For more than two months now, the duties of the mayor of Tomsk have been performed by the former deputy mayor of Omsk, ex-head of the department of property relations of Omsk Dmitry Makhinya. The new leader, alas, did not prove himself in anything other than rather stupid statements and strange decisions. Although this should not surprise anyone, it is enough to just study the biography of our hero a little.
Dmitry Makhinya became the mayor of Tomsk at the request of the governor of the Tomsk region Vladimir Mazur. At the same time, the Tomsk residents themselves accepted the initiative from above without much enthusiasm. Omsk residents also added fuel to the fire by publishing a lot of information about Makhini’s previous “exploits” in Omsk.
Candidate from Masur
As we remember, it all started with the fact that on July 26, Tomsk telegram channels began to disseminate information that the vice-mayor of Omsk, head of the property relations department of the city administration, Dmitry Makhinya, would be vying for the post of mayor of Tomsk. At the same time, it was immediately reported that Makhinya had already submitted documents to the Tomsk Duma to participate in the competition for the post of city manager, although most Tomsk residents still knew nothing about this.
Late in the evening of the same day, the governor of the Tomsk region, Vladimir Mazur, made a statement regarding the new candidacy. According to Mazur, he “found a person” who is ready to restore order in the city economy, help business, and hear people’s opinions. In addition, a video recording from the meeting between Vladimir Mazur and Dmitry Makhini was published on the governor’s TG channel. In this case, only governor.
Dmitry Makhinya himself later made a statement that his nomination for the post of mayor of Tomsk “it was thought out by him a long time ago”. Omsk decided to make his main task “formation of a strong management team”to “to bring order to the city economy, attract investment, work with business”. As Makhinya said, he “Together with the governor and Tomsk residents, we need to rethink the city’s development strategy”. It immediately became clear to everyone that Dmitry Makhinya was the nominee of Vladimir Mazur, who for some reason decided to appoint this man to the position of mayor of Tomsk. There were even rumors about a certain powerful financial and industrial group standing behind the back of the Omsk resident, about the so-called “Omsk power group”, one of whose representatives is the well-known ex-head of the Tomsk Department of Internal Affairs Igor Mitrofanov.
The choice of an Omsk resident for the post of mayor of Tomsk caused outright bewilderment of thousands of Tomsk residents, since Dmitry Makhinya had never been or worked in the Tomsk region before. It was only thanks to the unprecedented pressure of the governor on the deputies of the Tomsk Duma that Makhini’s candidacy was approved in September.
What is known?
There is not so little information about the newly appointed mayor of Tomsk, Dmitry Makhin, who emerged literally out of nowhere, but not very much either.
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Makhinya was born on September 3, 1982 in the North Kazakhstan region, later moved to Russia (*aggressor country). In 2005, Dmitry Makhinya graduated with honors from Omsk State University with a degree in jurisprudence. Afterwards he studied for a long time in graduate school, where he studied the basics of land management, land cadastre and the practice of forming land plots. He began his career as a specialist in the logistics department of the Federal Bailiff Service for the Omsk Region. In 2005-2006 he worked as an assistant prosecutor of the Znamensky district in the prosecutor’s office of the Omsk region. From 2006 to 2019, Dmitry Makhinya went from chief specialist to head of the department of the Ministry of Property Relations of the Omsk Region. Since 2019 – Deputy Mayor of Omsk, Director of the Department of Property Relations. In 2012, he passed the qualification exam for the position of magistrate judge.
In other words, the entire career of an Omsk official is closely connected with the legal sphere, and first of all, with real estate transactions. His younger brother also works in the same field, Evgeniy Makhinya, current senior lecturer at the Department of Civil Law of the Siberian Law University. Previously, Evgeniy Makhinya worked in the administration of the Omsk region, where he was listed as the chief specialist of the legal department. Along the way, Evgeniy Makhinya actively works as a private individual and has a private practice (specializing in arbitration cases and government procurement).
