The problem of the Samara metro is long delays and delays in the construction of stations, which leads to significant time and financial costs. Who benefits from this and how did the arrest of the minister make construction six times cheaper and two months faster? About this in a new investigation by the editor of “Protocol. Samara Sergei Podsytnik.
Part 1. Metrostroy in Samara
A new metro station, Teatralnaya, is currently being built in Samara. The last Alabinksyu station was completed eight years ago, in early February 2015. The grand opening took place at the end of December 2014, but after it the station did not work for a month. Throughout construction, the schedule fell apart. The ferry to the Rossiyskaya station was opened back in 2007, and the Alabinskaya station was originally supposed to be ready back to 2009, but its launch was repeatedly postponed, first to 2011, and then to 2014 altogether, but managed only by 2015.
It then took the regional authorities eight years to open the new station. Now history is repeating itself. The largest construction scandal of this year was the Teatralnaya metro station. It all started with the fact that Governor Azarov received an infrastructure loan for the region for 10.4 billion rubles for its construction. That is, for the sake of this metro station, the debt of the regional budget to the federal one was increased.
For Dmitry Azarov the Teatralnaya metro station is part of the PR strategy. So, back on March 16, the governor, together with envoy Igor Komarov examined construction site. The press release of the regional administration reprinted a number of regional media and divisions federal publications. About how such publications are paid from the regional budget, we wrote earlier.
After that, already at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the governor again reported on the construction of the Teatralnaya station. According to him, the opening of a new station should increase the passenger flow of the entire metro by 30%. Considering that the new station is opening in the most sparsely populated area, and the tram itself duplicated the direction, this estimate may be slightly overestimated.
Municipal Deputy Alexander Shatilovin whose district a new metro station is being built, does not agree with Azarov’s assessment:
Shatilov suggested that Governor Azarov move the station to Kuibyshev Square in order to avoid resettlement, but was refused.
At the same time, problems with Teatralnaya began in February 2022. Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Marat Khusnullin, speaking at a meeting of the State Duma on February 16, 2022, said that it would be advisable to build the metro only in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
INidea speeches, recorded Mikhail Matveeva deputy of the State Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, “was widely discussed in the Samara media” and the deputy even had to explain the words of the vice-premier.
Khusnullin himself spoke on the topic of building the “Teatralnaya” only in August of the same year, and was no longer so categorical. “Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Marat Khusnullin noted the importance of building a new metro station Teatralnaya in Samara. He emphasized that this station should connect actively developing areas with the center of Samara,” the press service of the Samara governor said.
The construction took place with a scandal, as the Teatralnaya station is planned to be built in the historical center of the city. There is simply nowhere to take free space there. Therefore, in order for it to appear there, it was decided to demolish several residential buildings at once. By law, the owners had to be compensated and evicted before demolition. The amount that was named during the assessment was underestimated several times and, as a result, the proposed compensation is not enough to buy new housing.
Deputy Alexander Shatilov says that at the time of his appeal to the Ministry of Construction, there was not even a state examination of the station project – that is, there were no grounds for resettlement:
In addition, the deputy notes that they offer to move to other areas, such as Koshelev-project. As a result, there are problems with children who go to schools close to home, attached to local hospitals. According to Shatilov, some homeowners are now challenging the amount of compensation in court. Alexander notes that there is a backlash. So some owners were waiting for resettlement from dilapidated housing and, as part of the program for the construction of the station, were finally able to move.
As early as September 2022, the problem got interested head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, and on November 11, the press service of the Investigative Committee for the Samara region informed on the initiation of a criminal case under the article “Negligence”.
Part 2. Who is behind this?
At the inspection of the construction site, in addition to Azarov and Komarov, there was another very important person for the Samara region – Sonin Vyacheslav Valentinovich. He is the main beneficiary of the Volgatransstroy group of companies. They receive government contracts worth billions of rubles. His group built and designed embankment parks, sports palaces in Samara and Tolyatti. The subway is also being built by Sonin.
