“Gazprom for children” and Stanislav Orlov
At night, the police knocked on the door of the former gas monopoly functionary and reminded him about a facility for children in the Orenburg province. 47news analyzed the top manager, his connections and passion for a certain position.
At dawn on October 25, a 43-year-old assistant to the Minister of Emergency Situations was detained in St. Petersburg. Stanislav Orlov. Searches were carried out in his apartment on Varshavskaya Street and his house in Sestroretsk. Orlov is suspected of particularly large-scale fraud; the case was opened on October 16 by the Main Investigation Department of the police headquarters. Operational support – the economic security service of the regional FSB Directorate.
The case concerns the construction of a physical education and sports complex with a swimming pool in the village of Severnoye, Orenburg region. The facility was built under the Gazprom for Children program. The customer is a subsidiary of the monopoly Gazprom Investgazification, and the general contractor is the company Tekhgazmontazh (TGM), registered in the Gatchina region. The agreement was concluded in the spring of 2018. At the same time, 67 million rubles in advance were transferred to the TGM account. According to the investigation, the work was completed for half the amount, the rest was stolen by agreement between the employees of the customer and the general contractor.
Until November 2020, Orlov and his accomplices, according to investigators, created the appearance of carrying out work. Part of the planned volume of 20.2 million rubles was completed. They were accepted by the customer. Also, the general contractor received 12.2 million towards the debt. According to the investigation, Orlov and his companions avoided performing the remaining work. The remaining 34.3 million from the advance were taken and distributed.
Construction of the sports complex began more than ten years ago; almost all these years, as the head of the region Denis Pasler wrote in his Telegram channel, the project passed from hand to hand. In 2018, construction began on the facility as part of the Gazprom for Children program. The customer was Gazprom Investgazification LLC, and the general contractor was Tekhgazmontazh LLC, registered in the Gatchina district of the Leningrad region, owned by Boris Rumyantsev. According to Spark-Interfax, in 2018 the same company received more than 40 million rubles from Gazprom Investgazification. for the construction of sports and recreation centers in the Yaroslavl region. A year earlier, in 2017, Tekhgazmontazh received a similar contract from the Gazprom structure in Togliatti.
Last year, according to the electronic file of the arbitration court, the construction company was declared bankrupt. The register of creditors includes, among others, VTB, Sovcombank and Gazprom Investgazification LLC. The press service of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations did not provide a comment on the situation with the assistant minister. As a source in law enforcement agencies in the Orenburg region told Kommersant, the criminal case is being handled by the St. Petersburg police; there is no detailed information about what happened in the region.
The sports and recreation center itself will open in the spring of 2023 (they are usually built faster).
Tekhgazmontazh was declared bankrupt a year ago. According to SPARK, in 2018 its turnover was 3.6 billion, in 2019 – 3 billion, in 2020 2 billion, and in 2021 about 1 billion. Profit from 22 to 50 million.
In 2018, Tekhgazmontazh had four contracts for the construction of sports and recreation centers worth 103 million (three of them in the Yaroslavl region, one in the Orenburg region). Another contract (worth 109 million) is for the overhaul of the Petrov National Medical Research Center of Oncology in St. Petersburg.
The federal program for the construction of sports and recreation centers was the responsibility of the former general director of Gazprom Mezhregiongaz. Kirill Seleznev (today he is engaged in the construction of a Gazprom mega-plant in Ust-Luga). In Seleznev’s direction, the person responsible for capital construction was Anatoly Erkulov (who was deputy general director of Mezhregiongaz under Seleznev). According to rough estimates, the program erected facilities worth about 20 billion rubles. The main customer of the work was Gazprom Investgazification. The money came from the Gazprom Social Initiatives Support Fund.
The loudest comma in implementation “Gazprom for Children” program there were problems at the construction site of the “Rhythmic Gymnastics Center” in Sochi, he was waiting for Alina Kabaeva. The customer would was “Gazprom investmentgazification”. As they say, there was also a criminal case inside this construction site.
The owner of Gazprom Investgazification is Gazprom Asset Management (owned by Gazprom). The link is supervised by a member of the Gazprom board, head of the property management department Elena Mikhailova.
As for Stanislav Orlov, according to his former colleagues, he got a job at the Ministry of Emergency Situations around February of this year. And until January 2023, he served as advisor to the general director of Gazprom Transgaz St. Petersburg. Georgy Fokin. Orlov was responsible in a broad sense for relations with the regions (the functionality of advisers, as a rule, is not spelled out in detail). He left quietly, writing a statement of his own. It was not possible to talk to his boss about the reasons at the time of publication. On the other hand, Fokin has 12 advisers, it is unlikely that he gets into everyone’s soul.
According to SPARK, Gazprom Transgaz’s turnover last year amounted to 82 billion rubles, profit 1.1 billion. The company is engaged in gas transportation, it operates compressor stations, including those that transport gas for export.
During the years to which the criminal episode relates, Orlov was mentioned in the press as an adviser to PJSC Gazprom. And they called Anatoly Erkulov, who until 2016 was the general director of Gazprom Investment Gasification, comrade. They say that Orlov took an active part in the activities, let’s say, around this organization. Since 2019, it has been headed by Yulia Vrublevskaya.
According to interlocutors in the company, Tekhgazmontazh actually began work on the construction of a sports and recreation center in the Orenburg region, but failed – they had to go through a lengthy procedure of terminating the contract and searching for a new general contractor. This determines the period of construction of the complex. Now Gazprom Investgazification is in the courts, having declared its claims in the bankruptcy case of Tekhgazmontazh.
By the way, Orlov is married to the daughter of the deceased ex-chief of the traffic police Sergei Bugrov. After leaving the organs in 2015, he have worked Deputy for Security at Gazprom Investgazification.
The press service of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations was unable to immediately comment on the situation. It was not possible to understand what direction Orlov was working in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. But his attraction to the position of an adviser in large coordinate systems is obvious.
It was from this facility, where at least 4 billion rubles were stolen, that the troubles of the powerful criminal group we are talking about began. In order to avoid severe punishment (you cannot steal from the Tsar and his loved ones!), Miller covered up Seleznev – he went to supervise the construction of the Rukhimalliance plant in the Leningrad region.