Irkutsk businessman Belousov, who is tough on land issues, can enjoy the patronage of the timber merchant Timofey Kurgin, an accomplice in the murder of State Duma deputy Sergei Skorochkin.
According to the correspondent The Moscow Post in the Irkutsk region, this region seems to be stuck in time. In the third decade of the 21st century, the mores of the dashing 90s flourish there, including the criminal redistribution of territories, “protection” and racketeering. So, a massacre took place in the Leninsky district of Irkutsk – about 40 people armed with bats and other heavy objects surrounded a private house and stormed it. The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Irkutsk Region claims that the conflict occurred due to “litigation” – the newspaper writes “Taiga.Info”.
Return to the 90s
It would seem that the villagers had a fight, they didn’t share something … But not everything is so simple. The fact is that there is a serious struggle for power over the forest industry in the region. The main interest in this confrontation is a certain Sergei Belousov – the owner of such companies as Angarsk Forest, Intervostokdrev, Baraba, Igirma, Irkutsk Lespromkhoz, Woodexport.
The second participant in this struggle “on the other side of the ring” was the entrepreneur Alexei Kotelnikov (head of the Baikal Transit, ContinentForest, Baikal-Forost companies). As a result of a collision with bats, the latter was allegedly severely beaten – as the authors of the telegram channel claim “Irkutsk ring”. They also claim that allegedly Belousov’s business is “protected” by police department No. 8 of the city of Irkutsk, and the director of his companies Alexander Zarypov, a former prosecutor of the city of Shelekhov.
This situation has been going on for over a year now. Earlier on the YouTube channel of Sergey Petrov was posted video recording, on which Kotelnikov talks about how he owned a timber base for 20 years, and then Belousov allegedly appeared and began to take it away with the support of law enforcement officers who do nothing to prevent lawlessness. (However, according to other sources, the police did come to the scene of the attack and stopped the fight, but it’s still not clear whether its participants were detained or released, so he writes, as he writes “TVNZ”.
The reason for the conflict, according to Kotelnikov, was the territory on which the objects of his enterprise stand, or rather the fact that it belongs to another owner. He refuses to buy the objects or rent out this land, and numerous litigations also did not lead to anything for a long time.
“Eminence grise”
Who is this businessman Sergei Belousov, nicknamed “The Puppeteer”, who uses “methods from the 90s” to solve land issues?
According to the authors of the site Pikabu, allegedly Belousov is the “gray eminence” of the Irkutsk region, former security officials work for him. Its main business is timber export to China.
According to the authors of the site “Pokhabovsk”, allegedly ex-deputy regional prosecutor Roman Shergin was a close friend of Belousov. Allegedly, it was Sergei Belousov, in collusion with the deputy. Igor Kislitsyn, the head of the GUFSIN in the Irkutsk region, came up with and implemented a scheme for mass illegal deforestation transferred by the state to the FSIN in order to provide work for convicts.
However, as follows from an audio recording posted in the public domain, Belousov and Kislitsyn “resolved issues” with the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia and, instead of cutting wood to load more than 10 colonies, they began to sell wood from the plots and send it by train to China through a number of front companies . At the same time, according to the same documents, they exported 2-3 volumes of timber from the Russian Federation due to corruption by the customs officer at the Usolye-Sibirskoye post. More than 2,000,000,000 rubles worth of state forest was taken to China under corruption schemes of theft.
Coincidence? We don’t think…
Belousov has several companies, some of which are presumably registered with his wife Oksana Viktorovna Belousova. Interestingly, one of them, Woodexport, for example, is a participant in the state contract with FKU KP-39 OUHD GUFSIN of Russia in the Irkutsk Region for 8.6 million rubles.
At the same time, Belousov does not appear to be the nominal owner of the company, although the share of its second founder and part-time person with whom the contract was concluded (this is Alexander Zarypov) is pledged to him.
The connection with the Chinese side of the issue is guessed in the fact that the company affiliated with Belousov, in particular SIB LLC, was previously established by a certain Zhao Feng, and IVI LLC by Hou Meimei.
It is also interesting that several companies are associated with Belousov, the names of which are very reminiscent of those that the well-known businessman from Irkutsk Timofey Kurgin “gave” to the companies affiliated with him. We have repeatedly written about this timber merchant – his name is mentioned in the case of the murder of a deputy Skorochkina. By the way, Kurgin is actively suing our publication due to the fact that we do not turn a blind eye to some facts of his biography – read more about Kurgin’s claims and the court’s reaction in the material The Moscow Post. Let’s clarify right away: the journalists won the trial with him.
So, Kurgin is connected through the “National Association of Timber Industry “Russian Forest” with the company “LDK Igirma”, and Oksana Belousova (wife of Sergei Belousov), in turn, owns “Igirma”. The Timber company is affiliated with Belousov, and with Kurgin, in turn – “Timbertrans” and “Ind Timber”. Both entrepreneurs have people under the same surname in the composition of the heads of different companies (some Popovs work for one and the other).
However, confusion with names is Kurgin’s signature number. Not later than in May last year, during a trial with journalists, it became known that Kurgin had changed his name “Teimuraz” to “Timofei.” It can also be added here that he is known in certain circles as Timur Izmailovsky, as well as Timson.
On the part of Sergei “Puppeteer” Belousov, duplicating company names is hardly a simple imitation of someone you want to be like. Behind this, schemes for exporting timber abroad may well be hidden. However, neither the tax nor other law enforcement agencies seem to notice any oddities here …