Mayoral hopes: how Governor Starovoit promotes a loyal candidate for mayor of Kursk

The mayor of Kursk may be a man whom enemies accused of beating his wife and alcoholism.

According to the correspondent of The Moscow Post in the Kursk region, two finalists made it to the finals of the competition for the selection of a new mayor of the capital of the region. They were the chairman of the regional committee for property management Igor Kutsak and the deputy head of the administration of the Seimsky district of Kursk Oleg Vasiliev.

Now deputies of the City Duma will have to decide on the candidate. Voting will take place tomorrow, February 3rd. At the same time, few doubt that the name of the winner is already known to the governor of the Kursk region, Roman Starovoit. Allegedly, the latter relies on the official Igor Kutsak, who is already working in his team. Moreover, he deals with such a sensitive and corruption-intensive topic as the management of state property.

Starovoit, of course, will not keep anyone in such a position, so Kutsak’s nomination was most likely agreed with the governor’s political strategists. Oleg Vasiliev is considered a convenient “sparring partner” who should create the illusion of competition.

A number of sources suggested that the competition committee for the selection of candidates (which, by the way, must necessarily include representatives of the regional authorities) almost led Kutsak to the final by the hand. Evil tongues claim that supposedly even before that there could have been an agreement with the deputies of the City Duma about how and for whom to vote.

Is the victory of Igor Kutsak in the fight for the chair of the mayor of Kursk predetermined by the administration of Roman Starovoit?

Of course, in the system, when voting takes place in the City Duma, no one asks the opinion of ordinary people from Kursk. Perhaps in vain, since they would have reminded that Mr. Kutsak is an ambiguous figure, without the support of the authorities, he would hardly have been able to make a career in the civil service.

The thing that didn’t happen?

Igor Kutsak headed the regional property management committee in March 2019. Prior to that, he headed the department of the Interregional Territorial Administration of the Federal Property Management Agency in the Kursk and Belgorod regions. Given this, they tend to associate him with the personality of Deputy Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko, who until 2020 led the Federal Property Management Agency. Recall that after leaving the post, she “left” behind a number of criminal cases in the department against former subordinates.

But for the Kuryans, something else is interesting. According to the authors of the website “Law and Order”, Igor Kutsak is allegedly famous for his craving for strong drinks, which could have negative consequences from driving while intoxicated to family scandals with assault. The same authors from the Law and Order website are trying to attribute to him the alleged repeated beating of his wife and children, as well as his own parents while drunk, for which, according to the same authors, Kutsak was allegedly prosecuted in the past. It is even reported about a certain criminal case from 2013, when Kutsak, allegedly in a state of intoxication, caused bodily harm to his daughter and threatened to kill his wife. And other sources stated that he was drunk driving a car around Kursk. Of course, such “leaks” are more reminiscent of competitors’ insinuations. If this happened, the Starovoit administration would definitely know about it.

In fact, Igor Kutsak was never convicted under a criminal article, no one recognized him as a criminal. But if the information about the criminal case is more like “black PR”, then the claims of the prosecutor’s office against Kutsak are known for sure.

Last summer, the control and oversight agency during inspections revealed that Igor Kutsak did not prevent the occurrence of a conflict of interest and did not report it, thereby violating the law “On Combating Corruption”. This was reported by the publication “The Edge”.

According to the publication, the conflict could lie in the fact that the position of deputy director of the Procurement Center of the Kursk Region controlled by Kutsak’s committee was taken by his sister. In addition, the woman was allegedly paid a bonus, which turned out to be several times higher than that of her colleagues.

To clarify: this Center was created in May last year to conduct centralized procurement of goods, works, services for regional and municipal customers with contract prices up to 3 million rubles.

The center has already acted as a customer for almost 20 million rubles. It should be noted that as of the beginning of February 2022, the deputy director named Kutsak does not work in the leadership of the Center.

Governor’s interest

If we take as a basis the version about the promotion of Kutsak to the post of mayor by Governor Starovoit, then I would like to understand why he needs him. As sources of The Moscow Post previously reported, Starovoit may well have an affiliated business in the Kursk region. In particular, we can talk about the asphalt manufacturer – LLC “Terra”. The structure worked before the arrival of Starovoit, but after he was elected governor, its zero revenue literally jumped up to almost 600 million rubles.

Against this background, in the Kursk region there were bankruptcies of a number of companies in the road industry. Evil tongues claim that such processes could be caused by the “switching” of the region’s officials to road contracts with “Terra”. As a result, as of the beginning of 2022, a structure with an authorized capital of a modest 10 thousand rubles turned out to be the owner of a portfolio of government orders in the amount of 3.5 billion rubles.

Most LLC “Terra” received from the OKU “Kurskavtodor”. But in second place, as you might guess, was the structure of the Kursk mayor’s office – the Committee for Road Facilities of Kursk with the amount of government contracts of almost 700 million rubles. In this sense, Kutsak, his man in the Starovoit team, could ensure the further prosperity of “Terra”.

Well, why was Kutsak needed, if contracts from the Kursk City Hall were already flowing like a river to the Terra company? The answer is simple: the former mayor of Kursk, Viktor Karamyshev, who was loyal to Starovoit, could have been behind this. Karamyshev turned out to be so useful to Starovoit that he decided to appoint him as his deputy.

Now Karamyshev’s “experience” will be extended to the entire region, and it was necessary to place an equally loyal person in the chair of the mayor of Kursk, who, if desired, can be “destroyed” informationally. Is Kutsak the perfect candidate for this?

Continuing the road theme, the choice of LLC “Terra” as the likely leading road company could not be accidental at all. After all, Starovoit in the past was the head of the Federal Road Agency, and then the Deputy Minister of Transport. And he also managed to work in the investment committee of St. Petersburg.

Among the founders of “Terra” is the company “Snabstroy”. In turn, its founder, Sergei Rakcheev, and his companies also consistently receive large government contracts.

At one time, it was his company Evrotransstroy, being the only participant in the competition, that received a contract for 3.8 billion rubles for servicing the Ring Road in St. Petersburg. It turns out that now Rakcheev has turned around in the Kursk region, because he could have known Starovoit from his work in the Northern capital? If everything is so, then, as they say, Kutsak will help them.

The only problem here is that the people of Kursk have not been asked who they want to see as their mayor. For them, all deputies obedient to the law (and not only) will decide everything.

Source: The Moscow Post