In August 2022, an employee of Life and the author of the blog “Infernal Grandmas” Alexandra Bayazitova was arrested in Moscow. She didn’t steal anything, she didn’t kill anyone. It just seemed to one banker that she wanted money from him. For seven months, the journalist has been sitting in a prison cell, despite her many serious illnesses. As part of the case, the court arrested Bayazitova’s modest apartment. She risks losing it and being left on the street.
Against this background, the Babushkinsky Court of Moscow has just released on parole the former general director of Voentelecom JSC, 41-year-old Alexander Davydov, convicted in the case of embezzlement of 1.4 billion rubles from the Ministry of Defense. In October 2022, the court sentenced him to four years and two months in prison, and in March 2023, five months later, he received parole. Now the prosecutor’s office is trying to challenge the decision of the Babushkinsky court. Unlike Sasha Bayazitova, the former prisoner has a place to return to: he has a half-billion-ruble mansion in the Moscow region.
Alexander Davydov was convicted last fall under the fourth – the most serious – part of Article 159 of the Criminal Code (large-scale fraud as part of a group). According to investigators, cheap Chinese equipment was supplied to the Ministry of Defense, passing it off as expensive Russian equipment. The difference in price reached 50%. Davydov made a deal with the investigation and testified against the organizers of the scam. Among them are high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Defense. Under investigation, Davydov spent three years at large on bail.
What’s left of Davydov
Since 2018, all the property of Alexander Davydov has been arrested. Including a cottage with 30 acres of land in the elite cottage village “Nikolskaya Sloboda” near Moscow. This property is worth about 100 million rubles. His nephew looks after the house. The ex-head of Voentelekom himself lived in a neighboring building – and this is a real castle with an asp and towers worth up to half a billion rubles.
Formally, Dmitry Plakhin, the general director of the VTK-S company, which has concluded state contracts worth a billion rubles with Voentelecom, can formally own this luxurious real estate. And this person also worked in the business structures of the mother and father of Alexander Davydov. Apparently, Plakhin is the right person for the family.
All of Davydov’s St. Petersburg real estate also came under arrest: an apartment in a high-rise building on Varshavskaya Street and a third of an apartment in a Stalinist building in Blagodatny Lane – a maximum of 25 million rubles can be earned for these assets.
How does the family earn
Three St. Petersburg organizations previously owned by Davydov were registered to Plakhin’s namesake (she is probably his wife). This is the company “A1”, whose subsidiary – NPP “Polar Fox” – produces electronic printed circuit boards and has a revenue of about 60 million rubles a year. This is the company “A2”, which manages retail premises in the Leningrad region on the Krasnoselskoye highway in the village of Novoselye. This is the Fineart company, which owns an online school with drawing and macrame courses called Art Class. None of these assets have been seized.
Among the suppliers of “Voentelecom” was the St. Petersburg IT company “Emzior”, whose revenue fluctuates at the level of 300-500 million rubles a year. Its ultimate beneficiary is 85-year-old Evgeny Davydov, father of Alexander Davydov. In the zero years, the parent was the head of the Research Institute “Masshtab” and in this capacity was a defendant in a criminal case on non-payment of taxes on an especially large scale, but was not convicted. At the end of the decade, he “inherited” his chair of the head of the institute to his son, Alexander Davydov.
Davydov’s mother, 72-year-old Svetlana Mezentseva, is also in business. She owns two auditing agencies – Triada and Alvenda. Official income there is cheap.
Davydova’s sister, 47-year-old Olga, thanks to her brother’s connections, was fictitiously employed in the Omega commercial firm, where she received over 600 thousand rubles a month for nothing. Now the woman runs the company in the field of software development “Metaseti”. Revenue there reaches 300 million a year.
Judging by social networks, Olga has long been living in the Dutch city of Haarlem. She gave birth to all three of her children in the Netherlands, they bear the surname Van der Heyde and have dual citizenship – Dutch and Russian.