Another corruption scandal with an official from the team of the ex-governor of the Tambov region Alexander Nikitin, this time risks hurting the senator himself.
As the correspondent of The Moscow Post in the Tambov region reports, a loud corruption scandal is flaring up in the region. Local law enforcement officers opened two criminal cases at once on abuse of power in relation to acting. Deputy Head of Administration of the Tambov Region Vladimir Gromov.
Recall that now in the Tambov region a new leader is Maxim Egorov in the rank of interim. He replaced Alexander Nikitin in this post, who is now working as a senator of the Federation Council. But there is no getting away from the fact that it was Mr. Nikitin who appointed Vladimir Gromov. The last one is a member of his team.
The appointment took place, we recall, back in early February 2020, when Nikitin’s departure to the Federation Council was out of the question. On the contrary, at that time the building of the power vertical was in full swing, as well as the strengthening of the governor’s team, which had greatly thinned after a series of corruption scandals.
It is interesting that earlier Mr. Gromov headed the regional committee of the state order. As you know, the state order (its function is the formation and distribution of budget money) is one of the most corruption-intensive areas of public administration. So the case with Gromov’s criminal cases may well be directly related to the state order.
Gromov is suspected of patronizing the defendants in the case of embezzlement of more than 25 million rubles as part of the Demography national project. According to investigators, in 2020, the management of a commercial organization entered into 90 contracts with preschool institutions in the Tambov region for the supply of goods for the material equipment of institutions. The amount is over 25 million rubles. Most of these contracts have not been fulfilled to this day, the goods have not been delivered, but the money has been paid.
As a result of investigative actions and operational measures, the possible involvement in the illegal actions of the leaders of preschool organizations and a certain company was established. The general patronage, according to TASS with reference to the version of the investigation, was allegedly provided by “the very same” deputy head of the administration of the Tambov region.
Subsequently, it turned out that the money within the framework of national projects was transferred to the accounts of an organization affiliated with Gromov himself (its name was not specified), and subsequently stolen. This is damage on an especially large scale.
In addition, a series of searches were carried out, including at Gromov’s house, money in rubles and foreign currency, illegally stored ammunition, and various documents were seized.
On the sidelines, opinions are being expressed: the guilt of Mr. Gromov still needs to be proven, but if this happens, then serious problems may arise for his former boss, and now a member of the Federation Council, Alexander Nikitin. Allegedly, now Maxim Egorov is conducting a real analysis of the heavy legacy left by the former leader. Gromov, loyal to Nikitin, could also fall under the distribution.
Vladimir Gromov (left) is clearly not happy about the visit of the security forces to his office. A frame of operational shooting leads the publication “About Tambov”
And how can one not remember who Mr. Gromov replaced as deputy head of the administration of Governor Nikitin? Because this story is more than incomprehensible and tragic, and as if by chance connected with crime.
After all, Gromov replaced Nikitin’s former ally Gleb Chulkov, who soon died under circumstances that were not fully clarified.
About Chulkov
It was in 2019, and before that, a criminal case of fraud was opened against Mr. Chulkov. Could it not lead the investigation gradually to the then governor himself?
We are talking about the sensational story of the theft of state property of the Rasskazovsky Market, a market in the village of Rasskazovo, Tambov Region. Together with Chulkov, the defendants in that criminal case were the director of the market, Sergey Klemeshov, and the former head of the regional Fund for Assistance in Lending to Small and Medium-Sized Businesses, Andrey Bludov. There are opinions that it is unlikely that the appointment of Mr. Bludov to the leading chair of the Foundation could have done without Nikitin’s sanction.
Moreover, if anyone knew everything about the Rasskazovsky Market operation, it was Chulkov. The fact that he died in December 2019, at the very time when the man was under house arrest, of course, alerted everyone. They said that Chulkov himself, according to the testimony of numerous friends and acquaintances, was not going to take his own life.
As for Bludov, he was detained earlier, back in May 2019. After large-scale inspections of the Foundation, the official was suspected of illegally providing state support for the reconstruction of Rasskazovsky Market. 50 million rubles were allocated from the budget for trays, tents and other property. This money, according to the investigation, was not used for its intended purpose, and later the market “fabulously” left state ownership, it was allegedly transferred to a private company.
