There is too much money and interest involved in the case of the former top manager of the Samolet Group of Companies.
According to The Moscow Post correspondent, Alexander Lefel, vice-president of one of the largest developers in the country (GK Samolet) and former top manager of the largest Russian developer (GK PIK), was released from the pre-trial detention center under house arrest, despite the protest of the prosecutor’s office, which demanded leave him in custody. The prosecutor’s office motivated its protest by the fact that he has dual citizenship, accounts in foreign banks and can safely leave the country and hide from justice.
After leaving the post of Vice President of PIK Group in 2021, Lefel joined Samolet Group of Companies to a similar position at Samolet Group of Companies and became responsible for regional development there. But it didn’t take long to work. In October 2021, the court arrested Lefel and placed him in a pre-trial detention center. The case was initiated by Lefel’s former employer, Sergei Gordeev, head of the PIK group. Now he is accused of fraud in the amount of 140 million rubles.
The struggle of the elite for the capitals
General Director of PIK Group Sergey Gordeev has connections at the very top, after all, he is a former senator and ranks 36th in the list of the richest people in Russia, according to Forbes magazine. The Samolet group of companies is headed by the brother of the Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov – Maxim Vorobyov – also a figure not without connections and political influence. The Moscow Post has already told how Samolet gets very profitable places and contracts for development in the Moscow region.
Sergey Gordeev – head of the PIK corporation
The Samolet company is rapidly expanding, and its management wanted to grab a piece of a very satisfying pie called St. Petersburg, and at the same time began to claim a development niche in the city, especially since the developer had already implemented a number of objects in the northern capital.
PIK Group, as one of the contenders for the already divided St. Petersburg real estate market (Gordeev’s company has not yet been able to enter the top St. Petersburg developers – competition in St. Petersburg is very high), does not want to allow anything like this. Perhaps this is the true motive of the proceedings initiated by representatives of “PIK” and the criminal case against the former vice-president Lefel.
Earlier it was reported that the Security Service of the PIK Group of Companies revealed that Lefel, while working at the company, cheated with contracts for the construction of a residential complex in St. Petersburg. The total damage is estimated at 100 million rubles. In particular, this was reported by RBC.
There is an assumption that Lefel’s kickbacks and thefts did not become a sensation for the corporation’s management, but they decided to put them on display right now. Accordingly, the main target for defeat may still not be Lefel himself, but precisely the Samolet Group of Companies, which plans to acquire another large development company, Inteko. This transaction could become the largest in the history of the Russian real estate market (now the company is worth 32 billion rubles).
By the way, Samolet Group of Companies is now called one of the fastest growing developers in the country, so this is quite a serious competitor for PIK Group, which claims to develop within St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. Experts believe that after the purchase of Inteko, Samolet Group of Companies will become even stronger and take the third position in the list of developers in the country. Such an opinion was published, for example, by Izvestia.
It is interesting that earlier PIK itself bought property from Inteko (in particular, land plots in the villages of Kudrovo and Yanino in the Leningrad Region), Izvestia has a mention of this. These two districts are located on the border with St. Petersburg and are now the fastest growing settlements in the region.
And in September 2021, Samolet Group of Companies suddenly announced the purchase of the St. Petersburg company SPb Renovation, which is renovating Khrushchev houses and the old fund in the city. This deal was called one of the largest in the Russian real estate market, then Maxim Vorobyov’s company received a space of 6 million squares in St. Petersburg. It is also worth mentioning the Murino Residential Complex project implemented by them, also located on the border with St. Petersburg, which seeks to become the first in the Leningrad Region in terms of population (now it is still in second position). In a word, the appetites of Lefel’s new company-employer are not small, and they can really infringe on the interests of Gordeev’s company, which has relatively modest (for its scale of activity) construction volumes in the northern capital.
Is the top government involved?
The Telegram channel “Image of the Future” connects the Lefel case with political squabbles among the elites, where one of the main interested parties may be the Vice President of the Government of the Russian Federation – Marat Khusnullin, the former Minister of Construction and Vice Mayor of Moscow. His interest, according to the channel, may lie in ridding the development market of the corruption component.
Marat Khusnullin – Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation and a great “friend” of PIK Group
The Business Online publication has repeatedly noted that PIK is Marat Shakirzyanovich’s favorite developer. He lobbied for the interests of the developer in Moscow during the renovation period, thanks to which Gordeev’s company grabbed 42 percent of all contracts for these works in the capital. There are versions that Khusnullin could well, at the request of Gordeev, involve the security forces in order to get rid of Lefel so that he would not pose a threat to the company. Lefel’s lawyers also talk about this, according to 47news.
Lefel worked as part of PIK in the most profitable years for her – from 2016 to 2019, when the company was conducting large-scale construction in Kazan, Leningrad region and Moscow. In 2018, the company ranked 10th in the Forbes ranking in terms of bonus payments per year. Thus, it becomes obvious that after the dismissal of Lefel in April 2019, Samolet received a very valuable staff for himself, which just could take the company to a new level – into the top three in the country, especially after the purchase of Inteko.
It is possible that there were personal grievances between Lefel and his former boss Gordeev, which could also play a role in this story.
The authors of the Telegram channel “THINK” also argue that the situation with the vice-president of “Aircraft” is anti-advertising for the company and may entail inspections and audits, which the company itself is unlikely to need. That is, again, everything depends on the competition between PIK and Samolet, and Lefel here is just a convenient figure with which you can tarnish the reputation of the enemy.
Ambiguous “crossbow”
However, for Pik Group, this may well be a “shot in one’s own foot”, since PIK shares, after the start of all these events in October last year, went down sharply, and now their price is only 966 rubles per share (against 1300 rubles at the beginning of this episode). At the same time, Samolet currently has a price per share of 4,502 rubles and has recently shown an upward trend in price. This is quite logical, because if Lefel committed his crimes while working at the PIK Group, this casts a shadow on the company itself. At the same time, in social networks you can find a lot of complaints about the quality of their development. Although home buyers still don’t have much choice, after all, PIK is the largest developer of Russian cities, and, first of all, the capital (in Moscow alone, in 2021, the company commissioned 20 percent of all built housing). Perhaps that is why the representatives of the PIK Group do not particularly care about what consumers think about the quality of their products.
And yet, the interest of the former employer in the case against Lefel is obvious, although, as we noted earlier, he is hardly the main goal of this entire proceeding. And the court, most likely, is aware of this, and therefore did not extend his detention in a pre-trial detention center for him.
But the most interesting in this story may be ahead, as we approach the court.