On the morning of April 19, searches took place in the office of a St. Petersburg company with the typical name Interconsult. Among the market participants interviewed by Fontanka, the first reaction to the news was something like “Wow, who got to”.
What is “Interconsult”
According to Fontanka, the searches are carried out by a creative team from the economic security service of the FSB and the UEEB, but they are in charge of the entire GSU of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The criminal case was initiated last year, it concerned large-scale theft from the pocket of the city social catering plant “Youth”, which is now in bankruptcy. The Interconsult company itself, registered on Ruzovskaya, has been operating for 22 years and is not specifically engaged in social services. It officially has four employees and an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles. The official turnover of the consulting company is not impressive – 2.5 million for 2021.
When Fontanka asked participants in the state order market about the company, Interconsult did not tell them anything. But the name of the owner and director of the company, Elena Volkova, is the opposite. “Oh, wow,” one of the interlocutors was surprised. – This is a famous lady, yes. It’s interesting that we got there.” According to Fontanka, the security forces are interested in the scheme: to formulate the terms of reference for the competition in such a way that the contract is guaranteed to go to a specific contractor – to the satisfaction of all participants, including the state customer.
Social catering providers in St. Petersburg
This can be seen in various industries, it is enough to study the sunset of Eduard Ilyin in the Vasileostrovsky district. But especially in social catering, which until recently was practically synonymous with the word “cartel”. Offhand, one can recall how in Kolpino they required participants to bring last year’s protocols for studying their products for the activity of strontium-90. Of course, for some reason, the chosen ones already had these protocols in their hands. And in that Kolpino story, the terms of reference were also prepared not by the food workers themselves, but by legal and consulting companies, in particular Avangard.
Both Avangard and Interconsult appeared in the Fontanka story about the peculiarities of the St. Petersburg state order back in 2014. Then, we recall, the correspondent, under the guise of a young contractor in the road industry, received advice from Elena Volkova in a restaurant on Izmailovsky. From the conversation it turned out that all the auctions are “sharpened by people” (in the sense they adjust the TK for a specific applicant), and the “mediators” receive a percentage of the contract if everyone is satisfied. The names of officials and informal leaders of the industry were mentioned, with whom they will have to negotiate in order to enter the closed market and understand in advance what will be required at auctions.
Fontanka also talked to other similar consulting companies; they admitted that the time of “mysteries”, which are included in the terms of reference in case participants come from outside, is running out, as the OFAS is struggling with such schemes. But the current searches are taking place in the office of Interconsult and in the apartments of its leaders 10 years later and on completely different, food themes. This is something new. Probably, the measure of restraint for them will be influenced by the degree of frankness with the GSU.
Life and death of the social nutrition complex “Youth”
The St. Petersburg social catering plant Yunost entered the monitoring procedure back in 2020, and a year later it was declared bankrupt. Accordingly, now its main activity is proceedings with creditors. But once it was quite a respectable provider of social nutrition: not a giant and, of course, not an industry leader, but in 2019, for example, it signed contracts with schools in the Moscow region for more than 200 million. The city ran its PCB quietly, and it made the news about school diarrhea from time to time, which, unfortunately, has always been an ordinary story for the market.
In 2018, Alexander Shchuchkin became the director. It is against him that they will then initiate a case of embezzlement, which will be reclassified as fraud, adding to the plot bringing to bankruptcy. According to the investigation, during the year, under the strict guidance of Shchuchkin, 4.2 million rubles, received by the plant in 25 schools of the Moskovsky district, passed by the KSP cash desk. He did it not alone, the investigator believes, but in the company of Sergei Batsev. According to the extracts from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Batsev is visible only as the former owner of the Trillium company and the Voskhod APK. His name is also among the founders of the St. Petersburg branch of Delovaya Rossiya; on the organization’s website, he is designated as “Business Ambassador to Shaanxi and Shanghai.” As far as one can judge, Batsev is definitely not in Russia, and not because of business missions – he is put on the federal wanted list.
The contracts of Yunosti and the Trillium company were paid attention back in 2020, when the plant started having problems. As a result, the company, then owned by Batsev, won several court cases against the city plant to collect debts for the provision of services, and then became one of the creditors in the bankruptcy case. But the largest demands on the dying plant, included in the register, are not with Trillium, but with Prodrezerv. This is a new name, before the company was known under the name “TZB Petrogradskaya”. Here it was just one of the titans of the city market of school meals, repeatedly appeared in the materials of Fontanka about antitrust disputes traditional for the industry and even about the famous index of burning cottage cheese. Investigators believe that Elena Volkova’s Interconsult cooperated with TZB Petrogradskaya.
But the main thing is different: it was the former “TZB Petrogradskaya” and “Trillium”, according to Smolny, who insisted on the introduction of bankruptcy proceedings in “Youth” (although formally Batsev is not visible in the “TZB”). In addition, the administration assumes that Yunost was ruined from the inside: Shchuchkin entered into a number of transactions with TZB Petrogradskaya and other companies, which led to the notorious “insolvency of the enterprise” (we recall the plot with deliberate bringing to bankruptcy). If translated into philistine, the task is to collect debts, go into bankruptcy and transfer with your assets to the property of the creditor. Therefore, Smolny objected to the introduction of bankruptcy proceedings in the Yunost KSP. Unsuccessfully.