“Kleshchikhinsky” will “get the borders” of Taran?
Will the future of the Novosibirsk market be decided by a businessman with a reputation as a raider?
In Novosibirsk, the deadlines for the development of a sanitary protection zone and new boundaries of the Kleshchikhinsky cemetery, which the city administration is obliged to establish in pursuance of a court decision that satisfied the claim of the prosecutor’s office, have been disrupted. In addition, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case, which in October last year was taken under personal control by the head of the department, Alexander Bastrykin. Today, municipal officials are talking about the fault of the contractor, who is obliged to complete the work by the end of December. The contract was signed in October with the Nizhny Novgorod appraisal company Veta, which reduced the price from 1.43 million to 519 thousand rubles. She already has unfulfilled contracts on her account, in particular, those concluded back in 2015 with PJSC Gazprom Gas Distribution Nizhny Novgorod. In courts, the interests of Veta are represented by the capital’s Delcredere Bar Association, which is associated with Transneft President Nikolai Tokarev: it is known that the oil company signed contracts with the board for 74 million rubles, and the managing partner of Delcredere is Alexandra Maidannik, whose husband Igor Maidannik is known as a legal adviser to Transneft management. Veta’s contract in Novosibirsk may be terminated, and the contractor may be charged a penalty. Meanwhile, within the new borders of the Kleshchikhinsky cemetery and the Shipyard, there may be the Khiloksky shopping center, the closure of which has been sought by residents of the nearby microdistrict for several years, complaining about the deterioration of the environmental situation and the crime situation: illegal migrants accumulate on the territory of Khiloksky, mass fights took place, dismantling of criminal groups, large quantities of drugs were imported. In the management of the shopping center, the cause of complaints is the actions of unscrupulous competitors. We are talking about the beneficiaries of the Mandarin agro-industrial distribution center recently built in Novosibirsk – the infamous owner of RATM Holding Eduard Taran and his partner Alexander Kayumov. A number of criminal histories and criminal cases are already connected with their Novosibirsk environment. Taran himself also found himself in the center of attention of the security forces, and in addition, he gained fame as the organizer of raider seizures of large enterprises with their subsequent bankruptcy.
The city hall of Novosibirsk blamed the contractor
The violation by the contractor of the deadline for the development of the sanitary protection zone (SZ) and the new boundaries of the Kleshchikhinsky cemetery is confirmed by the mayor’s office of Novosibirsk. In October last year, the City Department of Investments, Consumer Market, Innovation and Entrepreneurship concluded a corresponding contract with the Nizhny Novgorod Appraisal Company Veta LLC, which reduced the price from the initial 1.43 million to 519 thousand rubles. The work was to be completed by the end of December, on the State Procurement website the contract is listed as being under execution.
Now officials are talking about a claim letter sent to the contractor, threatening to terminate the contract, collect a penalty and, accordingly, hold a new auction. But that is not all. As it turned out, two land plots with a total area of 45.8 thousand square meters have not yet been transferred to the city treasury, which does not allow them to be included in the boundaries of Kleshchikhinsky. Governor Andrey Travnikov signed an order to change the category of these sites last September.
Recall that back in 2021, the Leninsky District Court of Novosibirsk satisfied the claim of the prosecutor’s office, obliging the mayor’s office to establish cemetery boundaries and CVDs. In July 2022, the decision was upheld on appeal. But in the end, a number of residential buildings and the territory of the Khiloksky shopping center turned out to be within the boundaries of the cemetery. The former may be subject to resettlement, while the latter may be closed, although neither officials nor employees of the city prosecutor’s office see any reason to stop the operation of the trading facility, recognized by the federal Ministry of Industry and Trade as “the best wholesale food market in Russia” in 2020.
The Novosibirsk media have repeatedly written about the reason for the proceedings – complaints from residents of a nearby microdistrict who found themselves in the “epicenter of an environmental disaster” and unsuccessfully trying to draw the attention of the municipality to unsanitary conditions, air pollution, illegal trade and the dominance of migrants.
