They persuaded me to pay
The CEO of the Expert-Kabel plant faced up to 5 years in prison. The amount that the budget received with a long delay can be considered a record for the Oryol region. However, Kutenev retained not only his freedom, but also the seat of the vice-speaker of the regional council. Against this background, the region again began to talk about possible informal relations between the speaker Leonid Muzalevsky and the owners of the cable manufacturing enterprise.
The Investigative Committee reported the initiation of a criminal case against the head of OOO KZ Expert-Kabel at the end of 2023. The case concerned non-payment of taxes in 2018-2019 – just before the start of a rapid political career Sergey Kutenevwhich he combines with managing the enterprise. In 2020, he was elected to the Oryol City Council, and a year later, also on the United Russia (*aggressor country) list, he was elected to the regional parliament, where he headed the committee on industry and housing and communal services.
According to the investigation, Kutenev created several companies that existed only on paper. Then, at the “Expert-Kabel” plant, a scheme of artificial document flow began to operate, which made it possible to change tax and accounting reports, transferring risks to the above-mentioned companies. All this made it possible to minimize VAT and not pay tax on the organization's profit.
As a result, over two years the company failed to pay the state 297 million rubles, then about 160 million rubles in penalties and fines were added to this amount. However, even before the case was transferred to court, Expert-Kabel paid the debt in full and the case against the deputy director was dismissed. Sergey Kutenev's membership in the party will now apparently be restored, and the story with the tax scheme will be safely forgotten?
Convenient location
Sergey Kutenev started his career in his native Volgodonsk as an electrician in the elevator section. In 2005, at the age of 22, he moved to Moscow and got a job at Expert-Energostroy LLC, where he began working as an engineer. He worked at the company until 2014 and rose to the position of department head. In an interview with Orlovskie Novosti in 2019, Kutenev told how he ended up in this region and became the director of the plant:
Today, Sergey Kutenev owns 10% of the capital of OOO KZ Expert-Kabel, which, due to his parliamentary status, is under trust management. The majority owners of the enterprise are brothers Valery and Dmitry Cheremisin (40% of the capital each). They are also the founders of OOO Expert-Energostroy in Khimki, Moscow Region.
According to the results of 2023, the KZ Expert-Kabel plant entered the top 10 largest companies in the Oryol region in terms of revenue, which SPARK-Interfax estimated at 9 billion rubles. For example, Gazprom Mezhregiongaz Orel LLC earned the same amount last year. And one more interesting detail: TD Expert-Kabel LLC is in 11th place in the rating with revenue of 8 billion rubles. The company belongs to one individual, a certain To Alexey Portnovand is located at the same address as the cable plant itself…
“We need people like this!”
In 2019, that is, as we now understand, against the backdrop of the “tax scheme”, a delegation of regional council deputies visited the Cheremisins’ enterprise. It was then that the speaker Leonid Muzalevsky presented Sergei Kutenev (who had any connection to politics, but only as a sponsor) with a medal “For Contribution to the Development of Legislation in the Oryol Region” and a party card.
After a criminal case was opened in 2023, local United Russia (*aggressor country) members had to vote to suspend Kutenev's membership in the party. Leonid Muzalevsky seemed to particularly emphasize that this measure was forced.
Whether the termination of a criminal case due to the payment of tax arrears is considered “proof of rightness” will be seen in the near future.
For now, we will only note that other companies of the Cheremisin brothers are also engaged in disputes with tax authorities, which allows us to assume only the executive role of Sergei Kutenev in the “scheme” that operated at the Expert-Kabel plant.