Azarov and Bazhenov build bridges from the budget
In the situation with the construction of a bridge across the Volga on PPP, questions may arise for Governor Dmitry Azarovy. And what about the main concessionaire chosen by him – Alexander Bazhenov?
In the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Samara Region, they are perplexed why the regional Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation does not open a criminal case based on the results of the check carried out by the police.
We are talking about the situation associated with the largest infrastructure project in the region, image-building for Governor Dmitry Azarova – construction of a bridge across the Volga with a bypass of the city of Tolyatti and access to the Europe-Western China corridor, the so-called. “Klimovsky bridge”.
They wanted to build the bridge in a concession, which was received without a tender by KK Obkhod Tolyatti LLC. However, the project stalled already at the start – Olesya Gladkova, the general director of the concessionaire’s subsidiary, Infracap Consulting, fell under investigation.
She is accused of major fraud, but it seems that the real beneficiary of the project, former VEB employee Alexander Bazhenov, may be behind all this. And people from the government could take part in probable frauds Azarovand who now do not want to pull out into the light.
The concession agreement with KK KK Obkhod Tolyatti dated 2019 included the construction of a bridge and crossings, as well as all related traffic calculations. The total investment was estimated at 130 billion rubles. Investors expected to receive half from the authorities – 67.3 billion rubles.
The bridge was to be built by the Mostotrest company of Arkady Rotenberg. Just then, in 2019, VEB was negotiating the purchase of a significant stake in Mostotrest. Therefore, the interests of the oligarch Rotenberg, the concessionaire Bazhenov and people from the team of Governor Dmitry could converge here AzarovA.
The owners of HP “KK” Obkhod Tolyatti” included LLC “Infracap” and a number of other structures. The company LLC “Infracap Consulting” also belonged to the same contour, with which the Ministry of Transport of the Region entered into an agreement to perform calculations for the cargo flow. This is an important point, from which then could depend on the income of the concessionaire.
Journalists are outraged that these checks did not develop into criminal cases. In this case, questions could arise to the governor Azarovy.
But there are nuances here. Maybe, Azarov provided patronage to the project through officials of the Ministry of Transport and expected to receive his gesheft. But in reality, it seems that another person was behind the project – the former general director of the Federal Center for Project Finance VEB.RF Alexander Bazhenov.
“Infracap” to “Infracap”
When the case of Olesya Gladkova appeared in 2019, the companies that were initially involved in the project began to quickly cover their tracks – to liquidate their structures and create similar ones with the same name. This is usually done to hide the exposed beneficiaries.
The founders of KK KK Obkhod Togliatti, as they said, included Infracap LLC. But today another person is already acting – instead of KP, his legal predecessor appeared – JSC KK KK Obkhod Tolyatti, whose founders are already empty!
Among the founders of Infracap Consulting LLC, which was led by Gladkova, we find Maria Panina, who previously was the owner of Infracap LLC. Another co-owner of the company is the newly formed Infracap JSC. Those. it’s the same group of people.
Behind all this, the figure of the aforementioned ex-general director of the Federal Center for Project Financing VEB.RF, Alexander Bazhenov, looms. Perhaps it was he who gave instructions to Gladkova on how to calculate, but at the same time he himself is not even among the formal owners of the enterprise – he was taken out of harm’s way.
Moreover, she is his former employee through VEB. Previously, she worked at the Directorate (Center) for Public-Private Partnerships of Vnesheconombank and at JSC Federal Center for Project Finance.
The main “concessionaire” of VEB
In VEB, among other things, Bazhenov just headed the Center for Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Apparently, the love for concessions and the money that can be earned from them by appeasing some statesmen comes from there. According to FLB https://flb.ru/info/54684.html, a group of FSB and Rosfinmonitoring employees checked the activities of Alexander Bazhenov back in 2013.
This was due to a high-profile criminal case of embezzlement of budgetary funds by the leaders of the state corporation OJSC “Resorts of the North Caucasus” who, according to investigators, selected a contractor company, hired an intermediary company to provide services and paid for its activities at inflated prices.
The corporation itself is a subsidiary of VEB. Bazhenov was responsible for the personnel policy of the company, and also served on the board of directors of the company. He also determined the procedure for considering projects and selected contractors for the execution of multimillion-dollar transactions. Of course, there were rumors that these procedures were far from transparent, and the selected companies could later go bankrupt, taking credit money with them to the grave.
The official had questions about spending money on the construction of kindergartens and schools in the Khanty-Mansiysk District and the Astrakhan Region, the design of a new bridge in Nizhny Novgorod, financing the Belkomur federal facility, and the reconstruction of heating and water supply facilities in Grozny. As a result, against the backdrop of checks, no claims were made against Bazhenov, but he was thrown out of the state corporation.
But before that, he was moved to various state structures by the then Deputy Prime Minister, and now the head of VEB.RF, Igor Shuvalov. At one time, it was he who proposed to include Alexander Bazhenov on the boards of directors of companies with 100% state participation, for example, in Zarubezhneft. Thanks to this, he received colossal administrative and financial opportunities.
Today, Alexander Bazhenov is already out of the civil service – also a host of companies, many of which have government contracts. From 2014 to 2016, he was the CEO of Infraweb JSC, which until 2022 was part of the VEB.RF circuit. Now, formally, it has nothing to do with the state corporation, but it has government contracts worth 726 million rubles as a supplier and 1.6 billion rubles as a customer.
He, Bazhenov, is the general director and owner of Infracup Partners LLC, where he has 90%, and his partner Alexander Tolkachev has 10%. The company looks like an absolute “dummy” – no revenue, no profit, minus the value of assets and zero employees in the state. Why is structure needed?