Up to your neck in trash
Another scandal erupted in the Arkhangelsk region related to the implementation of “garbage reform”: according to law enforcement agencies, the regional MSW removal operator unjustifiably received hundreds of millions from the budget for services that were not actually provided. Major officials and the company’s beneficiary Oleg Mamaev, a former top manager of Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s structures, are already behind bars. The investigation may go beyond the boundaries of not only the region, but also the industry, reaching even the enterprises of the United Shipbuilding Corporation.
Lomonosovsky District Court of Arkhangelsk arrested until December 16 Oleg Mamaev – former head of the development structure at AFK Sistema and the Sibmost Group company. The current claims against the defendant are related to his activities as a beneficiary of the Ecointegrator company, a regional waste management operator.
Mamaev is charged with two articles – part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (fraud committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy on an especially large scale), paragraph “b” of part 4 of article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (giving a bribe to an official on a large scale) . The decision to arrest was made, among other things, because the accused has authority over other employees of the company. In this case, the accused and his lawyers can appeal arrest.
It is known that Oleg Mamaev was detained by FSB officers on October 18 at one of the capital’s airports on the way to the check-in counter. He was going to take off to Dubai.
Fee for emptiness
According to the investigation, Oleg Mamaev, as a beneficiary of Ecointegrator, made it a point to provide the Ministry of Natural Resources and Timber Industry of the Arkhangelsk Region with deliberately false information about inflated volumes of waste transported to landfills. Such reports were sent every week. The defendant did not act alone, but together with his subordinates and two other employees of the Ministry of Natural Resources. The latter did not check the volumes of waste removed, but prepared orders to provide subsidies to reimburse these virtually non-existent costs. Thus, Ecointegrator unjustifiably received more than 391 million rubles.
The investigation also claims that the deputy head of this department received a bribe exceeding 585 thousand rubles, in return for suppressing the attempts of his own subordinates to check the information provided by the registrar.
The criminal case was initiated on the basis of FSB materials, and now it leads the second department for the investigation of particularly important cases (on crimes against state power and in the economic sphere) of the investigative department of the RF IC for the Arkhangelsk region and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug.
For the first time, people started talking about the fraud surrounding Ecointegrator about six months ago. Then there were detained Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Timber Industry of the Arkhangelsk Region Kirill Shapovalov and CEO of Ecointegrator Valery Shushkov. Then a case was initiated against the latter under the same Part 4 of Article 291 and Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country), and against a high-ranking official – under Part 3 of Art. 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (abuse of official powers, resulting in grave consequences) and paragraph “c” of Part 5 of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (receiving a bribe on a large scale by an official). At the moment when the investigation is only was unwindingwe were talking only about the unreasonably transferred 18 million rubles.
They’re running to the ships
According to the SPARK system, Ecointegrator LLC was created in the fall of 2018, and a year later passed competitive selection for obtaining the status of a regional operator for the management of municipal solid waste in the Arkhangelsk region. The company began work in a new capacity on January 1, 2020, the contract was signed for 10 years. According to the official website, the company serves 19 districts, 6 cities of regional significance, its park amounts to 160 modern garbage trucks and 10 thousand containers.
The selection of a regional operator took place under the former governor of the Arkhangelsk region – Igor Orlov. Just a few months later he left his post and moved to the position of General Director of the Severnaya Verf shipyard. Then he became the new governor Alexander Tsybulsky, which over the past years has never audited the contracts concluded by its predecessor. During this time, the top officials in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Timber Industry also managed to change – the selection of the registrar operator took place during the work period Alexandra Erulika, appointed at the beginning of 2018, but after his voluntary resignation, at the beginning of 2021, the Minister became Igor Muraev. Interestingly, Erulik today is also works at the Severnaya Verf shipyard – Deputy General Director for Economics and Finance.
This enterprise is also in actual state ownership – 13.6% belongs to the Federal Property Management Agency, another 85.7% belongs to the United Shipbuilding Corporation. The results of such management of Severnaya Verf are not the most optimistic. According to SPARK data, multi-billion dollar losses were recorded both at the end of 2021 and at the end of two quarters of this year. You should not be surprised if, as part of the investigation into the criminal case of Ecointegrator, investigators will look at the shipbuilding enterprise and perhaps find materials for other cases.
By the way, it will be interesting for the security forces to study the financial statements from the regional operator himself. Over the past three years, the company has demonstrated revenues of up to one and a half billion rubles per year, but net profit was more than modest – at best, several tens of millions. Even the hundreds of millions that, according to investigators, unjustifiably flowed from the budget into her accounts did not help. Where exactly the funds were withdrawn remains to be examined by specialists.
Something to check
The style of work of Oleg Mamaev and those associated with him should give pause to those who worked with him previously. Among them Vladimir Evtushenkovwith whom the current defendant was connected through AFK Sistema.
There have been concerns from the very beginning of the reforms that the garbage reform will give rise to unclean money-making schemes. It is not surprising that this area has begun to attract businessmen who have already established themselves in other types of business. How far can investigators unravel the criminal tangle? And won’t the threads lead to other industries – from shipbuilding to development? It can be assumed that in the criminal scandals associated with regoperators in different parts of the country, other names of governors and the names of large financial and industrial groups will appear.