The day before, Evgeny Glinkin, the former deputy head of the Moscow Region Mytishchi, was detained in the administration of the former head of Viktor Azarov. According to sources, the official is accused of embezzlement of budget funds on an especially large scale under Articles 159 (fraud) and 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of power). The investigation also finds out on what basis additional funding was allocated to the contracts of the ex-deputy head by the Council of Deputies.
According to law enforcement officers, Glinkin entered into contracts through front companies and individual entrepreneurs without bidding. Glinkin is charged with embezzlement of more than 1.2 million rubles. However, with no small probability, all this does not close on Glinkin, and the threads lead to the ex-head of Mytishchi, Viktor Azarov, and the governor of the Moscow Region, Andrei Vorobyov.
Details – in the material of the correspondent of The Moscow Post in the Moscow region.
“The authorities knew everything…”
In most cases, these contracts were related to the Safe Region video surveillance system, the supply of equipment and the creation of infrastructure on the territory of Mytishchi.
Meanwhile, three years later, the deputy of the already new head of Mytishchi, Ivan Kharkov, said at an operational meeting that the “Safe City” in the district is not developing as smoothly as expected. As of April 22, 2022, 582 devices installed by developers in the territories of apartment buildings are not connected, contracts for the maintenance of video cameras have not been concluded, and the corresponding payment has not been made.
It should be noted that one of the main state contractors for the implementation of the “Safe City” program in the Moscow region is the company “Depo Electronics”. According to Rusprofile, the same structure concluded contracts with the Mytishchi administration for the amount of 71 million rubles.
Back in 2018, the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case against Alexei Irisov, co-founder and CEO of one of the largest manufacturers of Russian computers and servers, Depo Electronics LLC (trademark of DEPO Computers). And last summer it became known that the owner of DEPO Computers, Sergei Eskin, was arrested in absentia on charges of fraud. According to some reports, the case against the owner of the company may be related to an investigation that four years ago the Ministry of Internal Affairs began about fraud in the purchase of laptops and computer flash cards for the Ministry of Defense at inflated prices.
His defendants were the CEO and owner of a small stake in DEPO Computers, as well as the head of an intermediary firm when concluding an allegedly unprofitable contract for the budget. The location of Eskin himself is not known to law enforcement agencies for certain. And it was DEPO Computers that provided the installation and warranty service of the technological support system for regional public security and operational management “Safe Region”
According to the publication “Tsargrad”, Glinkin said that his leadership knew about the theft. And the leadership is Viktor Azarov, who led Mytishchi from 2007 to 2022, and, of course, the head of the Moscow Region, Andrey Vorobyov.
But if Depo Electronics was one of the main suppliers in the Moscow region in the Safe City program, did Governor Vorobyov really know nothing. And if he did, why didn’t he take action? Maybe he wasn’t interested in it? Won’t Glinkin pull his former boss Azarov, and with him the head of the region Andrey Vorobyov?
Territory of lawlessness
Mytishchi, like the entire region, is called a territory where laws are regularly violated. Recently, a number of high-profile scandals have occurred in the Mytishchi district, in most cases related to illegal construction, subsequent eviction of residents and the demolition of apartment buildings on the territory of dacha cooperatives. From 2009 to 2012 alone, more than 30 such cases were identified.
The story in the village of Veshki and near the village of Chelobityevo received a special resonance, where, with the indifferent attitude of the authorities, in 2010, foreign labor migrants built an illegal village of dozens of houses. Another scandal was the construction of the Fedoskino folk art craft zone on the territory.
under the wing of the governor
Taking into account all, delicately speaking, ambiguities during the reign of Viktor Azarov, it is no longer incredible that his deputy admitted that the former head knew about Yevgeny Glinkin’s scams with video cameras. It would be logical to assume that after the deputy, questions will arise for the ex-head himself. However, it is not a fact that he will not find sufficiently influential patrons who can save Azarov from the excessive attention of law enforcement agencies.
Back in 2010, residents of Fedoskino, in a conversation with the media, stated that developers were given guarantees by “some influential official.” Regnum, at the same time noted that Fedoskino activists could not sign up for an appointment with Governor Andrei Vorobyov
The Moscow Post has already written that the Moscow region has become a real hotbed of crime, which is no small fault of Governor Andrei Vorobyov, who has staked in the management of the region on criminal authorities closely associated with the heads of municipal districts.
In 2020, Viktor Azarov, for example, contributed to the decision to demolish the military town of Mytishchi-16, ignoring the appeals of local residents. Later, already at the level of the City Planning Council of the Moscow Region, which is headed by the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrey Vorobyov, the former military town fell into the regional resettlement program.
Another scandal involved the sale of 102 hectares of Chelyuskinsky forest for development. Despite the fact that this land was part of the sanitary zone for drinking water intake, which is supplied to Moscow, in 2012 Azarov signed a decree on the removal of all restrictions from the Chelyuskinsky forest. True, on August 12, 2016, the city prosecutor of Mytishch, Yury Chizhov, issued a proposal to Azarov to eliminate violations of federal law. It was possible to stop deforestation then, but soon the issue was raised again. Andrey Vorobyov, the governor and chairman of the town-planning council of the Moscow region, put an end to it.
And on July 13, 2020, Nadezhda Krasnova, a judge of the Moscow Regional Court, dismissed a class action lawsuit by local residents and environmental organizations to invalidate Azarov’s decision to remove sanitary restrictions from the forest. There are other similar cases – and in each of them, behind the protection of dubious construction initiatives supported by Viktor Azarov, Andrey Vorobyov’s influence is also visible.
Andrei Vorobyov has repeatedly become the subject of publications by The Moscow Post: suffice it to recall the article “Unjudicated Governor Vorobyov?”, which told how 350 million rubles were impudently extorted from the Capital Plus company, allegedly “for the development of the region”.
Returning to the suppliers under the “Safe City” program “Depo Electronics”, and Governor Vorobyov, it should be recalled that not only this structure appeared in the “favorites” of the Moscow Region authorities. So among the suppliers of Mytishchi, Sovcombank is also indicated, from which, back in 2015, the brother of the Governor of the Moscow Region, businessman Maxim Vorobyov, acquired a 9.99% stake in the Modern Commercial Mortgage Bank (SKIB).
Sovcombank clarified that they plan to build a “modern technological bank” together with the new shareholder.
But it failed to build. In 2018, SKIB merged with the parent company, making Maxim Vorobyov the shareholder directly of Sovcombank, whose owners are the Khotimsky brothers.
But what is the use of all this for the Moscow region?
