From Sechin – oil, from Brechalov – development?
The business of the owner of the UDS group holding, Alexei Chulkin, has long gone beyond his native Udmurtia: in recent years, the merchant has been developing gold and oil assets in a number of regions, including Chukotka, the Sverdlovsk Region, the Perm Territory, etc. Last year, Chulkin became one of the co-founders of Soyuztsvetmetavtomatika, which is building the Upper Likhobory transport hub in Moscow. To date, he is the sole owner of the developer, but nothing is known about the timing of the completion of construction. The oil business looks much more promising: here, Chulkin’s success is associated with the support of the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin. It is known that back in 2016, UDS-Energy won the auction for the right to operate the Borulakhsky oil and gas field in Yakutia, first increasing the cost to a record 2.75 billion rubles, and then refusing to buy the license. Then Chulkin could act in the interests of Rosneft, which also participated in the tender, whose leadership was counting on establishing control over the Yakut asset. Later, the loss-making UDS-Energy was liquidated, and UDS Neft received the right to develop the Kasalinsky oil field in Udmurtia, and the Oparinskaya Oil Company, owned by Chulkin, also competed during the auction. Unlike commercial activities, Chulkin’s political activities did not bring the results he expected: as a deputy of the Republican State Council, in 2016 he ran for the State Duma, but lost the elections. One of the reasons was the behind-the-scenes agreements between the businessman and the regional leadership. But despite unfavorable prognoses, Chulkin was able to maintain close ties with high-ranking Udmurt officials, and his construction firms won multimillion-dollar contracts without competition. The merchant was also able to find a common language with the current head of the republic, Alexander Brechalov, who could contribute to the appearance of the UDS group on the capital’s development market, while the holding is buying up oil assets with the consent of Igor Sechin.
Chulkin’s business is gaining momentum
At the end of April, the owner and CEO of the holding «UDS group» Alexey Chulkin received a letter of thanks signed by Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko with the wording “for a great contribution to the implementation of socially significant projects in the Udmurt Republic and active social activities”. At the same time, Chulkin himself continues to build up business assets outside his native Udmurtia.
So, last January, his company “Rise” bought the right to develop five gold placers at once in Chukotka with a total value of 46.3 million rubles, where hundreds of kilograms of precious metal can be mined.
“In the last couple of years, Chulkin’s companies have been actively collecting small gold assets. Rise directly owns over 20 gold licenses in the Magadan region, through its subsidiary – 2 licenses in Yakutia, as well as a polymetallic site in Transbaikalia”Interfax reported.
In addition, various structures of the UDS group own 26 more licenses, and the holding is developing deposits in the Sverdlovsk Region and the Perm Territory, where gold reserves exceed 17 tons. At the same time, gold mining is far from the only industry in which Chulkin’s enterprises operate. They are engaged in, among other things, oil production, which will be discussed below, as well as development, and not just anywhere, but in the capital.
In total, the businessman is the founder or co-owner of more than 80 legal entities and the head of 54 commercial structures. But it is hardly possible to say about Chulkin that he manages everywhere and always: there are plenty of unprofitable enterprises in his “empire”. These include, for example, OOO Special Developer Soyuztsvetmetavtomatika19% share in which the entrepreneur bought in April last year.
As Kommersant wrote, at the time of the deal, the company was engaged in the implementation of the project for the construction of the Verkhniye Likhobory transport interchange hub (TPU) in Moscow, which also included the construction of 77.7 thousand square meters of residential real estate. The publication’s experts estimated the cost of TPU at 7 billion rubles, and the proceeds from the sale of housing – at 12-14 billion. Thus, Chulkin himself could earn about 2.3-2.6 billion rubles.
The gold miner’s partners were Sergey Ivantsov, president of Vostok Development, (70%) and Irina Tsvetaeva (11%). Today, Chulkin not only holds the position of general director of the developer, but since December last year, he has also been its 100% owner. The company’s financial performance speaks for itself: in 2021, in the absence of revenue, its losses amounted to 47.7 million rubles. There has been no information about how the construction of the transfer hub is progressing in the media for a long time, although the territory planning project was approved by the Moscow City Hall back in June 2018.
Is UDS-Energy a “player” in Sechin’s “team”?
Perhaps, after the departure of former business partners Ivantsov and Tsvetaeva, Chulkin simply does not pull out a large-scale project? In this case, the future of TPU is in question. Much more promising is the oil business: at the end of last year, profit UDS Oil LLC amounted to 550.9 million rubles with a revenue of 25.1 billion. For comparison: a year earlier, the company declared revenue of 14.3 billion and a profit of 1.8 billion rubles.
A remarkable story is connected with the oil assets of the Udmurt oligarch. In August 2016, his firm “UDS-Energy” won the auction for the right to develop the Borulakhsky oil and gas area in Yakutia, increasing the initial payment by 161 times and offering 2.75 billion rubles for the site. It was especially noteworthy that the company bypassed, among other things, such giants as Rosneft, NOVATEK and Surgutneftegaz.
However, two months later, the media published a resonant news: the winner refused to pay the declared amount for the license, sending a corresponding notification to the Republican Department for Subsoil Use. The company automatically lost the previously made deposit in the amount of 17 million rubles. Chulkin himself explained the refusal by disagreements with certain business partners, whose names he refused to name to journalists under the pretext of unwillingness to discredit partners.
