Mitin, retiring, “turns off the light”?

In the Novgorod region, right before the eyes of the public, a raider seizure of an enterprise is unfolding, which could cost the region an important energy facility.

They write on social networks that Muravin, the director of Novgorodobleelectro, was recently detained and placed under house arrest. Neither the perpetuation of the memory of those who died during the Great Patriotic War in the village of Zhestyanaya Gorka, nor the fact that the company, in fact, is one of the main assets of the region, saved the manager from such a turn.

Novgorodobleelectro is an enterprise that guarantees uninterrupted power supply in the region. There are also jobs, social projects, charity and much more. Now the company is, in fact, “decapitated”: Alexey Muravin, CEO, is under house arrest. Official sources on this topic are still silent.

The correspondent understood the situation The Moscow Post in the Novgorod region.

“Dirty” lawyers

According to rumors, the main customer of the ongoing events, KDM Group LLC, is a company that provides consulting services.

This “office” is known for taking 8.5 million rubles a month from the Deposit Insurance Agency for legal services during the bankruptcy of Probusinessbank. They even tried to challenge the rates in court, but they sided with the defendant – Pravo.ru reported about this. In fact, half of the bankruptcy estate of the debtor went to lawyers, which suggests some kind of collusion with the leadership of the DIA.

This is a rather interesting Moscow office, the beneficiary of which is the offshore “QUORUMDEBT MANAGEMENT GROUP LIMITED”. At the same time, it is framed in the name of a certain Maria Onisenko.

Potentially, this could be the financial director of the British pharmaceutical company, one of the world’s largest GSK Consumer Healthcare, Maria Onishchenko.

Photo: https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy

It is interesting that the company, despite its foreign jurisdiction, is a very large supplier in “state procurement”: “KDM Group” has earned more than 160 million rubles in the Russian sector of government customers.

Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru

Ukrainian politicians and DIA

The general director of the office is Pavel Chekunov. There is no information on the network about him – except that he was previously the founder of Private Gastronomy LLC and CJSC NCC of Economics and Law. Most likely, this is a lawyer-nominal for which the office is registered. But who is really behind it?

An interesting connection between Chekunov and a certain Alexander Grigoryevich Shpak through OOO Private Gastronomy. The full namesake of the latter was a major Ukrainian politician – a member of the Verkhovna Rada. In addition, he worked in the top management of Ukrnaftaprodukt, the structure of the oligarch Vitaliy Kovalchuk. And yet, the threads here, rather, lead to another hypostasis.

At the end of July, The Bell (recognized as a foreign media agent on the territory of the Russian Federation) released an investigation in which the Quorum group appears. Allegedly, there was an agreement with the ex-head of the DIA, Valery Miroshnikov, that Alexander Zheleznyak, co-owner of the Life financial group, which merged Probusinessbank with its subsidiaries, would receive compensation from the bankruptcy estate for the disclosure of assets and three or four years of house arrest Probusinessbank.

Everything converged on Mitin

Let’s go back a few years. In 2014, The Moscow Post published an article stating that control over Novgorodobleelectro could have passed into the hands of the then head of the Novgorod region, Sergei Mitin. The latter allegedly became the owner of the enterprise through Energetik LLC.

Undermining the enterprise could have begun as early as 2012, when, after winning the elections to the city, Sergei Mitin appointed “his own” person, Marina Soltaganov, as the head of the local Committee on Price and Tariff Policy, who, while becoming a shareholder of Novgorodoblekletro, raised utilities. And this is despite the fact that the Novgorod region belongs to those regions of the country where the dynamics of electricity consumption is one of the lowest.

It was Mitin who let the businessman Nikolai Makarov enter the region with his Continentalinvest project, as a result of which a pulp and paper plant polluting the Volga appeared. Not only was environmentalists opposed this object more than once, but it also gained notoriety due to numerous stories of raider seizures.

Mitin himself did not go far – as The Moscow Post reported, ten years ago he could take an active part in the capture of the Splav corporation, one of the leading manufacturers of equipment for nuclear power plants, gas industry enterprises and the defense complex.

The situation is very reminiscent of what can now happen at Novgorodoblelektro: the then general director of Splav found himself behind bars shortly after the proposal to transfer the enterprise to Rosatom, and as a result, it came under the control of those who were allegedly ready to “merge” the enterprise to Mitin.

A lot of corruption scandals surfaced in the region during his leadership. The loudest, perhaps, was the road one – with the participation of Mitin’s deputy Arnold Shalmuev. He was accused of using a system of “kickbacks” when concluding government contracts. According to unconfirmed information, the latter said during interrogations that he was simply following the instructions of the head of the region.

The portrait looms downright criminal. Alexey Muravin, who was put in charge of Novgorodobleelectro in 2013, comes from the construction industry, and many did not understand how he ended up in the energy sector at all. It is possible that this is simply a person close to Mitin, and assigned to carry out his instructions.

The current detention, if it really takes place, may indicate either disagreements with the ex-governor, or that the enterprise is trying to be taken away by someone who was not afraid to fight the influential Mitin.