Finally, in July last year, after a procedural audit, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case on the provision of services that do not meet the requirements for the safety of life and health of consumers, due to violations at the cemetery itself and the nearby Levoberezhny landfill. In October, after another rally, the participants of which demanded that the city authorities establish a CVD, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, took personal control of the investigation. Control is control, but things, as we can see, are still there.
Do Veta’s connections lead to Transneft?
Now everything depends on how the further “relationships” of the mayor’s office with the Nizhny Novgorod contractor company Veta, owned by brothers Dmitry and Ilya Zharsky, will develop. The firm, which specializes in conducting economic and technical due diligence and comprehensive expert support for litigation, demonstrates solid financial performance, declaring revenue of 82.2 million rubles, profit of 9.2 million and asset value of 68.1 million at the end of 2021.
The official portfolio of government contracts of the company is small and amounts to only 1.8 million rubles.
True, the following circumstance attracts attention: according to the data of the unified public procurement portal, contracts concluded in 2015 appear in the execution process. In particular, this is the case with the contract of Gazprom Gas Distribution Nizhny Novgorod for the provision of property valuation services worth 114.3 thousand rubles, as well as a contract with the same company for the supply of personal protective equipment for a more modest amount – 69 thousand rubles . The latter, by the way, testifies to the downright multidisciplinary nature of Veta’s activities, but by no means about the discipline of its owners. Perhaps the Novosibirsk officials would have had to wait for the CVD project for years, but the Sledkom and the prosecutor’s office “breathe down the back of the head”, and in such a situation there is no time for jokes.
The Moment of Truth publication suggested a possible connection between Veta and the head of Transneft, Nikolai Tokarev.
The fact is that in courts the interests of the Nizhny Novgorod appraisal firm are represented by lawyers of the Moscow city bar association Delcredere, which is actively mastering the finances of the oil giant: Transneft is the largest customer of the board, which has concluded contracts with it for a total of 74 million rubles. To date, information about the owners of Delcredere is not available in open sources, but its managing partner is Alexandra Maidannik, whose husband Igor Maidannik was mentioned in the press as a legal consultant to Transneft’s management.
Among the business partners of the co-owners of Veta were other equally interesting personalities. So Dmitry Zharsky was one of the co-owners of the Nizhny Novgorod Credit Consumer Cooperative of Citizens “Mortgage Savings and Loan Bank” (KKKG “ISSK”), among the founders of which Evgeny Tokarev appears. Whether the latter can be brought by a relative to the president of Transneft is not known for sure. Another former co-founder of ISSK, Mikhail Shirokov, is the director of the MKU Ritual in Dzerzhinsk. This institution is associated with the infamous Ritual State Budgetary Institution, which is led by Artem Ekimov, a former employee of the Main Directorate for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a protégé of the head of the FSB for Moscow and the Moscow Region, Alexei Dorofeev. Nikolai Tokarev is also a native of the special services. As we can see, there are plenty of interesting coincidences.
“Charms” of “Khiloksky”: migrants, drugs, showdowns
But back to the Novosibirsk Kleshchikhinsky cemetery. It was said above that the Khiloksky shopping center may be within its borders, the activities of which cause rejection by local residents. In 2020-2021 a group of activists sought its closure, pointing to its proximity to the churchyard, the Levoberezhny solid waste landfill, and referring to the norms of SanPiN. However, the Leninsky District Court dismissed the claim.
The official owners of Khiloksky are businessmen Anatoly Zyablov and Valery Masko, but at one time one of its founders was the former deputy of the regional parliament Alexei Alexandrov, who today holds the post of deputy director of the shopping center for security. In addition, Aleksandrov is one of the founders of the Archi security company, registered at the same address as the shopping center.
The difference in the financial indicators of the shopping center and the security structure is striking. At the end of 2021, Archie declared a revenue of 144.4 million rubles, a profit of 120.2 million and an asset value of 680.5 million. Against this background, OOO TC Khiloksky can hardly be called successful: over the same period, with a revenue of 7.3 million rubles, its losses amounted to 9.2 million.
