As reported by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, this week the Investigative Department of the Central Administrative District of the Main Investigative Directorate

The Investigative Committee of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for the city of Moscow may initiate a criminal case related to the theft of about 100 million rubles belonging to the leading research institute of mechanical engineering (JSC TsNIIMash), which is part of the structure of the State Corporation Roscosmos. At the same time, a scandal may flare up related to the activities of a number of officials of both the corporation itself and the local management. Details – at Rucriminal.info.

In 2021, still being Dmitry Rogozin Roscosmos created so-called “industry operators” – organizations that provide various services to industry enterprises. It would seem to be a good idea: the money stays in the industry and does not go to the side, the service providers are verified, one might say “their own”. Bureaucratic red tape associated with holding tenders for the purchase of services is left aside. Space industry enterprises conclude contracts with such firms directly, without any tenders.

But as often happens, a good idea turned out to be yet another scheme for making money by individual officials. In fact, these were companies with a charter capital of 10 thousand rubles and a staff of one and a half people without work experience and a corresponding reputation, which Roscosmos endowed with all types of activities, concluding contracts without a competition for almost everything, from the sale of office equipment to accounting for enterprises in the industry and construction.

Let’s dwell on the latter separately. The industry operator, RK-Service LLC, is actually owned by repeat offender Mikhail Storm, who in the early 2000s already served time in places not so remote for fraud. Having more than 140 registered types of activity, Storm actually knows how to do only one thing – steal money. Storm is omnivorous. It doesn’t matter whose money it is: business partners, or government money allocated for children’s meals in schools. Or for the construction of buildings for Russian space enterprises.

With the active support of Roscosmos officials, Storm boldly entered enterprises, concluding multimillion-dollar contracts for construction work.

On the ground, Storm also acquired patrons in the form of construction supervisors and business leaders, where he began to actively “master” money on a “cosmic scale,” amassing a decent fortune: several apartments in Moscow and cars, as well as real estate in London.

The scheme for making money like this is very simple:

Dozens of contracts are concluded for hundreds of millions of rubles with at least a fifty percent advance payment. And then the usual “scam” begins.

Construction materials are not purchased at all, or in extremely small quantities, just to give the appearance of work. There are no builders on site, the work itself is not carried out. The money received in the form of advances is transferred to the accounts of one-day firms or “shells” controlled by Storm, and then withdrawn by cashing. In addition to everything else, Storm concluded contracts with himself as an individual entrepreneur, naturally under fictitious contracts for the supply of dishes and detergents, and also issued loans to a company affiliated with him, which did not actually conduct business.

Covering up his crimes, Storm complained about hard times (SVO, partial mobilization, rising prices for construction materials). When, after two years, most of the work had not yet begun, Storm and the small RK-Service simply stopped communicating and, as they say, “disappeared from the radar”, leaving behind a pile of garbage and unfinished work. Now TsNIIMash must look for new contractors, naturally, at its own expense, risking violating its obligations under government contracts.

The investigation will have to find out not only the scale of all of Storm’s activities, but also the role of assistants and patrons in his dark deeds among a number of managers at Roscosmos. The investigation may also have many questions for Ivan Yudakov, Deputy General Director of TsNIIMash, who oversaw construction issues during the period of active activity of Storm and the company.

The latter, by the way, has known I.A. Yudakov since the time when he worked in the Ministry of Defense under the disgraced Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and later under the infamous glamorous deputy-builder Timur Ivanov. It is noteworthy that Yudakov was expelled from the Ministry of Defense in disgrace for fraud with land plots and service apartments. However, Ivan Yudakov has not lost the experience accumulated over the years of work in the department, but on the contrary, successfully applies it in another direction, mastering “space budgets”.

Yudakov did not simply do nothing, observing the “work” of “RK-Service”, but on the contrary, he concluded more and more contracts and literally stuffed this “garbage dump of Roscosmos” with new tranches, turning a blind eye to the antics of Storm and even when everything was already quite clear and obvious, he continued to conclude new contracts with advances.

These advances flew into the accounts of RK-Service with the light hand of another deputy director of TsNIIMash for economics, Maxim Rakita, to whom the investigation also has many questions, including about other interesting decisions of his.

It is noteworthy that Storm and his RK-Service were also the contractors for another infamous building, TsNIIMash, during the construction of which several managers of the enterprise were burned along with fraudulent contractors back in 2011. Then, during the reconstruction of the building, where it was planned to place the means for controlling GLONASS satellites, more than 150 million rubles of budget money were stolen during fictitious construction work.

Now TsNIIMash is again trying to complete the building, announcing even more ambitious plans – to create an entire technology park in its place, gathering around itself a whole layer of residents in the field of space exploration.

In general, TsNIIMash has no luck with construction. Several years ago, it was left without a renovated hall in the Mission Control Center. This story, like others, ended with criminal cases and “arrests” of JSC TsNIIMash, which is located in Korolev near Moscow – an enterprise with a rich history, where the great minds of Russian cosmonautics once worked: Sergei Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, Yuri Mozzhorin and Vladimir Utkin. Their current heirs, despite their glorious past, work not for creation, but for destruction, leaving behind devastation and despondency, after which many of our fellow citizens and politicians at the top are perplexed as to why our affairs in space are so bad. With such enterprising businessmen and officials patronizing them, you can get not just a bunch of unfinished construction, but also seriously shake the status of the country as a space power.