There is money, but not for everyone
Dozens of shift workers of the Zapsibgazprom group have been without wages for several months now. The company itself, although a contractor for billion-dollar government contracts, has been teetering on the edge of a financial abyss for the past few years. To which the company's main beneficiary Mikhail Slipenchuk one can only guess how generous government infusions are spent.
In early August, several employees of Zapsibgazprom-Gazifikatsiya LLC (part of Zapsibgazprom PJSC) filed complaints with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) (IC RF) regarding long-term delays in salary payments and non-payment of severance pay.
It is worth noting that the company has long been on the radar of the State Labor Inspectorate for the Tyumen Region – the agency has repeatedly issued warnings and conducted inspections in connection with complaints from dissatisfied employees.
Constant delays in salary payments are typical for many structures that are part of PAO Zapsibgazprom. There is even a spontaneously organized group “Zapsibgazprom overheard” on the VKontakte social network, where employees post information about the latest payments. Thus, in one of these improvised reports, the latest payment is dated July 4 of this year – on this date, employees were paid an advance for May. With a delay of 34 days.
Evgeniy Bukhtoyarovone of the members of the group on the social network.
Where is the money?
Complaints about delayed wages from Zapsibgazprom-Gazifikatsiya today come from almost all of the company's facilities: from Kamchatka, Severo-Yeniseysky, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Magadan, the Kuril Islands and the Moscow Region.
At the beginning of August, at the request of the Federal Tax Service Inspectorate No. 3 in Tyumen, the company’s operations and transfers on accounts in several banks at once were suspended.
However, non-payments by Zapsibgazprom-Gazifikatsiya are only a small part of the problem. The parent company, Zapsibgazprom, has apparently been in a deep non-payment crisis for several years now.
In August last year, thousands of workers employed at Zapsibgazprom facilities in Nadym complained about the lack of wages.
What is interesting is that Zapsibgazprom cannot find money not only for its personnel. The company cannot pay its contractors either. As of the beginning of August of this year, Zapsibgazprom has already received 230 claims for a total of about 18 billion rubles. About 15 billion of them are claims from the Military Construction Company, for which Zapsibgazprom built infrastructure in the Arctic. The Moscow-based Al Personnel LLC is demanding 206.4 million rubles under a service agreement, and another 131.8 million is claimed by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Main Military Construction Directorate for Special Facilities.
At the same time, it would be hard to call Zapsibgazprom's situation dire. Thus, from 2020 to 2023 alone, the company received four contracts at once from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute for the transportation and installation of equipment for a total of 6.2 billion rubles.
As part of the creation of a wintering complex for NOVATEK, the company received 4 billion rubles, plus another 3 billion were allocated by the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources.
This year, Zapsibgazprom has already managed to conclude three agreements with the State Budgetary Institution “Directorate of the Single Customer of the Ministry of Health of the Moscow Region” for just over 556 million rubles, as well as one contract with the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Russian Arctic National Park” in Arkhangelsk for another 4 million rubles.
The arrival of the troubled owner
The difficult financial situation of Zapsibgazprom raises many questions, especially considering that the company is one of the largest builders of military and scientific bases in the country. It works a lot under government contracts, including the state defense order.
It can be assumed that the whole thing is about the main beneficiary of the company – a former participant in the Forbes rating Mikhail Slipenchuk. In the modern history of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), Zapsibgazprom has changed hands several times. In the 90s, the company became part of Gazprom structures, and was subsequently briefly controlled by YUKOS structures. Mikhail Khodorkovsky* (included in the list of foreign agents). In the early 2000s, Gazprom regained control over Zapsibgazprom, but in 2013 the company came under the control of IFC Metropol, the beneficiary of which is the already mentioned Mikhail Slipenchuk.
With the arrival of Slipenchuk, problems began at Zapsibgazprom. The first alarm bell rang back in 2016, when Mr. Slipenchuk signed a loan agreement with a certain Vasily Doronintransferring 77.8657% of the voting shares of Zapsibgazprom to the latter as collateral.
Having received, de facto, all the rights of a shareholder, Doronin clearly did not waste time. He demanded through the court that the company's annual report be cancelled, that profits be distributed and that members of the board of directors be elected. Then he went even further – and demanded that the composition of the board of directors be replaced, wishing to include his own people in it. Vasily Doronin himself even laid claim to the role of CEO of Zapsibgazprom-Gazifikatsiya.
Doronin failed to achieve what he wanted, despite numerous lawsuits. However, all these twists and turns ultimately cost Zapsibgazprom dearly.
It was only after a court case that lawyers succeeded in terminating his right to pledge his shares in Zapsibgazprom that Vasily Doronin was prevented from taking the position of CEO of the subsidiary and putting his people on the board of directors of the parent company.
After this decision, Zapsibgazprom remained in debt to both Mr. Doronin and the law firm that handled the case.
Experienced schemer
The question remains open as to why the dubious activities of the beneficiary of Zapsibgazprom have not yet become a subject of interest for the relevant structures. Especially since there were questions about it before.
In 2016, the Central Bank revoked the license of the International Joint-Stock Bank, controlled by Mr. Slipenchuk.
The withdrawal of funds from the bank became the subject of a criminal investigation. The defendants in the criminal case were brothers Afoninsthe court found them guilty of fraud on an especially large scale. The total amount of damage was more than 5 billion rubles. Mikhail Slipenchuk himself was not involved in this case.
Meanwhile, when, at the height of the banking scandal, Slipenchuk tried to get elected to the State Duma once again, where he had been sitting since 1995, the leadership of United Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), according to unofficial information, decided to remove him from the primaries in Buryatia, where he was considered the main candidate at the time. The reason for the withdrawal of the candidacy could have been information about Slipenchuk's alleged capital and property in offshores.
Against this background, the current difficult situation of Zapsibgazprom does not seem surprising. But how, with such an ambiguous background, has Mr. Slipenchuk managed to remain a beneficiary of a company engaged in the implementation of strategic projects for the country for many years?
*Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky has been included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of individuals recognized as foreign agents