Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Alexei Teksler has appointed Yegor Kovalchuk, Mayor of Miass, as his deputy. In fact, he returned to the position from which he left on May 17.
Rumor has it that Kovalchuk received all his sinecures for concessions to external circumstances, as well as for loyalty to his main patron – Texler’s “pre-predecessor” – Mikhail Yurevich.
Details are in the material of The Moscow Post correspondent in the Chelyabinsk region.
And the Swiss, and the reaper …
Yegor Kovalchuk, as his biography shows, is a jack of all trades. Understands literally everything. Not only in ecology, but also in industry, as well as in housing and communal services, municipal services, and finance. He changes positions like gloves, but he doesn’t stay anywhere for a long time: a scandal is associated with him at every place, but he deftly jumps into the next chair as if “clean”.
Kovalchuk started from the position of director of MUP POVV in Chelyabinsk, which was engaged in water supply and sanitation. Under him, tariffs grew, and suppliers complained about racketeering by the department, which Kovalchuk explained as “legitimate requirements.”
Kovalchuk did not hesitate to report that the quality of water in Chelyabinsk had deteriorated under him and would be even worse, but after that he not only was not fired, but also grew in status, taking up the housing and communal services sector as a whole.
The authors of the site Uraldaily.com claim, citing their sources, that allegedly when he was the deputy head of Chelyabinsk for housing and communal services, Kovalchuk, together with Yevgeny Krekhtunov, who replaced him at that time as director of MUP POVV, were involved in a number of criminal cases, from which both miraculously “jumped off,” but Krekhtunov allegedly still worries about how they would not be resuscitated again.
A few years later, Kovalchuk, apparently, rendered a great service to Mikhail Yurevich. Kovalchuk, having worked in the Ministry of Industry of Chelyabinsk, vacated this place for Alexei Bobrakov, and he, in turn, ceded the mandate of a State Duma deputy to Yurevich.
Thanks to this castling, Yurevich had parliamentary immunity and protection from the security forces for another four years, otherwise he could have been seized “by the gills” immediately after his resignation. Recall that Yurevich fled to London after initiating a criminal case on corruption for 3 billion rubles.
Career outside the region
According to rumors, when Kovalchuk was Minister of Industry and Natural Resources, he was allegedly responsible not so much for industry as for signing licenses for subsoil use to the “right people” of Yurevich, and allegedly due to the presence of a whole “bouquet” of materials in the security forces, he was first transferred to the position Minister of Ecology (where is housing and communal services, where is the Ministry of Industry, and where is ecology!) After that, Kovalchuk went to Khanty-Mansiysk, where he was very surprised – they were waiting for the appointment of one of their own, and a Varangian arrived, and even a specialist from other fields.
Very soon, Kovalchuk got into a criminal case, however, he only managed to be a witness in the case of the loss of 98 million rubles during the construction of the fourth stage of water treatment facilities in Pyt-Yakh. The case itself was initiated in April 2017 against the head of the Pyt-Yakh city administration Alexander Rabinovich, fellow countryman and friend of Kovalchuk. Rabinovich was eventually imprisoned, and Kovalchuk quickly “screwed” back to Chelyabinsk.
In 2019, Kovalchuk became vice-governor instead of Ruslan Gattarov.
At the same time, Texler did not give him any authority at that time (he understood, however, that Kovalchuk was not in the industry with a foot in the tooth) and brought the Ministry of Industry out of his control. It turns out that he took a person to work simply “beautiful eyes” or to protect him from criminal prosecution?
Get it done in a month
In May 2023, Kovalchuk went to Miass as mayor. There were several candidates for the position, but, apparently, according to Texler, who lobbied for his candidacy, Kovalchuk was the most literate, and, for example, the head of the property relations department of the Miass administration, Nikolai Buldygin, did not know at all what was going on in this Miass.
By the way, the previous mayor of Miass is also a scandalous person. Apparently, Kovalchuk’s fate is to come to places with a “tarnished reputation.”
The last months of the work of the ex-mayor of Miass Grigory Tonkikh were accompanied by a confrontation with the deputies of Miass. At the end of 2022, the city was on the brink of a budget crisis. Parliamentarians criticized the new draft budget, but officials did not listen to them and did not make the proposed changes. After that, the deputies rejected the project.
The mayor of the city allegedly ignored the attempts of the people’s representatives to hold a personal meeting with him on budget issues. As a result, the deputies transferred control over the finances of the city to the Chamber of Control and Accounts of the region. It was the first such case in the region.
Despite the fact that Kovalchuk was in the position of mayor of Miass for only a month, he managed to “drag” “his” people there. So, ex-Deputy Minister of Economic Development Irina Akbasheva became his adviser, and Evgeny Krekhtunov, the deputy for municipal services, the same one with whom they worked together at MUE POVV, became his adviser.
At the same time, Krekhtunov at one time managed to spoil relations with everyone in the housing and communal services sector in Chelyabinsk, and was fired because at the most stressful time, before the start of the heating season, he went on vacation, and then, already on vacation, he wanted him for himself and extend.
Well, the final touch. Texler has 15 vice-governors. For comparison: there are seven of them in Moscow, and only two in Kazan. Maybe this suggests that Texler is not coping with his duties, and the budget of the Chelyabinsk region is spent not on people, but on officials?
