While corruption scandals are raging around Governor Vasiliev, it is up to the prosecutor’s office to force officials to fulfill their duties.
According to the correspondent The Moscow Post in the Kirov regionlocal residents are outraged by the empty PR activity of the governor of the region Igor Vasiliev. The editorial office received a letter from residents of the Nolinsky district, which has long needed (and laid) a new building for a comprehensive school. Now in the building, designed for 450 people, more than a thousand students are studying!
People blame officials of the regional administration for “delays” with the construction.
Last November, finally, the case moved forward: the prosecutor’s office drew attention to the situation.
As a result of the audit, the employees found out that the school was working with violations, and filed a lawsuit to eliminate them in court. He, in turn, obliged the regional and local authorities to immediately solve the problem – that is, to build a new school, and redistribute the parallels of students. Wrote about it “Arguments and Facts”.
And in early November, Igor Vasiliev publishes amazing news on his social networks – he announces the construction of several new schools in the Kirov region. And including a new school in the same Nolinsky district, where, at the request of the prosecutor’s office, the court ordered its officials to build it. True, Igor Vasiliev did not mention this small circumstance (about the prosecutor’s office and the court) in his publication.
Vasiliev presents plans for the construction and repair of schools as his own merit? Photo: vk.com
Why this publication appeared on social networks is clear to everyone. In 2022, Mr. Vasiliev is expected to have elections. People will judge whether it is worth keeping such a governor for a second term. And so far, it seems, the mood is not in favor of the current head of the region.
“Burned” in the woods
Of course, it’s good that a school will be built in Nolinsk after all. But the question is: will someone at this construction site be welded on again?
After all, while Vasilyev is promoting himself on social networks, the representatives of his team seem to be ready to drag everything that is not nailed down. For example, in the region there is still a scandal with the former vice-governor Andrey Plitko, who, in fact, was Vasiliev’s right hand.
In 2020, Plitko was caught red-handed while handing over 3.4 million rubles of an alleged bribe. According to investigators, Plitko was the organizer of a criminal group that collected kickbacks from local entrepreneurs for concluding timber purchase and sale agreements. I wrote about it in detail The Moscow Post.
Plitko is not just Vasiliev’s right hand. He was his confidant, they had worked together for a long time. Previously, Plitko was Vasiliev’s deputy in Rosreestr. In addition, when Vasilyev carried out a reorganization of power and introduced a separate post of prime minister, all deputies were reassigned to him, except for Andrey Plitko. As vice-governor, he reported directly to the head of the region and replaced him during his absence.
Together with Plitko, the Minister of Forestry Aleksey Shurgin, another person from the governor’s team, was also detained. And what?..
Suppose one carried money to another. And their boss was neither a dream nor a spirit? .. One way or another, but then Vasiliev resisted – no claims were made to him personally.
Andrew Plitko. Photo: https://kirovreg.ru/
Just think about it: right under the nose of the governor, an alleged organized criminal group is being created, which allegedly “puts on the counter” the entrepreneurs of the forestry industry? But even the current Prime Minister Alexander Churin, the same one under whose direct leadership Shurgin worked in the government, was also previously under criminal prosecution.
According to investigators, Alexander Churin, being the general director of JSC Zavod Selmash, hid more than 350 million rubles from the tax authorities in 2014. This was written by the website Newsler.
However, Churin did not go to prison. The criminal case was closed. Instead, he worked quietly at the same plant, after which he was invited by Vasiliev to the post of first deputy chairman of the regional government, and since 2019 he has become head of government.
In general, this is not surprising. After all, his father, Anatoly Churin, is also a long-term regional official. He works as an adviser to the governor Igor Vasiliev.
The wake-up call for the Churins sounded quite recently, at the beginning of February 2022. Then information appeared that the house of Alexander Churin, located in an elite village not far from Kirov, was allegedly searched. This situation was reported The Moscow Post told recently.
There were no official clarifications on this matter, but there was talk that the investigators might be interested in some documents on the same case from 2014, which was closed. But it can also be revived.
According to another version, Churin could be “probed” in some new case. Recall that the sons of Churin – Sergei and Alexander – marked themselves in the timber industry, took over the defense industry, privatizing state-owned enterprises. This was also reported by our publication.
It is known that Sergei Churin, having headed the state-owned city-forming enterprise OAO Luzsky Timber Complex with an authorized capital of 120 million rubles, practically brought it to bankruptcy. After that, the company’s assets could end up in Luzsky Timber Complex LLC, which is in Serpukhov near Moscow. But in 2013, this company closed.
And again the forest “emerges” on which both Plitko and the Minister of Forestry Shurgin, appointed by Alexander Churin, “got burned”.
It’s amazing who just didn’t try to cash in on the forests of the Kirov region. And as soon as Vasiliev is not afraid to repeat the fate of his predecessor Nikita Belykh!
Recall for what he took the bribe of Belykh, judging by the materials of his criminal case. He personally and through an intermediary received bribes in a particularly large amount totaling 400 thousand euros in favor of an entrepreneur from the forest industry, the owner of Novovyatsky Ski Plant JSC and Forestry Management Company LLC. Wrote about it “Interfax”.
Depression in Vyatka
However, there would be fewer analogies if Igor Vasiliev adequately fulfilled his duties. Here is the case with the construction of a school in the Nolinsky district, he will now surely present as his personal merit.
But the inhabitants of the Kirov region suffer from many other unresolved problems. For example, take problems with transport accessibility. In December 2021, Governor Vasilyev again virtually, in social networks, reported on the purchase of 67 new buses with a capacity of 108 passengers. Already in December, according to him, the buses were supposed to go on the route.
However, as our readers from the Kirov region write, neither in December nor in January did new buses enter the line. According to the source, this happened because the administration of the city of Kirov did not check the carrier for the availability of staff. As a result, at the beginning of the year, people stood for an hour at stops waiting for the right bus, although earlier the waiting time did not exceed ten minutes.
Apparently, there is the usual bungling and sluggishness of officials. But after all, in this situation, it could have reached the measures of the prosecutor’s response – is Vasilyev really waiting for this again? And why doesn’t he understand that such empty success reports only annoy people?
While the governor was promoting in social networks, the transport collapse almost happened in the region. Photo: https://vk.com
In January 2022 Kirov region took last place in the ranking of regions of the Volga Federal District in terms of average wages. Judging by the analysis of vacancies, employers are ready to pay Kirov residents only 39.9 thousand rubles. The top five outsiders also included the Udmurt Republic (41 thousand rubles), the Chuvash Republic (41 thousand), the Saratov region (40.7 thousand rubles) and Mari El (40.5 thousand rubles).
That is, even within the framework of the Volga Federal District, the Kirov region under the control of Vasiliev looks underdeveloped. But there is also the state debt of the region, which, according to the authorities, by the end of 2021 should have decreased from 25 billion rubles to 20 billion rubles. And even this figure is shocking – out of the entire amount of debt, 16 thousand rubles fall on each of the 1.2 million inhabitants of the region, counting infants and the elderly.
We have to state with sadness that under Vasiliev the region not only failed to get rid of the subsidized status, not only did not overcome corruption (for which, after the arrest of Belykh, people had a special hope), but also drowned in new scandals, arrests, redistribution of the timber industry.
What should one think about the governor, who, without a “kick” from the prosecutor’s office, cannot build a school in the district center and at the same time actively promotes himself in social networks? It is unlikely that such an approach will help Vasiliev win the sympathy of voters in the upcoming elections.