The Insider found that the head of the Ministry of Digital Maksut Shadayev hides in declarations your actual spouse. She was involved in a business that receives multi-million dollar contracts from the government.
Many federal ministers have secret wives who are credited with lucrative business and valuable property that they themselves are not legally entitled to own. Among them, the head of the Ministry of Defense Sergei Shoiguhead of the Ministry of Finance Anton Siluanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Not far behind colleagues, as The Insider found out, and Minister of Communications Maksut Shadayev.
The Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media, headed by Shadayev, is subordinate to Roskomnadzor, which fines and blocks media outlets that allow the free dissemination of information. So Shadayev can be called one of the main censors of the country.
Shadayev has a passion for blocking not only socially significant information, but also information about his family life. According to the declaration, he has two minor daughters, but there is no information about his wife. It is possible that he is forced to avoid the official declaration of the actual marriage by the inevitable questions about the conflict of interest in this case.
According to The Insider, 37-year-old Alexandra Melnikova may be Shadayev’s secret wife. Several factors point to this. Firstly, Melnikova drove the mother of the minister, Lilia Meksutovna, in her Volvo XC90 (license plate E8 ** EE77) to the dacha. Secondly, Shadayev himself was captured in the passenger seat of Melnikova’s previous car.
Thirdly, the parking of this car was paid from the phone number Sergei Kholkin – Shadayev’s half-brother. We will talk about this relative of the minister later.
Fourthly, in the notebook of one of her acquaintances, Melnikova is recorded as “Sasha Parking Barin.” It is in the elite residential complex Barrin House that Shadayev has an apartment of 101.6 sq. m and cost about 100 million rubles.
metla.press, 06/30/2020, “Barin is in touch”: Earlier we reportedthat the real estate in the Barrin House residential complex is owned by the head of the Ministry of Transport, Yevgeny Dietrich. There is an apartment here (101.6 sq. m.) and Shadayev (according to link – extract from Rossreestr). The living space of the head of the Ministry of Communications is located on the top floor of a prestigious building. The market value of the holdings is about 100 million rubles.
Barrin House has its own Luxe class fitness club that meets the highest requirements of residents. The club has a large swimming pool, a SPA with a relaxation and recreation area, as well as a separate children’s club. The house is located on Malaya Pirogovskaya Street in the Khamovniki district – one of the most respectable areas of the historical center of Moscow. […] On the territory of the courtyard of the LCD there is a private fountain. Shadayev bought an apartment using credit funds in April last year. […]
Before joining the civil service, Shadayev managed to work for the IBS corporation as a multimillionaire and “King of IT government orders” Anatoly Karachinsky. Karachinsky closely tied with the Russian authorities. On instructions from the Kremlin, his company, for example, monitors protest moods on the Internet. — Inset K.ru
The minister bought the property here in April 2019. At that time, he was vice president of the state-owned Rostelecom. Prior to that, the official in different years held the positions of Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region, Advisor to the Speaker of the State Duma, Assistant to the Head of the Presidential Administration.
And finally, fifthly. Shadayev and Melnikova fly together on vacation. The Insider received flight booking data, according to which the minister and his girlfriend flew to Adler last year, to Crimea the year before last, and even earlier they traveled together to Yerevan and Riga.
While Shadayev was climbing the official ladder, Alexandra worked in senior positions at Medialogy LLC. The company is engaged in the system of the same name for monitoring and analyzing the media and social media. “Medialogy” mastered almost 3 billion rubles on state contracts, including from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the government of the Moscow Region, where Shadayev had previously supervised information technology.
It turns out that Shadayev gave large government orders to a company in which his “girlfriend” held a leading position. The Insider Melnikova said that she does not comment on her personal relationships. “In the period 2010-2019. worked as an administrative director [в «Медиалогии»]. She dealt with HR issues, and also ensured the comfort and safety of employees. I had nothing to do with the procedures for concluding and executing Medialogy contracts,” she explained. Melnikova refused to name the place of her subsequent employment. According to The Insider, in 2020 she received a quarantine pass from the Ministry of Digital Development.
Alexandra’s father, Viktor Melnikov, worked at the Research and Testing Institute of Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense. The same one where poisons from the Novichok group were developed. Her mother Elena Melnikova was an employee of the financial department of the military missions of the Ministry of Defense.
The Insider has identified the stepfather of Minister Shadayev. His name is Igor Kholkin, previously he was the general director of Timostroy LLC, which at that time was owned by Alexander Volkov, co-founder of Medialogy.
The half-brother of the minister, Sergei Kholkin, is employed at Operator-TsRPT, a company that labels goods. This business given away at the mercy of the oligarch Alisher Usmanov.
Shadayev’s half-brother with the budget
Sergey Kholkin headed the TsRPT controlled by the Ministry of Digital Development for drug labeling in Russia
The original of this material
© “BBC Russian Service”01/22/2020, The brother of the new head of the Ministry of Communications will label all medicines in Russia
Andrey Soshnikov, Anastasia Napalkova
The Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media of Russia is one of the key participants in the project, the creation of which drug manufacturers and importers will have to spend billions of rubles. As the BBC found out, this project is being handled by the half-brother of the new head of the department, Maksut Shadayev.
From July 1, 2020, drug labeling will become mandatory in Russia: local manufacturers and importers will have to place Data Matrix barcodes on packages. With their help, it will be possible to verify the authenticity of products. Since October 2019, the labeling of expensive drugs for rare diseases, which the Ministry of Health purchases under the Seven Nosologies (Diseases) program, has already become mandatory.