As we can see, Dmitry Makhini’s career is very rapid: he barely graduated from high school and immediately ended up in the Federal Bailiff Service for the Omsk Region, and even in the logistics department, then he worked for a year in the prosecutor’s office, then there was a transition to administration and rapid growth in the municipal service. It was as if some invisible but powerful hand had been rapidly raising the hero of our story upward over the past 18 years.
Tarnished Reputation
The work of Dmitry Makhini in the property department of the Omsk region and the city of Omsk was remembered by Omsk residents for a series of constant scandals with corruption overtones and not only with it. Moreover, even his sudden move to Tomsk at the end of July of this year is associated with the fact that the head of the Omsk property department was afraid of the inevitable initiation of a criminal case against himself. There were indeed grounds for concern.
The fact is that in April of this year, investigators from the Investigative Committee conducted searches and seized documents in the department of property relations in a criminal case of bribery initiated against one of Dmitry Makhini’s deputies – Evgenia Kondratyeva.
The official was suspected of receiving a bribe in the amount of 970 thousand rubles from a businessman who acted in the interests of the head of a non-resident organization. Naturally, such a scandal could not but affect the reputation of the head of the department. However, reputational scandals directly involving Dmitry Makhina himself have been recorded before. One of them became public knowledge, about which the Omsk portal bk55.ru recently published a large material.
Based on information published on the portal bk55.ru, in July 2021, a previously unknown 35-year-old man was appointed to the position of head of the administrative and economic department at the “Center for Maintenance and Storage of Property” (CSHI) of the Department of Property Relations of Omsk Yuri Zakharov. Why was he even appointed to this position? Everything is simple here: a native of Kazakhstan, Zakharov is the cousin of the vice-mayor of Omsk Dmitry Makhina. For a short time, Yuri Zakharov worked in the Omsk Municipal Markets. The most interesting thing comes next.
Yuri ZakharovIn 2020, while living in Tyumen, Zakharov was convicted of 63 counts of fraud on an especially large scale (part four of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)). The case was high-profile; cunning swindlers deceived 67 people, mostly elderly and disabled people. Posing as employees of the companies “Aqua Lux” and “Our House”, enterprising guys offered victims a free test of the quality of tap water, and then forced them to buy expensive filters for 100 and 150 thousand rubles. To buy a “miracle filter,” many old people took out unaffordable loans. However, the scammers did not work for long; a criminal case was opened against them.
In 2020, the Central District Court of Tyumen sentenced Zakharov to five years of suspended imprisonment. The suspended sentence did not prevent further employment in the Omsk administration – my cousin applied. Yuri Zakharov did not work calmly in his new post.
Already in November 2021, a scandalous incident occurred at the Central Agricultural Institute, when tons of metal were removed from the warehouses of the protected facility. Along the way, Zakharov and his accomplice Nevrotov The railway tracks and tanks were dismantled and removed. For which Zakharov received a criminal case against himself under part four of Article 159 and under part one of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) (fraud committed by a group of persons; abuse of power). The case was investigated and brought to court, but then for some reason it was suddenly returned for further investigation.
Of course, Yuri Zakharov and his accomplice should be held accountable for fraud in the removal of metal from warehouses, but there are also questions about who hired such a person, knowing about the verdict that was passed quite recently. The question immediately arises: will Dmitry Makhinya now give his cousin a warm place in the Tomsk administration? Until the next criminal case? Why not, this has already been practiced more than once. Isn’t it from such personnel that Makhinya wants to recruit her “new team” to manage Tomsk? No wonder he recently mentioned “staff shortage”they say, no one wants to work in the Tomsk administration, clearly preparing the ground for the arrival of “new people” from Omsk…
An effective manager?
