Stuck in the 90s
Scandal after scandal is unfolding in the Irkutsk region: one gets the impression that the region has never emerged from the last decade of the last century, and, perhaps, the general and deputy governor Andrei Bunev, who previously headed the regional department of the Investigative Committee, played a significant role in this.
The second episode of the film about Andrey Bunev, created by the legal leviathan investigative project. The deputy governor of the Irkutsk region may be associated with the Russian Forest Group: in the region, the timber company is known for not the cleanest methods of dealing with competitors – in other words, it, resorting to the help of loyal officials, took over the business of local entrepreneurs.
Here is a striking example of working with partners – the forester’s case Shlykova from the city of Zima. Presumably, the reason for initiating a criminal case was only that Shlykov entered into an information that was deliberately hidden by the former Minister of Forestry of the Irkutsk Region Sergei Sheverda an auction, the subject of which were very attractive plots – they were planned to be given to the Russian Forestry Group, and the deputy governor, apparently, personally supervised the process. Only federal security forces managed to stop the distribution, who detained Sheverda at the airport. Subsequently, the former minister received a sentence for illegal logging in the reserve under the guise of sanitary work, but did not name the other participants in the scheme.
Everything looks as if it is influencing the power structures. How else can we explain that the Sheverda case was so quickly hushed up, and the further chain remained unsolved?
Help in absorbing competitors to their partners from the Russian Forest Group could have come from Bunev. At some point, timber merchants became interested in the Angara company, which has a rich logging base.
“Angare” seemed to have set a trap. The “daughter” of the Russian Forestry Group invited the company to take over its site and begin cutting down trees here, offering an advance payment of 300 million rubles and assuring that there was permission to cut down. The work began, but it turned out that everything was not so simple.
There were difficulties with the felling ticket. In the video, journalists say that forestry employees destroyed the document. This, it seems, played into the hands of the “Russian Forestry Group”, and “Angara” actually found itself in the status of a “black lumberjack”, since it cut down the forest without permission. A criminal case was opened against the director of the company for illegal logging. The next step was to plant the latter, and it was assumed that the company in this case could go to the Russian Forest Group for symbolic money. If everything was orchestrated from above, then it would not go without gratitude.
But the head of Angara found a duplicate of the logging ticket, which he showed to the security forces who came to conduct the search. Then, apparently, the “Russian Forestry Group” itself cut down part of the forest located outside the site, and they blamed “Angara” for this.
Moreover, a new case was opened against the director of the company – about an incorrect VAT refund – the same was initiated against Shlykov. This may indicate that the person in charge of this process has strong connections with the tax office. What is this if not an organized group of officials who abuse their powers? The assumption about Andrei Bunev’s attitude to the process looks plausible – after all, he has experience working in law enforcement agencies and in the regional administration.
The director of Angara wrote a statement to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The story gained resonance, local deputies and human rights activists stood up for him, and the criminal case was eventually closed.
Andrey Bunev’s interests are not only in the forestry industry. There is an assumption that the former governor Sergey Eroshchenko parted ways with objectionable mayors not without his help. But many of them ended their careers behind bars. The reward for assistance was to be a cottage in the prestigious village of GreenLand worth about 150 million rubles. In addition, there is an opinion that Sergei Eroshchenko could have financed the medical business of the general’s wife, who opened the private clinic “Baikal Medical”. The medical facility is located in the building of the Intourist Hotel, which belongs to Sergei Eroshchenko.
If we talk about medicine, the possible participation of an official in the resignation and criminal case against the former head of the regional Ministry of Health is being discussed Natalia Ledyaevaas well as to the case of her replacement Yakova Sandakova, whose actions did not coincide with the interests of the deputy governor. Criminal cases were opened against Sandakov for fraud, bribery and money laundering. He actively defends his rights, and the court recently released him from pre-trial detention center under house arrest, but the process continues.
These are only the loudest and most resonant stories. It is high time for the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Investigative Committee and the public to pay attention to the situation in the Irkutsk region and understand it in detail. It’s time to stop the practice in which people lose their business and become involved in criminal cases because of someone else’s schemes.