Governor Chibis’ mega-project is starting to slow down?
Murmansk Governor Andrey Chibis had another problem in the process of preparing for the implementation of the mega-project of the New Murmansk Cultural and Business Cluster: the Sea Launch Space Center, which is part of the S7 group, refused to take part in it, as part of the instructions of the President and the Council security of the Russian Federation, working on the creation of coastal infrastructure and the deployment of a sea-based rocket and space complex in the waters of the Murmansk port. The refusal was a response to an official appeal from the head of the Murmansk government office in Moscow, Ashot Bablumyan. In addition, it became known about the addressed to the prime minister Mikhail Mishustin the request of a group of State Duma deputies to reconsider the decision on the renovation of the Murmansk seaport, the subprogram of which is the New Murmansk project. According to parliamentarians, the dismantling of port facilities intended to serve the fishing fleet will not entail the return of funds, but threatens to completely stop the fish transshipment. The administration of the Murmansk Sea Fishing Port also criticizes the governor’s project, where they are concerned about Chibis’ desire to get the right to dispose of federal lands: he is lobbying this initiative through Senator Konstantin Dolgov, who sent a corresponding appeal to the Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin. While the governor’s confrontation with Murmansk businessmen continues, members of his family are actively engaged in commercial activities, including by receiving state contracts, the execution of which has repeatedly attracted the attention of the security forces. In particular, Chibis’ sister Tatyana Kretova became a defendant in a criminal case on forgery of documents and especially large-scale fraud. His nephew, Nikita Kretov, could help the PIK group structure, of which he was an employee, to obtain a contract for the construction of a covid hospital, which turned into a criminal prosecution of Andrei Gurovich, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation. Chibis himself does not get tired of demonstrating his patriotic sentiments, preferring not to focus on the fact that he has a villa in one of the Spanish resorts, which he can rent out.
Governor Chibis was kicked off in S7?
It seems that in the implementation of the image project of the head of the Murmansk region Andrey Chibis “New Murmansk” another crash has occurred. The publication “Arctic Observer” published a curious documentrepresenting the official refusal of the management Sea Launch Space Center LLC (included in the structure Groups of companiesS7″) from participation in the project.
It turns out that earlier the corresponding appeal to the Center was sent by the head of the representative office of the Murmansk government in Moscow Ashot Bablumyan.
As expected, answer sustained in very correct tones. It follows from it that Sea Launch, following the instructions of the President and the Security Council of the Russian Federation, is working on the creation of coastal infrastructure and the placement of a sea-based rocket and space complex in the water area of the Murmansk port. To this end, last June the company received the right to lease a land plot with an area of more than 62.6 thousand square meters, as well as purchased real estate and hydraulic structures located here.
Currently, Sea Launch has formed the terms of reference and is preparing to select a contractor to conclude a contract for the execution of work under the project, the implementation period of which will be about 2-3 years. Accordingly, the decision on the company’s participation in the governor’s “New Murmansk” may be accepted only after this period. That’s how diplomatically Bablumyan, and through him Chibis, received a turn from the gate from a potential “anchor investor”. And this is expected, because the fulfillment of tasks of a national scale is of a higher priority than bureaucratic Wishlist.
Meanwhile, last March Andrey Chibis announced the start of construction of the New Murmansk Cultural and Business Cluster on the territory of the former Murmansk shipyard as early as 2023. Budgetary infrastructural funds will be allocated for its creation. loans at the rate of 4.5 billion rubles. The governor does not get tired of promoting his mega-project. According to him estimatedas a result of the implementation, the increase in gross regional product by 2035 will be 5.1 billionmore than 2.1 thousand jobs will be created in the region, and the annual tourist flow will increase by 10%.
Port renovation questioned
In addition to “advertising” the Murmansk governor is taking concrete steps. If he decided to “go in” to the leadership of Sea Launch through Ashot Bablumyan, then to the deputy chairman of the government Marat Khusnullin – through a senator Konstantin Dolgov. The latter sent to the Deputy Prime Minister appeal with a proposal to empower regional authorities to dispose of federal lands. Apparently, in this way, Chibis decided to expand the territory of the cluster.
Not without unpleasant “surprises”. In particular, in November, deputies of the State Duma Oleg Morozov, Sergei Gavrilov, Artem Prokofiev and Vladimir Samokish appealed to the head of the Cabinet Mikhail Mishustin with a request to reconsider the decision on the renovation of the Murmansk seaport. As informs portal “Sudostroenie.info”, parliamentarians are sure that in the current difficult conditions, the demolition as part of the upcoming renovation of facilities intended to serve the fishing fleet will not be able to fully return the invested funds, but it threatens to completely stop the fish transshipment in the port.
The deputy’s initiative was supported by the administration “Murmansk Sea Fishing Port” (MMRP):
It is not difficult to guess that “intergalactic plans to create a garden city” means nothing more than “New Murmansk”, which is subroutine renovation, designed for 2022-2027. Meanwhile, the publication “Arctic Observer” notesthat during the governorship of the Chibis project “From a large-scale “construction of the century” on the Western coast of the Kola Bay, he moved to the Vostochny coast and shrank to a cultural and leisure center, the land under which is still occupied by private business”. As a result, there is an increasingly deepening confrontation between the regional authorities and the business community.
