Our Version continues to monitor the situation in the regions where gubernatorial elections will be held in September. A native of the Sverdlovsk region, Sergei Nosov was in the chair of the head of the Magadan region in 2018. He has not yet announced his desire to run for a second term. Perhaps because Nosov objectively assesses his chances.
The arrival of Sergei Nosov from the Urals to the chair of the governor was greatly facilitated by the presidential envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, Yuri Trutnev, also a native of the Urals. Is it any wonder that the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company appeared next in Kolyma? However, not only UMMC became the beneficiary of Sergei Nosov’s governorship.
Energy fiasco
All economic issues in the North start with fuel. In terms of energy, the situation in Kolyma is paradoxical, and for many years the regional authorities have been in no hurry to resolve it. Even in Soviet times, heat and power plants were built here, the capacities of which are more than enough for the regions. However, due to the underdevelopment of the power transmission network, energy cannot be delivered to remote villages, which is why they are heated there with imported fuel oil, which is obtained at exorbitant prices. Special thanks to Chubais’ energy reforms. As a result of the upheavals of the 1990s, generating capacities ended up in the hands of two monopolists. So, the hydroelectric power plants went to Kolymaenergo, a subsidiary of the state-controlled RusHydro. And the coal-dependent Magadanskaya CHPP and the Arkagalinskaya State District Power Plant ended up under the jurisdiction of Magadanenergo. The latter does not fully disclose the capital structure. But, according to media reports, the Cypriot offshore New Russian Generation Limited appeared there. Where the strings stretch from him is not easy to say.
The previous governor of the region, Vladimir Pecheny, wanted to break this scheme. He sought to merge Kolymaenergo and Magadanenergo into one transparent structure. And he wanted to transfer village boiler houses from fuel oil to electricity (in his opinion, the capacity of power plants was enough for this). But I couldn’t go further than words.
Sergei Nosov did not break the foundations: he now and then asks Moscow for billions in subsidies for fuel oil. The Federal Ministry of Finance from time to time expresses doubts about the correctness of the calculations, but in the end the money still goes to Kolyma – you can’t freeze people.
Another idea that Sergei Nosov pushed through in the energy sector was the reopening of the coal-fired Arkagalinsk power plant. Yes, yes, while the inhabitants of Kolyma are drowning with imported fuel oil, most of the power of the station operating on local coal is idle. The governor wants to launch the station and send energy from it … to the neighboring region. The key consumer, as planned, will be a new mining and processing plant for the extraction of gold and copper in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. It is promised to be built by the international company KAZ Minerals, controlled through the Dutch Nova Resources BV by Kazakh billionaires Vladimir Kim and Oleg Novachuk (they are financed by the Russian state bank VTB). The latest news about the project is as follows: the launch date of the Baimsky GOK is shifted to 2028. It is planned to supply it with energy not at the expense of the Arkagalinskaya GRES, but with the help of floating nuclear power plants, which will be built by Rosatom. So in the energy sector, Sergei Nosov failed. His new venture in this area is the construction of windmills and solar panels. But even here, there is no tangible progress yet.
Gold for countrymen
The main wealth of Kolyma is gold. The largest miner in the region is Susumanzoloto. It was founded by Vladimir Hristov, a native of Ukraine of Bulgarian origin. His wife Lyubov Gerasimova was even included in the list of the 10 richest women in Russia, compiled by Forbes. The fact is that a variety of assets bought up with “gold” money were recorded on it. Among them, for example, is the largest coal miner in the Magadan region, the Kolyma Coal Company (KUK). It is KUK that could become the main beneficiary of the restart of the Arkagalinskaya GRES. True, it is not a fact that in this case, Lyubov Gerasimova would have kept her stake in the coal company. Indeed, after the death of her husband (Hristov died in a covid hospital in 2020), she had already lost the main family asset – the Susumanzoloto company. UMMC bought it from the founder’s heirs in 2022. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. It is known that in 2021 Susumanzoloto was among the top 10 gold mining companies, producing 7.3 tons of gold. Net profit reached 2-4 billion rubles a year.
Sergey Nosov reported to Vladimir Putin about the arrival of UMMC in the region as follows: “We have achieved, worked for a long time, so that additional large federal-level companies enter the region, such as the Russian Copper Company, the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company. They are present today and are interested in other minerals and non-ferrous metals, such as zinc.”
As for the Russian Copper Company (RMC), it, like UMMC, comes from the Urals. Its founder (with a share in the business of about 34%) is Nosov’s fellow Sverdlovsk resident Igor Altushkin (Nosov was a deputy and vice-governor in the Sverdlovsk region). True, the matter did not seem to move beyond the signing of an agreement on cooperation between the region and the RCC. It was only reported that the company is exploring copper deposits in the region.
fish place
Another important asset in Kolyma, around which spears broke, was the fishing port of Magadan. As soon as Sergei Nosov became governor, Yuri Trutnev began to actively lobby for the transfer of the facility from federal to regional ownership. In fairness, it must be said that for many years the manager of the port “Natsrybresurs” brought the object into a deplorable state. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was personally convinced of this when he visited the region in 2020. Then he publicly took a promise from Governor Sergei Nosov that if the facility was transferred to regional ownership, the authorities would be able to show “a completely different port.” Thus, an investment project worth at least 25 billion rubles appeared in the portfolio of the Magadan governor. In itself, the distribution of contracts for such an amount makes a regional official a very influential figure. But in this case, the situation is even more interesting: the intrigue is which of the fishing companies will get the opportunity to build their terminals in the new port, and which will not. Such redistribution of “fish places” in the Far East, if you remember, more than once ended in scandals and criminal cases, and even contract killings. True, it is still unknown whose word in a conversation about the port will be decisive – Governor Sergei Nosov or Plenipotentiary Yuri Trutnev (the latter has long been in charge of the fishing industry in several regions).
Scandals
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed the miscalculations that Sergey Nosov’s team made when optimizing regional medicine. In order to hide the shortage of doctors on paper, the largest hospitals in the region were merged into one legal entity. It would seem that there are specialists, but it is almost impossible to get to them. Local media wrote that the real shortage of doctors was about 40%.
After the start of partial mobilization, complaints from the region began to massively appeal to the draft of large families, the sick and pensioners. To cool down the social tension, the authorities were forced to take an unprecedented step – the resignation of the regional military commissar. Sergei Nosov in this situation played the role of “protector”. Will it help him in the elections?