Sokolov: at odds with Lada

At one of the key divisions of Avtovaz JSC – Lada Izhevsk LLC – large-scale reductions are planned. As follows from the letters of the head of the enterprise, Denis Nosov, by August 31, the number of employees in the structure will be reduced tenfold. And even if they are offered compensation, it is obvious that with such a decrease in the personnel potential, little can remain from the production itself.

And this is against the background of the fact that in recent months, under the current general director and president of JSC Avtovaz, Maxim Sokolov, a whole series of layoffs has already taken place. As a result, the number of employees decreased from 3100 to 2000 people. After August 31, 200 people should remain at all.

What is happening in the Russian automotive holding under the current leadership: in the material of The Moscow Post correspondent in Udmurtia.

Explaining the reasons for the cuts, experts recall the decrease in the purchasing power of citizens with the tightening of Western sanctions against the Russian auto industry. But after all, the same “Lada” is much less dependent on foreign components than many cars of foreign brands.

According to this logic, the demand for domestic cars, on the contrary, should grow against the background of a decrease in the ability to buy and service products of the Western auto industry. Therefore, the causes of problems should be sought, first of all, in the quality of management, and not at all in external factors?

Viktor Nazarov, the head of the trade union of the Lada Izhevsk automobile plant, spoke about the situation. It turns out that factory workers are forced to do temporary work to feed themselves: paint walls, cut grass and collect garbage.

From his own words it follows that the leadership of the holding does not make much contact with people. And not only the holding, but also the Ministry of Industry and Trade represented by its head, and at the same time the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Denis Manturov. But once Sokolov, as the former head of the Ministry of Transport, was praised just for the federal “resource”. It turns out that now he is in no hurry to defend the interests of his own employees at the federal level?

With the production of trouble

It is already clear that the production of the popular Lada Vesta from Izhevsk will be transferred to Togliatti. At the same time, the assembly of the model will resume no earlier than 2023, and this is where the good news for AvtoVAZ ends. Apparently, one can forget about “projects” like the electronic “Lada Largus” for the time being.

As for LLC Lada Izhevsk, according to the results of the last known reporting period for 2020, it received a loss of 240 million rubles, as well as a dramatic drop in the value of assets immediately by 1.2 billion rubles, to 1.6 billion rubles. By the end of 2021, these indicators are likely to have deteriorated even more, and in the five months into 2022 – even more.

The lack of reaction of Maxim Sokolov himself is surprising. One gets the impression that he left any comments at the mercy of the general director of Lada Izhevsk LLC Nosov. The reason is clear: Sokolov avoids a negative story. Indeed, at the end of July, the employees of the LLC recorded an appeal to Vladimir Putin with a request to pay attention to the situation at the enterprise.

It seems that Sokolov is simply afraid of a direct question from the President about why, a few months after his transition to a new job, several thousand qualified AvtoVAZ employees ended up on the street?

At the same time, the appointment of the ex-head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation and the former transport vice-governor of St. Petersburg Maxim Sokolov as the head of AvtoVAZ was carried out precisely in order to strengthen the management of the enterprise, overcome the crisis and make the holding less dependent on budget injections.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

These injections are great: AvtoVAZ cannot do without them yet. Even before Sokolov, in the spring of 2021, subsidies to the holding accounted for up to 16% of the entire turnover of the structure. There are no signs of improvement under Sokolov – moreover, the economic situation has worsened.

Metro for their

At the same time, while still at the head of the Ministry of Transport (2012-2018), and then already at the rank of transport vice-premier of St. Petersburg, Maxim Sokolov managed to acquire many scandals. Some – with a clear taint of corruption. True, experts doubted that he even came to St. Petersburg to develop the transport industry, and not engage in banal lobbying for someone’s commercial interests.

His career speaks for itself – after the post of head of the Ministry of Transport, for two years he suddenly turns out to be the general director of one of the largest development holdings in the country, St. Petersburg LSR Andrey Molchanov, after which he becomes deputy governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov. No conflict of interest?

