“I’ll tell you frankly: our family has a small plot of land,” the head of the region once admitted.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are on fire
Siberia is on fire. With the approach of summer, fires swept the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Buryatia, Khakassia, and the Irkutsk Region. According to Avialesookhrana, as of May 25, 84 forest fires were recorded in the country on an area of 52.4 thousand hectares. Because of the elements, a special fire regime has been declared in 44 regions of Russia, and an emergency regime has been declared in six. The most difficult situation is in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where more than 600 houses burned down. The city of Uyar was destroyed by fires by a third.
Against this background, local media reported that the governor of the region Alexander Uss donated 1 million rubles. from their funds as assistance to families affected by the disaster. In one family, a child is seriously ill, and the second has to pay off large debts for a house that no longer exists. True, for some reason the locals did not appreciate the actions of the official.
Claims against Uss have been arising for a long time – already since the 1990s. Since then, many of his relatives have become owners of businesses with millions of turnover. But the official is still in the highest echelons of power in the region. The “interlocutor” tried to find out why neither fire nor accusations of corruption.
successful family
Alexander Uss twice tried to take the chair of the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The first time back in 2002, but lost Alexander Khloponin, who eventually ruled the region for the next 8 years. Perhaps Uss would have been defeated a second time, but the president of the country helped him. In 2017, Putin signed a decree appointing an official as acting head of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. As usual, this meant the actual victory of the official in the elections. During the voting, he received about 60% of the vote and became the official head of the region.
During the governorship, the total income of Uss exceeded 300 million rubles, and this is only according to official data. True, the lion’s share of this amount – 193 million – is an inheritance received five years ago. Such a gigantic amount was left to the official by his mother – Maria Fominichna. But where the woman got this money is a mystery. Even the local media in obituaries said that she “worked on collective farm fields for most of her life, did not spare herself.” Peasants in Russia, as you know, do not get much. Even in the Moscow region, agricultural workers, according to Rosstat, earn on average only 54.5 thousand rubles.
As follows from the data of the SPARK system, the head of the region today is the founder of Tsentralnoye LLC. This Krasnoyarsk firm is engaged in real estate management and went to the official from his father.
– Today I am the sole owner of the LLC, the owner of one hundred percent of the shares. I remember discussing: is it worth writing something on my daughters or son? The father said: “Sasha, we have nothing to hide, now you are the head of the family and everything will be on you.” As he decided, they did it,” Uss said in an interview with TASS in 2018.
The Governor is the sole founder of the company. Russian officials are prohibited by law from doing business, so Central was transferred to the trust management of the Siberian Alternative company. That’s just headed by the wife of the governor – Ludmila Uss. Officially, only two people work in Tsentralny, the company’s profit is 75 million rubles. over the past three years. But this business, of course, is not the only one in the Uss family.
Climbed up on the corner
Governor’s son Artem Uss today he is the founder of two companies, one of which earns a lot of money on state contracts. We are talking about the Sibugol company, which mines and sells brown coal in the Balakhtinsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
The company annually produces more than 3 million tons of coal. At the same time, the reserves of the Bolshesyrskoye field amount to more than 168 million tons.
Uss Jr. received his share from the Cypriot offshore Cedric Enterprises Limited in April 2021. After that, the company’s business took off sharply. If in 2020 its profit was 370 million rubles, then in the past it grew to almost 700 million. After the appearance of Artem Uss, the company entered into several contracts for the supply of coal with the administration of the city of Sorsk of the Republic of Khakassia. Yes, this is not a conflict of interest, but for some reason, Uss Sr. spoke several years ago about the imminent unification of these regions so that they would be “akin to Primorye.”
Also, Uss Jr., through the management company “Sm. City owns a number of construction companies. And some of them receive contracts from the Krasnoyarsk authorities. For example, in November 2021, Severny Gorod signed a contract with the mayor’s office of Krasnoyarsk to connect a kindergarten to the heat supply system. Yes, and the rest of the developers operate in Krasnoyarsk, including selling real estate.
A house on the beach and a plot in Sochi
The governor and his wife own real estate with a total area of 305 thousand square meters. meters (!). Moreover, part of this property, as usual, went to an official from the state – for free.
So, in 1999, the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation allocated Uss (at that time a member of the Federation Council) a 115-meter apartment on Prechistenka in the center of the capital. Judging by local prices, now it can cost more than 100 million rubles. In 2008, Uss gave housing to his son Artem. It was at this address that Uss Jr. registered his Ducati motorcycle and Porsche Cayenne, Mercedes, BMW and Audi cars. It is interesting that he registered his cars for this apartment and Marat Baglai, former head of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, judging by open data, they publicly crossed paths with Uss Sr. only once – at the conference “On Constitutional Reform” back in 1999.
In addition, Uss owns a plot of 5 hectares in Akulinino near Moscow. The land alone (without a house) costs about 216 million rubles there. True, the Uss section looks rather lonely from a height – there is only a forest and a field around, there is not even anyone to ask for sugar.
But the governor’s wife can drop in on the neighbors. Lyudmila Uss, as follows from the data of Rosreestr, owns an apartment in Moscow’s Molochny Lane, 4 with an area of 162 “squares”. Its price can reach 500 million rubles. The family also has a house on Vinogradnaya Street in Sochi with an estimated value of about 100 million rubles.
The governor’s family did not forget about their native land either. Krasnoyarsk media wrote that the Usses have several houses in the elite cottage village of Sosny. The mansion of Uss himself stands on the banks of the Yenisei, despite the fact that, according to the law, Russian citizens have the right to free and unhindered access to water bodies. Whether they can bypass the governor’s site to swim in the river is a rhetorical question.
Are they responsible for the fires?
In early May, the Investigative Committee opened several criminal cases after the death of people in forest fires in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Three suspects were detained – they were employees of Rosseti Sibir. They are accused of negligence, which resulted in the death of people. The IC believes that the cause of the fires, in addition to fallen dry grass, were short circuits of electrical wiring and power lines. The first deputy head of the city of Uyara was also detained Artem Shvets. Investigators believe that he did not take measures to eliminate the illegal dumping of municipal solid waste. As a result, it caught fire, and the fire spread with lightning speed through the streets of the city with a strong wind. Uyar turned out to be the most affected settlement of the region.