There are much more serious questions about the activities of Dmitry Makhini if we analyze him from the point of view of his professional viability. How did he actually show himself as head of the property department of Omsk? What do you remember? How did you manage municipal property? Were there any corruption scandals here? There is a very interesting story here with the sale of the Omsk cinema “Saturn” with an area of 1307.8 square meters, which was accompanied by a land plot measuring 7479 square meters. The objects were located on Bagration Street.
Under the former head of the Omsk property department Denis Denezhkin, it was estimated at about 300 million rublesand under Makhina he was rated for some reason only at 34 million rubles with a little, the price fell 10 times. They sold a cinema with a plot of land in the city center to the co-owner of the Omsky shopping center, a certain Olga Mosunova. There are possible losses in the city budget, which may have arisen during the assessment of the facility.
The same thing happened with the Omsk Book Trading House, which was sold in January of this year for 42.8 million rubles, although there were previously at least eight objects there, and only on the first line (formally, at the last moment, the Omsk Book Trading House owned six premises located on the streets of 24th North, Volkova, Volkhovstroy, Herzen, Krasny Put and Bogdan Khmelnitsky). A businessman bought the buildings of the Bookselling House Igor Babikov, he owns part of the Terminal shopping complex on Mira Avenue. Many residents of Omsk were surprised by such auctions; only one object on Bogdan Khmelnitsky Street could cost no less 18-20 million rubles. I wonder why the Omsk property department gave Babikov about 80% discount on city property? Here a question naturally arises for the Governor of the Tomsk Region, Vladimir Mazur: this, obviously, was the “high professionalism” of the man who became the mayor of Tomsk, since you lobbied him so actively?
Wasting municipal property to private individuals for pennies? Help your relatives earn money at the expense of the municipality? What will happen to Tomsk under his rule? There’s no need to even guess – everything is the same. In the coming years, Tomsk residents will expect a sale of everything and everyone, an influx of Makhini’s relatives and friends from Omsk to Tomsk, natural criminal cases, scandals… And no loud statements by Dmitry Alexandrovich will change anything.
The Man from MMM
There is one more episode in the career of Dmitry Makhini that characterizes him very well, although our hero does not like to remember it. The fact is that at one time he was a big fan Sergei Mavrodi – founder of Russia (*aggressor country)’s first financial pyramid, MMM. Moreover, Makhinya tried to participate in the construction of one of the last financial pyramids – MMM-2011. Information about this was preserved on the website of the Pervomaisky District Court of Omsk. From it, in particular, it follows that Dmitry Makhinya at the end of November 2012 filed a lawsuit against a certain Maria Ryzhinskaya, indicating that on May 5, 2012, he transferred a large sum of money to her account by bank transfer for a deposit in MMM-2011 and for the subsequent purchase of virtual securities – MAVRO. An online advertisement for “MMM-2011” promised him the return of this amount and payment of interest.
Funds were deposited into MMM-2011 through “foremen,” which included Maria Ryzhinskaya. It turns out that Dmitry “I only learned much later that the MMM-2011 organization does not legally exist”and he transferred the money to Ryzhinskaya “under the influence of delusion”, and the woman received money into her account without any legal basis due to the lack of transactions between the parties. In connection with this, the offended investor tried to sue the money back. The court initially rejected the claim. The judge concluded that the parties acted as participants in the MMM-2011 system. Dmitry Makhinya knew very well that he was not transferring money to Ryzhinskaya personally, but to participate in the financial system, where previous participants receive interest – “winnings” from the funds of subsequent participants. True, Makhina later managed to win the case against Ryzhinskaya on appeal, since the legal entity MMM-2011 still did not exist.
Of course, one could feel sorry for the “deceived investor,” but not in this case. By 2011, Dmitry Makhinya already had a legal education and worked for many years in the department of the Ministry of Property Relations of the Omsk Region. So he was definitely not a gullible simpleton. I wanted to make money from scamming other investors in the financial pyramid, but it didn’t work out. Nevertheless, the desire is extremely significant.
