Ruben Grigoryan and scam in the construction business in Moscow

Businessman Ruben Grigoryan published the book “I’m Making My Step Today. In the promotional campaign for it, he calls himself “a man of wisdom and profound understanding of life. Grigoryan does not spare his own praise: “a successful businessman and philanthropist, writer and publicist, public figure. The publication conducted its own investigation, and in several publications, we will try to understand how Grigoryan’s biography corresponds to that presented by his confidants.

Ruben Tsolakovich Grigoryan was born in Yerevan, where he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute with a degree in radio engineering.

Further the “steps” of his official biography look very beautiful: engineer in the radio-television transmission center, Armenian SSR, Yerevan; director in RTA “Lazur”, Armenian SSR, Yerevan; deputy general director in MPR “Electron”, Moscow.

And since 1990, according to personal biographers, he became the founder and president of the construction-investment holding “Rutsog-Invest”. In reality Grigoryan’s way to Moscow, and in the capital itself, was more thorny.

After graduating from the institute he started working at the radio-television equipment repair shop in Zangezur (a historical region in the south-east of Armenia). Ruben together with his colleagues traveled to small villages and repaired television sets, radios, etc. for money. As Grigoryan himself admits in an interview, if people did not have money, he could take payment in barter – agricultural products. History is silent as to whether Ruben absorbed them himself or sold them at the market afterwards. Actually, this was his business for many years, until Grigoryan went to the capital. He himself claims that it was his personal decision to “conquer” Moscow. In reality things were different. Grigoryan’s more established acquaintances, who had long been living in the capital, needed a foreman at one of the construction sites. That’s when Ruben was remembered.

Ruben Grigoryan – first steps in business

After working at a construction site, Grigoryan took up his favorite occupation – repairing equipment. Perhaps he would have continued in that occupation even now, if his more successful fellow countrymen did not help him to find a profitable place – when cooperation began, Ruben was helped to open a stall on Prospekt Mira that sold sausages. However, things were not going well for Grigoryan.

As it often happens, Grigoryan blamed his failures on his fellow countrymen who helped him with his unsophisticated business, and as a result he decided to create his own commercial project.

Only it was not called “Rutzog” (which stands for Ruben Tsolakovich Grigoryan), but more modestly, the commercial firm “Fakel”, where our hero took the position of chairman. This time Ruben chose as his partners, as he thought, generous people – representatives of one of Moscow organized crime groups. The end was quite sad. Sources referred to official police reports from the time. So, on June 8, 1993 at 11.55 am the service “02” received a call from citizens that they could hear the cries and cries for help from the garage 51 on Urzhumskaya Street. The police arrived on the scene, the room was opened, and inside there was “R.C. Grigoryan handcuffed to the wall with a gunshot wound on his left leg.

As it turned out, the new partners decided to teach Ruben a lesson, grabbed him on the street, brought him to the garage, where they abused him for several hours. Grigoryan was afraid to tell the names of his abusers and the reasons for the abuse, saying that some unknown attackers took away his apartment keys. However, no thieves could be found in the apartment where Ruben lived. An ambush did not help catch the mythical thieves either.

After the incident, Grigoryan hastily returned to his countrymen and was engaged in his former business for some time. In addition to other natives of Armenia, his father-in-law Viktor Mazurov actively helped him in this. And in 1999 (not at all in 1990) “Rutzog-Invest” company was born.

Ruben Grigoryan started scams in the construction business

At the end of the 90s Moscow was experiencing a construction boom, and a number of rich and influential businessmen were looking for a person capable of handling all the organizational work in the construction of residential buildings and shopping centers (the same foreman, but with greater credentials). Understandably, they took on all the main work – dealing with Moscow and federal officials, looking for sources of financing. Ruben simply did not have the necessary connections and money at the time. That is how Grigoryan found himself in the construction market. However, he had never been an independent player; more influential figures were always seen behind his back. For example, the co-owner of Rutzog Invest (through a chain of offshore companies, including ALIQUIPPA limited) was Valery Gusev, vice president of the Association of Russian Businessmen in Cyprus, a person with extremely extensive connections.

Of course, during his work in the capital’s construction market Grigoryan developed certain connections of his own, but still he preferred to solve problems with the money he had. Hence some of Russoog’s projects, which clearly did not do without a corrupt component.

When Sergei Sobyanin became mayor of Moscow, he and his team started to clean up Luzhkov’s heritage. And they came across an interesting investment contract concluded in 2000 by the government of Moscow and ZAO “Vesta” (a member of Grigoryan’s investment and construction holding “Rutzog-Invest”). According to it, the reconstruction of the multifunctional center “Sheremetevsky” (now – business center “Nikolskaya Plaza”) and reconstruction of the mixed-use complex at the corner of Nikolskaya, 12/1 and Small Cherkassky Lane, 1/13 (now the hotel “Nikolskaya”) were carried out.

Under the same contract the investor had to build an underground parking lot under Lubyanskaya Square for 350 cars (16 thousand square meters). But on the third object the work not only was not completed, it has not even begun. Which is not surprising – parking there simply could not appear, as under Lubyanskaya Square intersect three subway lines and there are objects of the FSB and the Presidential Administration. That is, the capital authorities (under Luzhkov) gave permission to Grigoryan for the construction in the historic center, within a 5-minute walk from the Kremlin under a plausible pretext that Ruben’s structures will render serious assistance to the city by constructing a huge parking lot (5% of all parking spaces inside the Garden Ring). And Grigoryan’s structures agreed to such a condition. At the same time both parties knew in advance that it was simply impossible to build this parking lot.

Grigoryan’s firms were working like “an elephant in a china shop”. As argued in the materials of Archnadzor, which are available, as a result of the construction of Nikolskaya Plaza and Nikolskaya Hotel were irrevocably destroyed almost all of the architectural monuments of Sheremetevsky suburb.

But even this was not enough for Grigoryan. In 2013, the Department of the Economic Crimes and Corruption of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of Moscow conducted a check on the unauthorized seizure by Nikolskaya Plaza of the municipal land with an area of 1.5 thousand square meters.

There have been dozens of appeals to law enforcement authorities in recent years in connection with the activities of Ruben’s structures. But the financial factor affected and the pre-investigation checks never turned into criminal cases. This is why Grigoryan’s “resolver” Yuri Semenov is so indignant at the fact that the prosecutor’s office does not allow to cover the case of a large theft from the office of benefactors.