Director General of the Federal Energy Service Company subordinated to the Ministry of Energy (FGUP FESCO) Nikolai Myagkikh was detained in Moscow during a joint operation between the Moscow police and the FSB. He is suspected of involvement in a major fraud.
According to the preliminary version, heading one of the most important federal state unitary enterprises of the ministry, the range of tasks of which is very wide, Nikolai Myagkikh was involved in a rather trivial scheme for the sale of cars of the departmental fleet. With the help of a fictitious assessment, the cost of cars was underestimated by 90%, but they were sold at a real price. At the same time, it is not ruled out that the remaining 10% was not returned to the treasury of the enterprise. The damage caused so far is estimated at approximately 80 million rubles, despite the fact that at the moment only a short period of work of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise has been verified. Investigators intend to ask the court to arrest Nikolai Myagkikh, who denies his guilt.
According to Kommersant’s sources, Nikolai Myagkikh was detained by operatives of the Economic Security Service of the FSB, the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and investigators from the Department of Internal Affairs of the SAO of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow on Thursday morning upon arrival from Perm at the capital’s Domodedovo airport. He was immediately sent for interrogation as a suspect in the framework of a criminal case on especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) previously initiated in the department for the investigation of organized criminal activity. At the same time, teams of detectives carried out searches, seizures of documents, interrogations of witnesses, etc. in other cities – Perm, Samara and Saratov. In the first of them, whose native is Nikolai Myagkikh, he, according to some sources, actually lived permanently, and rarely came to the head office of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow, preferring to manage the enterprise remotely from his small homeland or from one of the many regional branches FESCO. In Samara, searches were carried out in the office of Otsenka LLC, which specializes in intermediary services for property valuation, as well as in the places of residence of its employees. Two employees of the firm – some Popova and Bykova – refused to testify during interrogation, according to Kommersant, using Art. 51 of the Constitution. In the meantime, all documentation related to FESCO, mobile phones, computers, etc., were confiscated from apartments and offices. car sales.
Everything seized should become material evidence in the materials of the investigation, which has been ongoing since October last year on the basis of the operational developments of the employees of the SEB FSB. Initially, it was said that some “unidentified persons” from among the leadership of FESCO set up a criminal business for the sale of departmental cars, deceiving and misleading officials of the Ministry of Energy.
The scheme itself was extremely simple. As counterintelligence officers and investigators found out, only in the period from January 2018 to mid-2019, Samara appraisers from the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Ministry of Energy received defective statements about the need to repair 108 vehicles under the economic jurisdiction of FESCO. Documents were sent immediately from 26 regions of Russia. True, information about the need to repair or write off the car was compiled only in one place – the metropolitan car service LLC Primeavto-M. However, this circumstance did not bother representatives of the Samara “Assessment”, and they reduced the cost of cars by 90%.
Already at the new price, the FSUE cars were sold by his leadership to “an indefinite circle of people”, and the money, according to the detectives, went into the pocket of swindlers from FESCO.
In the course of the investigation, an examination and operational-investigative measures were carried out, which revealed the facts that the assessment in Samara was carried out exclusively on paper without providing cars for inspection, the capital’s car service also had no branches anywhere in the regions, and the documentation, in particular, defective statements, have signs of inaccuracy. “The indicated acts of technical inspection of vehicles, according to the Ministry of Energy, did not reflect their real technical condition and cannot be considered reliable and appropriate,” the Kommersant source explained. Now the information is also being checked that the remaining 10% of the cost of the cars allegedly also did not go to the FSUE accounts opened with Sberbank. So far, investigators and investigators estimate the damage caused to the enterprise at about 80 million rubles. However, this is a preliminary estimate, since so far the verification measures in the framework of the criminal case have affected only a year and a half of FESCO’s activities. Meanwhile, Nikolai Myagkikh, although listed as O. CEO, has been in charge of the company since February 2017. Obviously, the new checks will also affect other periods and aspects of the financial and economic activities of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise. It should be noted that Nikolai Myagkikh is a specialist in energy service activities, heads the energy efficiency committee of the Perm regional branch of Business Russia, and is also a member of the expert council under the State Duma Committee on Energy
After the first interrogation, Nikolai Myagkikh was detained for two days under Art. 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on suspicion of committing a crime.
According to some reports, both during testimonies and at face-to-face confrontations, he denies his involvement in fraud, insisting on the authenticity of estimates of the cost of cars.
As early as this weekend, the investigators intend to apply to one of the capital’s courts with a request to select a measure of restraint in the form of detention for Nikolai Myagkikh. In addition, in the near future they intend to qualify in accordance with the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation the actions of appraisers from Samara and those involved in the investigation from Saratov, who could be directly related to the sale of cars. So far, the legal status of the latter has not been determined. Kommersant’s sources emphasize that the detention of Nikolai Myagkikh indicates that law enforcement officers continue their systematic work to restore order and fight corruption in the fuel and energy complex, and often in the highest echelons, by no means focusing on identifying violations and crimes by ordinary entrepreneurs.
In the Ministry of Energy itself, the scandal in the federal state unitary enterprise subordinate to them has so far been left without official comments.
True, Kommersant’s sources explained that they were talking about scams with FSUE cars, and not the ministry, whose representatives, by the way, took part in the verification activities.
It should be noted that the range of tasks of FESCO is very wide and includes several dozen types of activities – from market research of energy-saving technologies and equipment to commissioning and from consulting and reconstruction of electric power facilities to information and analytical support for projects and the creation of a single information space.