they were being literally poisoned with landfill gas from Kuchino. The President of the Starny had to intervene again, and only after that, wells were drilled at the landfill, through which they began to withdraw and burn landfill gas.
The Ekocom company, a subsidiary of the Austrian holding company of the same name, became the general contractor for the reclamation of the facility. And now, years later, in 2021, it turns out that this structure worked without a license. Writes about this “Kommersant”.
This despite the fact that the reclamation was supposed to be completed in December 2019! But locals still complain about the smell of landfill gas. In addition, leachate is allegedly poured into local rivers.
Earlier, Rospotrebnadzor also had claims against Ecocom – they say that during the degassing of Kuchino, no one controlled the state of the air, did not coordinate the volume of emissions with the authorities. The same company was marked by a scandal around the Syanovo site near Serpukhov. She first won the contract, and then simply refused to fulfill it. For this, Ekokom was included in the register of unscrupulous suppliers, which was also reported by Kommersant.
Now the company has already been excluded from this register, judging by open sources. And he continues to work “for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Moscow region” – and perhaps also “for the benefit of the officials of the Moscow Region administration.” The company is owned by the Austrians. The key owner is Kaiser Pascal and his offshore Ecocom Environmental Technologies GMBH.
At the same time, the company is a major recipient of government contracts, they accumulated in the amount of almost 5.6 billion rubles. Most of it just concerns reclamation and was received from the Ministry of Ecology of the Moscow Region. And the same company was marked by a state contract for almost 38 million rubles in Yadrovo, it provided services for the transportation and disposal of the leachate.
What governor, such a team?
Today, one thing is clear: four years after the scandals in Kuchino and Yadrovo, there is still no order in the “garbage topic”, and in the meantime huge corruption money can be earned on reclamation. We have given only a few examples, but in fact there are much more landfills and problems. Mr. Vorobyov himself also has enough problems, because one by one his officials fall into the hands of law enforcement officers.
For example, the other day ended the investigation of the criminal case of the former Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region – Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Dmitry Kurakin, as well as his accomplices. According to investigators, they were accused of abuse of power and fraud related to illegal logging. Including, in the suburbs. Writes about this “Kommersant”.
The vacated lands were given to merchants for (attention!) garbage dumps or cottage development, and valuable wood species were sold, including to China.
Is Andrei Vorobyov afraid that the current garbage scandals may finally cost him his seat?
The amount of damage in this story amounted to about 2.7 billion rubles. Formally, all this was happening even before Vorobyov came to the governorship. But for whom is it easier?