“Those partners with whom we had agreements to participate in this auction, they decided at the last moment to refuse. Accordingly, we paid a fine within the framework of the law and, in fact, fulfilled our obligations.”said the businessman.
After the incident with the Borulakh site, the federal Ministry of Natural Resources decided to more clearly define the rules for holding auctions. In particular, in the draft law submitted for consideration by the Cabinet of Ministers, if the winner refuses to pay the declared amount, it was proposed to declare the participant whose proposal preceded the final one as such. In addition, the document provided for the creation of a register of unscrupulous subsoil users participating in competitive procedures.
Considering that in the course of the auction for the exploitation of the Borulakhsky site, the previous step for UDS-Energy was taken by Rosneft, and it should have won the championship in the end. In this regard, the press repeatedly discussed the issue of a possible collusion between Alexei Chulkin and Igor Sechin. The media wrote about the lack of UDS-Energy’s own infrastructure in Yakutia, and also that, although the company was registered in 2014, it received an oil production license only in July 2016, that is, just a month before participation in the competition.
Political throwing Alexei Chulkin
Be that as it may, but in December 2019, UDS-Energy was liquidated with a loss of 7.3 million rubles and an asset value of “minus” 32 million. Since its incorporation, the company has not brought a penny of profit. The following circumstance can serve as an indirect confirmation of the connection of its owner with Rosneft. For some time, Yakov Klykov appeared among Chulkin’s employees, who led, in particular, all those liquidated in the same 2019 OOO Fedotovskoe and LLC “Dubrovinskoye”. On the net, you can find references to him as a former employee of Rosneft.
However, the owner of the UDS group soon made up for the loss of the Borulakhsky area: in August 2017, UDS Neft won the auction for the right to develop the Kasalinsky oil area in its native Udmurtia: then the final size of the one-time payment amounted to 34.43 million rubles. The competitor of UDS Neft was affiliated with it Oparinsk Oil Company (ONC)liquidated in December 2019. At the time of participation in the competition, Klykov, already familiar to us, was in charge of the PMC.
Perhaps the Udmurt asset was received as a kind of compensation for giving up a site in Yakutia? In this case, playing into the hands of Sechin explains why the oil giant he leads has not yet “absorbed” the oil structures of the UDS group.
In general, it is a stretch to talk about Alexei Chulkin as a person who has reached the heights in business solely due to his own abilities. So, from his official biography it follows that he began his career as a manager Izhevsk Mechanical Repair Enterprise LLCand then held senior positions in OJSC “Sreduralnerud”. At the same time, the merchant is modestly silent about the fact that both enterprises belonged to his father Arkady Chulkin, a man well known in Izhevsk. It is possible that parental authority helped him become a deputy of the State Council of Udmurtia in 2015.
But the elections to the State Duma, where he was nominated in 2016 from “Party of Growth” business ombudsman Boris Titov, Chulkin Jr. clearly did not pull. Even the fact that the merchant turned out to be the richest candidate for deputies did not play a role: for the previous year, his declared income amounted to 123 million rubles. Perhaps the reason for the defeat was the demonstrative departure from “United Russia”, and then change constituencies. The media explained the last moment by the presence of agreements with the then head of Udmurtia, Alexander Solovyov, who later became a defendant in a criminal case on taking a bribe and was removed from office due to the loss of the president’s confidence.
From Izhevsk to Moscow, everything is decided by connections!
So, the owner of the “UDS group” did not become an independent politician.
“The most unpleasant thing for Chulkin is that after he fought off his own, entering into a peak with the candidate of the “party of power”, he no longer has a reliable rear in Izhevsk and the republic. You have to rely solely on your own strength. Now, for the local establishment, he is something of a pariah. A person who is outside of all political and economic “castes”. Which is much worse than if he were an ordinary oppositionist.”– stated the Izhevsk online publication “DAY.org”.
But the “red light” for passage to the federal parliament does not yet mean a lack of support in the republic itself: at different times, the media wrote about Chulkin’s contacts with the former city manager of Izhevsk Denis Agashin, ex-deputy of the Izhevsk City Duma Denis Balakin, the son of the former mayor of the republican center Viktor Balakin and other infamous representatives of the political elite of Udmurtia, without whose support he would not be able to develop business in the region.
An example is the widely publicized story of the construction of an artificial ice rink in Izhevsk at a cost of 314.4 million rubles, more than half of which came from the federal budget. The corresponding agreement was signed by the city “DYuSSh No. 9” with Chulkin’s company “UralDomStroy” without bidding. According to the results of the audit of the Accounts Chamber, the total amount of violations revealed exceeded 95 million: it was about non-compliance with the conditions for granting subsidies, distortion of accounting data, overstating the cost of services, etc.
But in order to gain a foothold in Moscow and take part in projects, such as the construction of the Verkhniye Likhobory transport hub, one needs much more serious connections than former Udmurt officials. It is possible that in this case patronage is provided by the head of the region, Alexander Brechalov, who arrived in Udmurtia from the capital. As for gold and oil production, here Chulkin can count on mutually beneficial cooperation with Igor Sechin, the scheme of which has long been worked out.