Sokolov stayed as vice-governor for only two years. He was tasked with reforming the city’s transport industry. But it is still not completed, accompanied by numerous scandals and almost frank “tearing” of the same “Metrostroy”.

As a matter of fact, even launching the reform turned out to be very difficult, its deadlines were postponed several times. This was written by “Business Petersburg”.

But what they didn’t put off indefinitely was the change of the key contractor for the construction of the city’s metro. Instead of Metrostroy, it has become a new structure, Metrostroy of the Northern Capital, which is closely associated with the interests of Russian billionaire Gennady Timchenko.

According to evil tongues, allegedly this was Sokolov’s main task: to replace the contractor for the construction of the St. Petersburg subway, redistribute budgetary flows, and go into the sunset. As a result, a corporate conflict arose in the St. Petersburg “Metrostroy”, the company was essentially bankrupt.

It came to very wild things that could turn into sad consequences not only for Sokolov, but also for Governor Alexander Beglov. We are talking about hunger strikes of metro builders, salary delays, and other scandals.

Perhaps one of the most striking episodes was the dissatisfaction of the employees of SMU-11 Metrostro. Yes, they expressed it even before Sokolov, in 2018, when, in fact, they were starving, demanding payment of salaries. But following the results of Sokolov’s leadership of the transport industry for two years, the structure ended the year with a loss of over 200 million rubles, with an asset value of minus 773 million rubles. And what, in fact, did Sokolov and Co.?

Under Sokolov, the state-owned Metrostroy was effectively squeezed out of the market, ending up in bankruptcy and with huge debts. Photo: Rusprofile.ru

In addition, after the scandals and the virtual exit from the Metrostroy market, the authorities of St. Petersburg announced large-scale plans for the construction of metro stations – as many as 22 stations are planned by 2022. Everyone understands that these are pipe dreams. But it is precisely for these projects that Smolny will now seek budgetary funding, which, apparently, will go to the Metrostroy of the Northern Capital as government contracts.

When Sokolov left for Avtovaz, a noticeable part of the negative that poured out on the authorities of the Northern capital in connection with the slippage of many provisions of the transport reform went with him.

The results are disappointing

At the same time, if Sokolov’s task was to secure a new contractor for the construction of the metro, then other areas of work with transport could be given to completely different hands.

According to evil tongues, it was not he who allegedly played the main role in the distribution of budgets through state orders in recent years, but the person who is represented as Sokolov’s adviser – Vitaly Rodionov.

The latter is called the “gray cardinal” of the transport “kitchen” of St. Petersburg. Allegedly, it was through Rodionov that interaction with the “kings of the state road order” of the Northern capital took place. According to rumors, earlier Rodionov could have been an employee of one of the law enforcement agencies, from where he was allegedly fired for not the most pleasant motives.

And it is to Rodionov under Sokolov that they are trying to attribute a number of gray schemes for state orders for the development of the transport industry. In addition to Metrostroy, the structures that could be related to the “florid” schemes are the State Budgetary Institution Mostotrest (it has been headed by Andrey Kochin since 2019) and the St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise Passazhiravtotrans, headed by the scandalous manager Andrey Lyzin.

Both are just officials, but they manage as if they were the beneficiaries of the structures. The amounts are skyrocketing. More than 335 million rubles passed through St. Petersburg State Unitary Enterprise Passazhiravtotrans as a supplier.

The key feature of the reform was to be the complete control of Smolny over the operation of urban transport, and, as a result, the rejection of private routes. But suddenly, after seven years of preparation, it turned out that the new routes do not meet the requirements of the townspeople.

Entire neighborhoods were cut off from the transport network, popular routes were divided into several parts, which led to a sharp increase in the number of transfers. Runews24 writes about it. But in a huge plus were officials and lured companies, which, after Sokolov, even more strengthened in the market.

Was everyone dissatisfied with the work of Maxim Sokolov in St. Petersburg, except for Gennady Timchenko? Photo: duma.gov.ru

It must be assumed that Sokolov does not worry at all about the results of his work in St. Petersburg before, throughout the country. The new position at the head of Avtovaz also sets new tasks for him: and the fact that the previous ones have not been fulfilled is already a matter of bygone days.