Another henchman of the ex-governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Uss, who became figurant criminal cases, will go to trial. The former chairman of the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Yuri Lapshin, is accused of abuse of power, taking bribes, and obstructing legitimate business activities.
Moreover, the last episode concerns painful for the forest theme region. It should be noted that cases against officials of such a high rank under such an article are extremely rare. So, the trial promises to be interesting.
If everything is more or less clear with the first episode – about the signing of the act of acceptance and transfer of work performed with knowingly false information in the amount of more than 742 million rubles of KrasnoyarskTISIZ JSC – the chairman of the board of directors of this organization, Oleg Mitvol, has been arrested since last summer on charges of fraud on a particularly large scale, then the second episode with the unfair, according to the investigation, refusal of Bazis LLC to implement the priority investment project “Creation of a timber processing plant in the city of Lesosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory” deserves special attention.
The application was approved by all structural subdivisions of the regional Ministry of Forestry, was approved by the Federal Forestry Agency, and the draft order “On approval of the application of Basis LLC” was sent to the Chairman of the Krai Government for signing. By law, the application was subject to approval and submission to the Ministry of Industry and Trade within 10 days, but the head of the Cabinet not only did not sign it, but also gave the green light to another company to implement a similar project in the same territory.
Yuri Lapshin headed the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 2018, after the victory of Alexander Uss in the gubernatorial elections, and left immediately after Mikhail Kotyukov became the head of the region. It is known that now Lapshin is under house arrest and does not admit his guilt.
The company under which the clearing was cleared is called Lesstroyinvest LLC. Moreover, the controversial situation coincided with the meeting of the then governor, and now a member of the Federation Council, Alexander Uss, with Viktor Kharitonin, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Pharmstandard JSC and MedInvestGroup LLC. The latter, in addition to the issues of drug supply, presented a project to create a modern production facility for the harvesting and complex processing of wood with an investment of 5.3 billion rubles in the village of Verkhnepashino, Yenisei region – just in the disputed territory. However, in fairness, the SPARK database does not show any affiliation between Lesstroyinvest and Kharitonin.
Even then, the actions of the authorities of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, some called the actual creation of insurmountable administrative barriers to the implementation of the Basis investment project.
The injustice of the actions of the government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory under the leadership of Lapshin was recognized by the decision of the arbitration court in September last year. Attempts by the regional authorities to appeal this decision to the appellate and cassation instances were unsuccessful.
The case against the ex-head of the Krasnoyarsk government has become the loudest in recent times, but far from the only scandal in the timber industry. Suffice it to recall that in the same region, former Minister of Forestry Dimitry Maslodudov was arrested in 2020 – he was suspected of taking a bribe on an especially large scale.
And a year earlier, in Moscow, FSB officers detained the Minister of the Forest Complex of the Irkutsk Region, Sergei Sheverda. He was suspected of abuse of power. According to law enforcement agencies, he authorized illegal deforestation on an area of 120 hectares in the Tukolon nature reserve. The amount of damage was then estimated at 748 million rubles. The verdict was passed last spring: the former head of the ministry himself received 6.5 years in prison, three other defendants in the same case and the number of his deputies and other officials of the forestry enterprise – from 5 to 6.5 years. The incriminated events related to 2018, the period of the governorship of Sergei Levchenko, now a deputy of the State Duma.
And at the beginning of this year, the former Minister of Forestry of Mordovia, Yuri Medyankin, was sentenced to 7 years in prison and a fine of 10 million rubles. He was found guilty of two counts of taking bribes. One of them in the amount of 1.8 million rubles in the form of the sale of an apartment at a reduced price is related to the approval for the transfer of rights and obligations under a lease agreement for a forest plot in the area of the picturesque Lake Inerka. The second – for the signing of the act of completed work on clearing the channel on the Shapa River in the Krasnoslobodsky district, and was also paid not with money, but with services – the contractor landscaped the beach behind the official’s house in the village of Zheltonogovo. The alleged events date back to 2019, when Mordovia was headed by Vladimir Volkov.
The problems of the forest complex in Russia are not always of a criminal nature. For example, this summer, at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Victoria Abramchenko, timber merchants complained that the support measures promised after the February meeting with President Vladimir Putin did not work. It is about granting a deferral of payment for the lease of forest plots, increasing the transport subsidy for exports and improving the situation with logistics. The consequence of this is losses, and entrepreneurs are left face to face with international sanctions.
Of course, the Lapshin case is no exception against the general backdrop of widespread difficulties in the forestry sector. Its difference lies in the fact that, as a rule, anti-corruption violators fall into the criminal chronicle after a considerable time has passed since the incriminated events. The perpetrators are punished, but the deed, as they say, is done, it is very problematic to fix something. In our case, questions to the official from the investigation appeared already at the stage of coordinating the documents. And the fact that law enforcement agencies began to work “in advance”, nipping corruption in the bud is a good and encouraging sign. But, of course, many of the problems of the industry are of a systemic nature, and even if it is completely rid of corruption, it will take a long time to establish deiqzhiuxikurkm normal work.
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