A scandal flares up on the Web related to the current head of the Committee on Interethnic Relations and the Implementation of the Migration Policy of St. Petersburg, the former head of the LDPR faction in the city parliament, Oleg Kapitanov.
Allegedly, Kapitanov’s subordinates from the St. Petersburg House of Nationalities GKU committee subordinate to him tried with strange persistence to give a contract of more than half a billion rubles for the restoration of Stifter’s mansion into the hands of a specific company – Petersburg Revival LLC. And in the end, they succeeded, even despite the problems with the FAS.
At the same time, the GKU itself is headed by Olga Shulgina, who, according to Delta, is Kapitanov’s girlfriend. And the names of both officials have already sounded in scandals related to the restoration of buildings at the expense of the budget.
Details – in the material of The Sankt-Peterburg Post.
The Committee for Nationalities Affairs (let its functionaries take no offense) is considered one of the least significant in the system of power in St. Petersburg. However, very serious money is also found there, in recent years, associated with the restoration of buildings and mansions belonging to the state and related to migration policy.
In February, the “St. Petersburg House of Nationalities” began accepting applications for the restoration of a monument of regional significance – the Stifter mansion on the street. Mokhovaya, 15A. The initial price of the contract was 544.7 million rubles.
At the same time, the requirements for participants were extremely strict – one had to have experience in at least 90 contracts for work with monuments over the past few years. And for some reason there should not have been more than 150 such contracts. As a result, only one application was able to pass – LLC “Revival of Petersburg”, which is located nearby on the same Mokhovaya Street.
However, the conditions for selecting applications were too strange – the FAS canceled the purchase. As a result, the other day a new purchase was made, already under adjusted conditions. But, apparently, adjusted in a strange way: only LLC Vozrozhdeniye Petersburga, which reduced the price by only 10 thousand rubles, was also able to show up. Delta writes about it. Those. the budget received almost no benefits from such a contract. Why then was a tender needed at all?
All this suggests that the company could be tritely “led”. At the same time, the contract with the GKU itself could not be found in open sources – it is not clear why. Perhaps he is still at the conclusion stage.
But the GKU has worked with the same company before – it turned out to have two contracts for repair work in the same building on Mokhovaya with a total cost of almost 100 million rubles. As Delta writes, the structure was supposed to restore the Hall of Columns, the roof and attic floors, but in fact the work allegedly affected only the office of the director of the GKU (Olga Shulgina) and the head of the public procurement department.
Apparently, the Hall of Columns will be restored as part of a new state contract for half a billion rubles. At the same time, the total amount of state purchases of “Revival of St. Petersburg” exceeds 10 billion rubles – it is clearly very fond of the authorities of the Northern capital.
The company itself was founded in 1996, but out of about 500 contracts won, 93 were concluded in the last two years – i.e. after the arrival of Oleg Kapitanov to the post of head of the Committee on Interethnic Relations. The company is owned by Mikhail Yumartov (40%) and ten other entrepreneurs, each of which accounts for 6%. Some of them are his alleged relatives, while Yumartov himself has no other businesses.
According to the authors of the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, the company is allegedly friendly to the head of the House of Nationalities, Olga Shulgina, and allegedly it is she who is trying to give a contract of half a billion to this particular company. Considering that she is allegedly friends with Kapitanov, does this mean that this firm is “friendly” to him too?
The same authors of the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel claim that Shulgina was allegedly involved in some kind of corruption scandal with the restoration of the House of Children’s Creativity, where she was the supply manager, and that only Kapitanov helped her get rid of trouble after checking the State Administrative and Technical Inspectorate ( GATI).
At the same time, Mr. Kapitanov himself, who can promote his people to positions, turned out to be an experienced restorer. And also scandalous. Before entering politics, he worked as the general director of CJSC Molis (according to some reports, he could also be the beneficiary of the structure).
This company was disgraced in 2014 during repair work in the Stackenschneider’s house on Millionnaya Street. The Committee for State Control and the Use of Historical and Architectural Monuments (KGIOP) filed a lawsuit against the company, believing that the structure was working there illegally, and even causing harm to the facility. TASS wrote about this.
By the way, the company itself was going to open a hotel in a historic building, as Oleg Kapitanov himself directly stated. At the same time, unsanctioned protests by city defenders who opposed the work continued for several weeks next to the mansion. This was written by “Business Petersburg”.
So, apparently, Kapitanov and his people could have had a “strange” attitude towards historical buildings in St. Petersburg long before they got into power.
We also note that CJSC “Molis” with a negative asset value of 57 million rubles. And until January 2022, it belonged to the Swiss offshore Silom Construction JSC. Isn’t it worth looking for the company’s money there, and could the former deputy, and now an official of Kapitanov, be related to offshore business?
“Principled” Captains
After that, Mr. Kapitanov managed to be elected a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg from the Liberal Democratic Party. And in this position, he was also accompanied by a whole series of scandals. He was also considered a person close to another deputy from the LDPR (only the State Duma) Boris Paikin.
Billionaire Boris Paykin, the owner of Fort Group LLC, began his career as an adviser to the Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev, then became the general director of Gazprom Sotsinvest LLC. The organization was engaged, among other things, in the construction of Olympic facilities in Sochi.
Boris Paykin resigned from this position in February 2013, immediately and after construction timelines and cost overruns were sharply criticized by Vladimir Putin.
As the journalists of the Neva Segodnya publication reported: “Paykin’s resignation suggests his participation in corruption schemes related to the Olympic construction. To avoid consequences, as happened with Bilalov, Boris Romanovich chose to retire and continued to engage in investment business in the Fort Group holding “In 2013, Paikin’s name appeared on the list of offshore owners registered in the British Virgin Islands. According to the papers, Boris Romanovich was a co-owner of an unknown company Sander Universal.”
The same publication “Neva Today” wrote that “it was Boris Paykin who was involved in the embezzlement of funds from the Olympic construction site.”
According to the authors of the Profit RU website, Oleg Kapitanov supposedly was once engaged in eliminating Boris Paikin’s competitors in the field of entrepreneurship. As an example, it is cited that Kapitanov allegedly made efforts to stop the construction of the oceanarium near Kupchino, arguing that the construction could affect the green zone of the Internationalist Park.
But the building site was withdrawn from the park back in 1999. And the development of that territory was carried out by Optima LLC, which, with its oceanarium, could become a serious competitor for traffic from the South Pole shopping mall, located nearby and owned by Paikin’s Fort Group.
If this is true, then for what kind of benefits could Kapitanov contribute to the affairs of Paikin? Is it not for money from offshore companies that detractors previously tried to attribute to the owner of Fort Group?
It seems that Mr. Kapitanov is generally not very principled. It can be recalled that he received the position of head of the Committee in 2019 only after he withdrew his candidacy from the election of the governor of St. Petersburg, which Beglov won. Was it not for this that he was given a bread place in Smolny?
Such a step was “appreciated” by the late founder of the Liberal Democratic Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He directly called Oleg Kapitanov a “traitor” and simply kicked him out of the party. “A weak and worthless person turned out to be in our ranks,” Fontanka quoted Zhirinovsky as saying.
Now this weak and insignificant, according to Zhirinovsky, a person is engaged in the distribution of government contracts worth hundreds of millions of rubles, perhaps to firms that are not alien to him.