It turns out that the security business brings more income than “the best wholesale food market in Russia” according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade? Or do other cash flows go through Archie as well?
The reason for the dissatisfaction of the residents of nearby microdistricts was the worsening of the crime situation. In particular, we are talking about migrant traders who, according to the townspeople, are turning their once “paradise” into a ghetto, the new inhabitants of which often do not know the Russian language. But the “criminal history” of Khiloksky is not limited to illegal migration alone. So, a high-profile criminal case is connected with the shopping center about the supply of 80 kg of heroin brought from Kazakhstan in KamAZ with grapes.
Repeatedly there were mass fights “wall to wall” with the participation of hundreds of people. And if at first the security forces tried to convince members of the public and journalists that people from the southern republics were simply “solving production issues” in this way, then in 2019, after a “showdown”, accompanied by shooting from firearms, several people were nevertheless detained . As it turned out, there was an attempt to establish control over retail outlets by representatives of one of the criminal groups.
From publications in the media, one can draw a logical conclusion: ex-deputy Aleksandrov, who is responsible for security at Khiloksky, simply cannot cope with the situation. But he has his own version, according to which numerous complaints began to come only in recent years, and they are connected with “unfair competition.”
“Tangerine” team of Eduard Taran
The “unscrupulous competitor” refers to the Mandarin Interregional Agro-Industrial Distribution Center (IADC), whose beneficiaries are the infamous president of RATM Holding Eduard Taran and his business partner Alexander Kayumov, who, according to Kommersant, invested 1.5 billion rubles in the project. As you know, in big business, any means are good to eliminate a competitor, and Khiloksky has a far from crystal clear reputation.
In fairness, it is worth noting that the general director of Mandarin, Sergei Belous, who was arrested last year as part of a criminal investigation into giving bribes to ex-prosecutor of the Novosibirsk Region Vladimir Falileev and his former deputy Andrey Turbin, also managed to “light up” in crime. Another defendant turned out to be Oleg Yarovoy, a former member of the board of directors of JSC Plant Ekran, which is part of the RATM Holding.
In one of the publications of Kommersant, Yarovoy is described as a “fixer” who received 170 million rubles from the former general director of Vinap OJSC (previously one of the leaders in the production of alcoholic beverages) Yuri Veryasov, allegedly for preventing the initiation of the last criminal case. Just last March, Yarovoy was sentenced to three years probation for organizing the criminal prosecution of another of his business partners, the director of the Ekfard audit and consulting group, Natalya Vasilyeva.
The RBC portal reported about certain “representatives of criminals” appearing in the “case of bribes” to the ex-prosecutor. Presumably, we are talking about the “authoritative” businessman Mikhail Kolmogorov (real name – Chebotarev), known in certain circles as Chebotar. In 2012, he was arrested on suspicion of murder. The Novosibirsk media called Kolmogorov the “co-founder” of Mandarin, who applied for a change in the status of the land plots on which the distribution center was being built.
So, no less interesting stories can be associated with Mandarin than with Khiloksky. And the further you go, the more there will be. To be convinced of this, it is enough to pay attention to the owner of RATM Holding, Eduard Taran, who at least twice found himself in the center of attention of the security forces: in 2010 he was accused of giving a bribe in the amount of 100 thousand dollars to an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for refusing to verify information about the events that took place tax and economic crimes, in 2018 they were suspected of tax evasion in the amount of more than 150 million rubles during the sale of a 24% stake in the Lytkarino Optical Glass Plant to Rostec. But in both cases, the criminal cases were closed.
In addition, Taran has long been known as a specialist in “hostile takeovers” of large enterprises and pumping out their finances and assets, followed by bankruptcy. At various times, he was credited with organizing or attempting raider seizures of the Angarsk cement plant, Novosibirskenergosbyt JSC, the Sibelektroterm plant in Novosibirsk, the Anopinsky glass plant, etc. Taran, like no one else, may be interested in the results of the development of the SPZ and the inclusion of Khiloksky within the boundaries of the Kleshchikhinsky cemetery.