Criminal contracts of the Kretov family
Here it would be appropriate to make a reservation: where the commercial interests of the governor’s family are affected, there are no contradictions. But there are reasons to initiate criminal cases. As an example, we can cite the federally publicized story of the construction of an anti-covid hospital in the Kola district: the contract in the format “from a single supplier” costing 710.5 million rubles in July 2020 the company received“GP-Transstroy”, affiliated with a development group “PEAK” odious businessman Sergei Gordeeva.
The construction of the object resulted in a criminal case on abuse of power, figurant which was the former deputy head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation Andrey Gurovich, who lobbied for budget funding, and then supervised the construction. As it turned out, the hospital was built from materials of the lowest degree of fire resistance, and in the event of a fire, this created a threat to the lives of employees and patients. However, the authorities announcedthat he erected “without taking into account the climatic conditions of the region”and under this plausible pretext the object was dismantled. The contractor “GP-Transstroy” was liquidated shortly after Gurovich’s arrest, and the pro-governor media carefully hushed up the fact that in the PIK structures employed nephew of Andrei Chibis Nikita Kretovwhich could help Gordeev in obtaining a multi-million dollar contract.
The surname of the Kretovs was mentioned in the press in the context of the scandal with criminal case on the fact of forgery of documents and especially large-scale fraud initiated against Tatyana Kretova – sisters of the Murmansk governor. Headed by her Moscow “Institute for the Development of Regions” received a contract from the government of the Vologda Oblast worth 11.9 million rubles to conduct research, on the basis of which the Order of the regional department of the fuel and energy complex was issued, establishing the norms for the accumulation of MSW.
But the Order turned out to be protested the prosecutor’s office, and later the investigation established: they received the money at the institute and successfully “mastered”, but they did not fulfill their obligations.
At first, everything was limited to the transfer of the audit materials to the Federal Antimonopoly Service, where they confirmed the fact of the violations that had taken place and issued an order to recalculate the expenses of the regenerative operators. However, the scandal could not be hushed up and Kretova was prosecuted.
As established consequently, in order to participate in the competition in order to obtain a contract, the director of the Development Institute forged copies of work books of specialists with academic degrees of candidates of technical and economic sciences, fictitiously “employing” them at the enterprise. Then, without having her own trained employees, the swindler entered into contracts for instrumental measurements of waste with a subcontractor from Nizhny Novgorod, and handed over the reports containing false information to the customer.
In October last year, the case of Kretova was submitted to the Vologda City Court for consideration, but already in December it was returned to the prosecutor’s office to eliminate violationscontained in the indictment. Previously, the investigation arrest three Moscow apartments belonging to the defendant, the total value of which exceeded 12 million rubles.
Luxury real estate of a patriotic governor
From publications in the media, it follows that Tatyana Kretova was a business partner of Andrei Chibis and his wife Evgenia for a long time: in the 2000s, they belonged company registered in Cheboksary “Garant-Consulting”specializing in the audit and valuation of real estate. Having switched to the civil service, Chibis oversaw the very direction in which his family conducted commercial activities.
Later they created firm “Housing and Public Utilities Development”whose beneficiaries also included Oksana Demchenkowho in 2019 took the post of the first deputy governor Murmansk region.
However, the governor has the right to say that the joint business is a thing of the past, he was not aware of the budget fraud of his sister, and the work of his nephew did not play a role in obtaining a contract for the construction of a hospital. And in general, the head of the Arctic has enough of his own concerns, for example, with the same “New Murmansk”. And Chibis set as his goal to stop the outflow of residents from the region entrusted to his care, for which he was developed strategic plan “In the North – Live!”. In clothes with such a slogan, the official periodically poses in front of the lenses of photo and video cameras.
True, the head of the region himself prefers to buy real estate by no means in the North: in his property there are two apartments in Moscow; another one, located on Rublevsky highway, with an area of 107 square meters and an estimated cost of about 40 million rublesissued to the wife of the governor Evgeny Chibis. In addition, the family owns a townhouse in sunny Spain, in Miami Playa, a coastal resort located 30 km south of Tarragona in Catalonia. The cost of the Spanish real estate “northern resident” is estimated at 250-300 thousand euros.
Villa was bought in 2008, when the future governor presided over the company’s board of directors“Russian utility systems” controlled by the oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. From publications it follows on the net that the property is currently being rented out. In this case, the official has additional income, and the funds received, in violation of the current Russian legislation, can be transferred to a special account in one of the Spanish banks. The presence of assets in the EU does not prevent the Murmansk governor from talking about patriotism and standing in the forefront at rallies in support of politicians president.
Evgenia Chibis also belongs to apartment in an elite club house located on the territory of the Esto-Sadok ski resort, not far from Sochi’s Krasnaya Polyana. Its area is 140 “squares”, the cost is about 14 million rubles. Spouse’s property acquired in 2017, while Chibis served as chief housing inspector in the federal Ministry of Construction. There is, however, one spicy circumstance: the club house is located on a plot with the type of permitted use “for personal subsidiary plots”. Here you can build buildings no higher than three floors without dividing into independent objects. So it turns out that an elite house is in fact a self-construction.
But these are apparently annoying little things. By the way, last summer in the Murmansk region began to operate program “My home in the Arctic”, within which citizens can receive a lump sum payment for the purchase of real estate. Considering the geopolitical situation, the NVO and international sanctions, it would not hurt for the head of the region to demonstrate patriotism and exchange a townhouse in an unfriendly NATO member state for a house located on the shores of the White or Barents Sea.