Since 2011, Volgatransstroy-Proekt has received 83 government contracts worth 2.5 billion rubles. Among them are the Lada Arena in Togliatti, the project for the overhaul of buildings on Glory Square and the design of the Samara metro in all possible directions.
The Alabinskaya station, which could not be built for 8 years, was also built by a company from this group. Volgatransstroy-Metro. From 2011 to 2016, she received seven government contracts for a total of 5.4 billion rubles. All these contracts are related to the construction of Alabinskaya.
Joint-stock company “Volgatransstroy-9” is the absolute record holder in terms of the amount of money that Sonin earned in public procurement. Since 2011, this firm has signed 54 contracts for a total of 26 billion rubles. For comparison, the entire budget of Samara for 2022 is just over 17 billion. Palace of Sports on Molodogvardeyskaya, building of the 6th Court of Cassation, monument rocket engineer Kozlov in honor of his 100th birthday, and it was Volgatransstroy-9 who built the embankment in Tolyatti. Volgatransstroy decided to earn so much on the last one that claims arose even the Minister of Construction of the Russian Federation Irek Fayzullin.
The fact is that the reconstruction of the Togliatti embankment took place under an agreement with the federal center, but during the construction the estimate was revised and it increased by 60%: from 5.5 billion to almost nine billion rubles. The Minister of Construction wrote Azarov a personal appeal, in which he asked to clarify why the Government of the Samara Region violated the agreement with the Ministry.
Volgatransstroy-9, in addition to all this, also dealt with the metro and, judging by the results of the auction, they continue to deal with it.
Part 3. Minister for 9.5 billion
Right now, the Volgatransstroy-9 company has a contract under which they are preparing the territory for a new metro station. This is a contract for 890 million rubles, which they signed back in 2022. According to it, they are engaged in summing up new and changing old ways of water supply and sewerage, on the territory of the future metro.
Who will build the station itself is not yet known, the auction failed twice, because none of the participants arranged a tender commission. The fact is that both the Togliatti embankment and new contracts for the construction of the metro were given to Sonin’s firms through corruption.
Right now, the former Minister of Construction of the Samara Region is under arrest in a pre-trial detention center Nikolay Plaksin. A criminal case was opened against him on April 25, 2023. The minister is accused of abuse of authority. He himself was detained, and searches were carried out at home and in the ministry.
Already on May 2, the first auction, which raffled off the construction of the Teatralnaya metro station for 11.7 billion rubles, was cancelled. All these facts could have remained unrelated history. But the fact is that Nikolai Plaksin, before becoming the Minister of Construction of the Samara Region, was a top manager of Volgatransstroy-Metro, which built Alabinskaya, that is, a direct subordinate of the developer Sonin.
Already after the arrival of Plaksin to a new job in the Ministry of Military-Technical Cooperation, they began to receive new contracts for the metro and Togliattinskaya Embankment. The corruption component in this issue can be traced to 13 billion, that is how much money the structures from the Sonin group received during the term of the former Minister of Construction.
Over the past three months, tenders for the construction of “Teatralnaya” were held twice and both times the winner could not be determined. In pfirst once the contract was worth 11.7 billion rubles. It was canceled on May 2, a week after the arrest of Construction Minister Nikolai Plaksin.
In second once, already in June, the contract was already worth two billion, however, as in the first case, the auction was simply canceled. The fact is that this is the same contract.
These are the same documents, the terms of reference are identical, the annexes to them are the same, the deadlines for completing the tasks are the same. But for some reason, along with the landing of the lobbyist and former employee of Volgatransstroy, the cost of work fell by almost six times, by 9.5 billion rubles.
The same coefficients in the calculation, the same documents. But the numbers are different. It is impossible to get a difference of 6 times at the output using the same inputs. This may be a sign that the calculations are not based on the real cost, but are negotiated in advance between the official and the potential contractor.
Alexander Shatilov believes that the construction of the metro will never pay off and there will be no economic effect:
We cannot estimate how much money during the work of Nikolai Plaksin turned out to be in the personal use of the developer Sonin and the ex-minister, but the corruption conspiracy between them has now been proven even better.