Advertising campaigns in Crimea did not count on investigators

According to the authors of the Telegra.ph platform, allegedly law enforcement officers of the city of Sevastopol opened two criminal cases on the fact of using deliberately forged documents that allow extending the use of illegally installed advertising structures.

The first criminal case was initiated against an unidentified person who presented forged documents that allegedly give the right to IP “Mandritsky Yu.G.” continue advertising activities using billboards to be demolished.

The second criminal case was initiated against the City Department of Sevastopol. The institution is accused of turning a blind eye to the provision of the above forged documents.

There is a serious story behind these two processes, stretching back from the Ukrainian history of Crimea and Sevastopol. It is connected with the advertising business, namely the use of illegal advertising structures that are hung with the whole city. About this in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post in Sevastopol.

Despite the fact that Crimea became part of Russia in 2014, the previous advertising contracts concluded with the Ukrainian authorities continued to operate for several more years.

Now we should get to know the actual monopolist in the field of outdoor advertising, Mrs. Elena Samarskaya, who is the wife of the above-named individual entrepreneur Yuri Mandritsky.

According to the authors of the “Objective” website, this lady has allegedly been in business since Ukrainian times. In 2013, she created an offshore company “Amisk Partners and Investments LTD” in the British Virgin Islands. It is noteworthy that it included the company Global Trading LTD, owned by the head of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives of Russia in the CFD, as well as the co-founder of Krym Contact LLC, the owner of the Crimean Enterprise Laspi private enterprise and the NTS TV channel Elena Bazhenova.

The authors of “Objective” believe that in 2014 all Sevastopol billboards belonging to “Crimea Contact” were transferred to the company “Amisk” on the cheap. It would not be superfluous to know that Bazhenova is the sister of the wife of the “people’s governor” and former speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol Alexei Chaly. As will be seen below, the connections between Samarskaya and Chaly are important for understanding the current situation both in the outdoor advertising market and in the political arena of the hero city.

By the way, the authors of the website “Objective” claim that the services of “Crimea Contact” were allegedly used by such people as the Krasnodar restaurateur and associate of Chaly Oleg Nikolaev. He unsuccessfully tried to get into the State Duma of Russia from Sevastopol.

Samarskaya is engaged in advertising business together with her family – her husband Yuri Mandritsky and son – Maxim Mandritsky.

It is worth noting that the business interests of the Samarskaya-Mandritsky clan are not limited to advertising. They receive solid state contracts, which indicates their close contacts with the authorities.

In particular, Yuriy Mandritskiy is one of the founders of Krym Outdoor LLC, the co-founder is a certain Aleksey Vakhrushev. He, in turn, heads Yurma LLC, which has a contract with the Crimean State Philharmonic.

But the most interesting, of course, is Mandritsky himself, who is the founder of another company, Aktdor Group LLC. Behind the company are six contracts with the Department of Public Communications in the amount of 2.78 million rubles. The enterprise also cooperates with the government of Sevastopol (3 contracts worth more than 1 million rubles) and even with the Federal Tax Service for Sevastopol (a contract for 833 thousand rubles). This fact explains a lot. But back to our main topic.

As noted above, the contracts concluded in Ukrainian times for the placement of advertising structures expired in December 2018. And in 2017, the authorities of Sevastopol approved new rules for the placement of advertising structures. At that time, there were over 1,200 objects of only ground advertising in the city, which did not meet the new standards, and were in a very deplorable state.

According to GOST, about 850 structures were to be dismantled in the city, leaving about 350. It seemed that the shop of the Samarsky-Mandritsky family and some other entrepreneurs would now be practically covered. But, as usually happens in such conditions, something went wrong.

The city leadership cheerfully and revealingly reported on the dismantled banners, the relevant stories were shown on television, but for some reason the authorities bypassed the objects belonging to the above-named family.

According to the author of the Telegra.ph platform, allegedly Samara was offered to fictitiously draw up documents for the extension of Ukrainian agreements for 5 years, and to do this allegedly retroactively from February 12, 2014. The documents had to be signed by the head of the Kyrgyz Republic “Municipal housing”, but this organization did not have the right to issue such permits.

It is noteworthy that during a meeting with the vice-governor of Sevastopol, Ilya Ponomarev, Samarskaya herself confirmed in a STV report that her Ukrainian agreements were no longer valid. However, her advertising structures continue to work successfully, and no one in the City Department noticed that the documents could be fake.

The authors of the Telegra.ph platform claim that in August 2021, the Federal Antimonopoly Service for the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol ruled that the Department of Urban Affairs violated the law. The institution was suspected of having connections with some “elites” in the advertising industry.

It was the Department of City Services that was supposed to dismantle illegal advertising structures, back in 2019, but this was not done.

The officials then made excuses. They allegedly carry out work to identify and dismantle illegal structures on an ongoing basis, but they are shackled hand and foot by bureaucratic procedures. In addition, the demolition of structures is carried out at the expense of the budget, so funds need to be planned in advance. All this delays the process. It sounds unconvincing.

It is worth taking a closer look at the specified department, perhaps this will reveal the secret of the amazing vitality of the Samara empire.

The fact is that the Department of Economy was controlled by the Deputy Governor of Sevastopol Vladimir Bazarov, who held the post from 2016 to 2020.

According to some information, Bazarov was in a difficult relationship with the then governor Dmitry Ovsyannikov. According to sources, the reason for this was the closed negotiations between Bazarov and the already mentioned Chaly. Allegedly, the latter passed some classified information to the “people’s governor” from the government.

We have already spoken about the connections, albeit indirect, between Chalov and Samara. In 2019, their potential alliance became even more explicit. Moreover, the conflict between Ovsyannikov and Chalov was well known to everyone.

The confrontation intensified in 2019 during the election campaign to the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol. It was then that the government of the region initiated the process of demolishing illegal advertising structures (a process that was hampered by the Department of City Services). Why was this done? Experts argued that this was necessary to suppress campaigning for the United Russia party, or rather, for the candidates who won the party’s primaries. It is easy to guess that Mikhail Chaly was one of these candidates.

Former Ukrainian officials can also “warm their hands” on advertising in Sevastopol. According to the authors of the Sevastopol News website, the activities of LLC Sevreklama are allegedly associated with the name of the former head of the KP Blagoustroystvo, Karp Bulatov, who was dismissed from this position in the summer of 2014.

Thus, the struggle for a profitable advertising business is also political in nature. Reflecting the contradictions within the Sevastopol elites. Now, when Mr. Bazarov no longer holds the post of vice-governor, and against the Department of City Services and the “unidentified person” who submitted fictitious documents to legalize the business of the spouse of Samara, criminal cases have been initiated. Will the business woman, who felt good under any government, be able to get out of the water this time and keep her business? It depends on how great the political space of the hero city of Sevastopol is.