It was Gleb Chulkov who was supposed to follow this process, who will not tell anyone any details. He, Chulkov, in addition to the post of deputy head of Nikitin’s administration, served as head of the property management committee of the Tambov region – presumably there could be many more such “cases” with markets, fairs, squares, government buildings.
What exactly happened? First, a local company, OOO Unitech, purchased a promissory note with a face value of 45 million rubles from the market. If the market did not have time to pay for it, the structure received the right to lease a plot – and this is about 35 hectares in a very advantageous place in Tambov. Kommersant wrote about this scheme at the time.
The point is also that the market, it seems, could not repay the debt at all. According to the situation at the end of 2017, he received a miserable profit of only 41 thousand rubles. All this was very reminiscent of a scheme for the alienation of state property. But, of course, law enforcement officers must prove this.
The mysterious death of Gleb Chulkov still raises many questions
Fuel was added to the fire by the fact that Unitech, as a potential owner of the market, had signs of fictitiousness: the only employee, only 10 thousand authorized capital … At the same time, neither the market management, nor Bludov, nor Chulkov, nor their chief Alexander Nikitin, this circumstance did not raise any suspicions and questions.
After only a year and a half, on suspicion of corruption, another deputy head of the administration, Gromov, was caught, who, in fact, became Chulkov’s successor. Is it right to suspect that this post was cursed? ..
And the entire local elite begins to wonder: will Alexander Nikitin shield him from the Federation Council, or will Gromov, mindful of the tragic fate of Chulkov, immediately begin to cooperate with the investigation and tell some intriguing details of joint work with the former governor?
Is the structure collapsing?
In the Tambov region, by the way, few expected that Nikitin would be in the Federation Council. He even prepared for himself the chair of the new (old) mayor of Tambov, Maxim Kosenkov, an official with an ambiguous past.
And now Kosenkov is the acting head of the administration of Tambov, but cannot establish himself in this position due to previous problems with the law. Recall that in 2009 he was sentenced to nine and a half years in prison for kidnapping. Kommersant wrote about that ugly story, and Mr. Kosenkov went to places of deprivation of liberty precisely from the position of the mayor of Tambov, which caused a serious scandal at the time.
How long – how short, but in 2017 he managed to get out on parole and return to city politics … Or, well, how to return – there is reason to believe that he, as a politician, was “reanimated” by Alexander Nikitin himself, who was looking for support in the city thought. Given that the Motherland party, whose regional branch is headed by Kosenkov, won a majority in the City Duma, and Kosenkov himself had experience in managing the city, the appropriate choice was obvious.
Since, due to a criminal record, it was not possible to quickly establish himself as the head of the administration of Tambov, there was talk of returning the old system of city management through a city manager appointed by deputies. When Nikitin himself was excommunicated from the governor’s seat in the fall and left to work in the Federation Council, his entourage could have a feeling of loss from the fact that the ex-governor seemed to have abandoned them.
Alexander Nikitin and Maxim Kosenkov clearly relied on each other, but the political realities turned out to be completely different
In the end, a new full-fledged mayor was never elected. Worse than that, problems began with the prosecutor’s office, because the competition (the terms of which were extended by the deputies of the City Duma themselves) still needs to be held.
In December 2021, the prosecutor’s office of the Tambov region made a submission to the chairman of the Tambov City Duma, Elena Leonova, in connection with the failure to hold a competition to elect the head of the city on time. This is how the department reacted to the appeal of the deputy of the City Duma, secretary of the Tambov regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Artem Aleksandrov, who, like many oppositionists, is clearly dissatisfied with the disorder in the city government.
The situation is indeed strange. Nikitin himself is no longer in the region, and the structure of power that he tried to build in Tambov, for example, remained unfinished and could lead to a crisis of power. And then, as an evil, Gromov so unsuccessfully got into development with the security forces – just look, they will soon remember Nikitin himself …
Source: The Moscow Post