The only operator of the system, which will also be used for marking shoes and cigarettes, is the Advanced Technologies Development Center (CRPT).
Since July 2019, 33-year-old Muscovite Sergey Kholkin has been in charge of the Pharma direction in the Central Regional Development Center. “In fact, I am responsible for the labeling of all medicines in Russia on the part of the operator,” Kholkin confirmed in a conversation with the BBC.
Kholkin is the half-brother of the new head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev. Their relationship is confirmed by two acquaintances of Holkin, who asked not to publish their names, as well as a BBC source with access to personal databases.
Kholkin himself told the BBC that he would not comment on his relationship with Shadayev, since this issue “has nothing to do with the minister’s professional qualities.”
The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is one of the “key participants” in the product labeling project. Roszdravnadzor website. Is there a conflict of interest in the fact that Kholkin and Shadayev are relatives?
“It all depends on the specific powers of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media in the drug labeling project,” says Ilya Shumanov, deputy director of Transparency International Russia. “If the minister issues regulations and is authorized to control drug labeling systems, that is, he makes decisions regarding the company where his relative works, then we can talk about a conflict of interest.
At the same time, Shumanov points to a possible option for resolving such a conflict of interest: the minister’s brother should leave his position in the labeling operator. “The option in which the minister removes himself from decision-making is impossible in this situation because of his high leadership status,” he said.
According to the director of the department of external relations of the pharmaceutical company Stada Ivan Glushkov, the decision on public-private partnership was made, along with other departments, by the Ministry of Communications.
“The Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications is a participant in this project [по маркировке лекарств], but performs a very small number of tasks in it. In terms of management, they take part in meetings of the project committee. From a technical point of view, they are responsible for the work of certification centers that issue electronic signatures. They are not active participants,” Glushkov added.
The BBC sent a request to the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications asking them to comment on cooperation with the CRPT.
How much does the project cost
Half of the CRPT is owned by the USM Holdings holding company of Alisher Usmanov and Vladimir Skoch, the father of State Duma deputy Andrei Skoch. Another 25% of the operator is owned by the state corporation Rostec and the managing partner Almaz Capital Partners Alexander Galitsky .
Labeling of drugs cheaper than 20 rubles will be free. Manufacturers and importers will have to pay 50 kopecks for one barcode on the packaging of a more expensive medicine.
Companies that do not mark at the production stage face a fine of 50 to 100 thousand rubles. Officials and individual entrepreneurs – from 5 to 10 thousand rubles. Sellers of unmarked goods – from 50 to 300 thousand rubles.
In 2018 Vedomosti sources estimated the cost of creating the system in 205.7 billion rubles over 15 years. On average, for the first seven years of the project, the CRPT expected to receive an annual profit of 1.5 billion rubles and reach payback during this time with a yield of 16%, the newspaper wrote.
The volume of the pharmaceutical market in Russia in 2018, according to the analytical company DSM, reached 1.6 billion rubles, which is 2.6% higher than a year earlier. Sales volumes of medicines in real terms increased by 1.5% and amounted to 6.4 billion packs.
Initially, the labeling system for medicines and fur coats was created by the Federal Tax Service, which was headed by the new Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. On June 1, 2019, the functions of the operator were received by the CRPT. In 2017, the former head of the Federal Tax Service told Rossiyskaya Gazetathat the idea of labeling all goods in general was discussed at a meeting in the government.
Who is Sergey Kholkin
Like Maksut Shadayev, Kholkin worked for the IBS IT consulting group. He also played for her basketball team.
Now 33-year-old Kholkin runs the Gosbuk company: in 2010, she opened a social network of the same name to discuss government issues, the project was initiated by the president Dmitry Medvedev.
Currently, the social network does not work, and it belonged to website shows articles about construction. In 2015, Gosbuk received 143 million rubles from the budget for various projects; most, 57 millionshe received from Rostelecom for a project on departmental informatization.
Three years later, Shadayev came to Rostelecom as vice president.
His half-brother also owns a stake in Kursarium, another contractor for ministries and departments. Kursarium received its largest contract from the Ministry of Education and Science in 2013: for 16 million rubles, the company looking for footage for “demanded sectors of the economy” and was engaged in e-learning.
In a press release from the CRPT on the appointment of Kholkin saysthat he also implemented projects for the government of the Moscow region. In the same place, in 2014-2018, his half-brother Maksut Shadayev worked as the Minister of State Administration, Information Technologies and Communications.
It was not possible to find information about these projects in open sources. BBC Holkin said he did not remember in what years he collaborated with the government of the region.
After the publication, the BBC received a comment from the deputy director of the CRPT Revaz Yusupov.
He claims that Sergei Kholkin, as the head of the Pharma product group, does not interact with the Ministry of Communications.
“In accordance with the grades of the CRPT, this is the position of a middle-level manager. The CRPT has similar divisions involved in the introduction of labeling of cigarettes, milk, tires, shoes, perfumes and more than 10 product categories to which the state has extended the obligation to label products,” said Revaz Yusupov .
“An attempt to designate a certain conflict of interest is far-fetched, if not to call it a gross exaggeration,” the company representative continued.
According to him, Kholkin came to the CRPT more than a year ago – before the appointment of Shadayev. And the main public partner of the labeling operator is the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
The CRPT does not consider the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications to be one of the key participants in this project, as Roszdravnadzor characterizes it on its website.