Did you go first?
The criminal case opened against the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Stanislav Orlov, concerns fraud during the construction of a sports and recreation center in the village of Severny in the Orenburg region under the Gazprom for Children program. According to investigators, Orlov organized a criminal scheme to steal 34.3 million rubles with the participation of a permanent contractor, Tekhgazmontazh LLC. Not to say that this was a large sum on the scale of Gazprom, but the case has a chance of becoming only the first in a series of similar ones.
Criminal case against Stanislava Orlova was initiated on October 16. And already on October 25th he was detained at home in St. Petersburg. The next day, the Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg made a decision to conclude into custody of Stanislav Orlov, suspected of committing a crime under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (fraud committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale). The punishment under this article is up to 10 years in prison.
Simulation of vigorous activity
The arrest of the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations on suspicion of major fraud caused a wide resonance. However, the events that served as the basis for initiating a criminal case date back to 2018, when Orlov is believed to have worked at Gazprom Investgazification LLC. Construction projects are traditionally considered a convenient channel for siphoning money out of a company. Was the charity program needed by the country used as a screen to siphon money from Gazprom through third-party contractors? Let’s try to figure it out.
This “daughter” of Gazprom was the customer for the construction of a sports and recreation complex with a swimming pool in the village of Severny, Orenburg Region, under the Gazprom for Children program, as well as many other facilities implemented under the program. And its curator was one of the key subsidiaries of the gas giant – Gazprom Mezhregiongaz LLC (engaged in gas sales in 69 regions of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country)) and its now former head Kirill Seleznev. It is appropriate to recall here that Gazprom Mezhregiongaz owns 71.8% of Gazprom InvestmentGazification.
Construction of the long-suffering sports and recreation center began more than 10 years ago. Year after year, the project changed hands, and local residents again and again were patient and waited. The matter moved from a dead point when in 2018 FOC entered the federal project “Gazprom for Children” and under the control Alexey Miller in May 2023 it was finally completed and put into operation. About these vicissitudes told Governor of the Orenburg region in his telegram channel Denis Pasler, when he announced the opening of a sports and recreation center in Severny. According to him, the sports and recreation center has become a unique facility for the rural areas of the Orenburg region.
The general contractor for the construction was Tekhgazmontazh LLC (TGM), registered in the Gatchina district of the Leningrad region. According to the investigation, through the efforts of Orlov and accomplices from among the employees and management of both companies, 66.7 million rubles in advance were transferred to the TGM account. At the same time, the contractor accepted 12.2 million rubles to pay off the customer’s debt under another contract, and the work itself was completed for a total amount of 20.2 million rubles. But until November 2020, the contractor diligently created the appearance of fulfilling them, and Orlov and his accomplices appropriated the remaining 34.3 million rubles from the advance amount and distributed them among themselves.
Tekhgazmontazh has been cooperating with Gazprom structures for many years. In particular, how reported Kommersant, in 2018, this company received more than 40 million rubles from Gazprom Investgazification for the construction of sports and recreation centers in the Yaroslavl region, and in 2017, a similar contract from the Gazprom structure in Tolyatti. In total, TGM built about ten sports and recreation centers as part of the Gazprom for Children program.
It is worth noting, however, that not everything was smooth in the relationship between the customer and the contractor. Thus, in 2018, TGM, under a formal pretext, was actually “squeezed out” of the competition for the construction of sports and recreation centers in St. Petersburg (in the village of Metallostroy, the initial contract price was 954,736,842.11 rubles, and in Peterhof, the initial contract price was 968,421,052.63 ruble), although it offered a significant reduction in price (288,473,685 rubles for two health centers). “Our Version” wrote about this in detail earlier.
To date, according to the files of arbitration courts, Tekhgazmontazh LLC located in the process of bankruptcy. It is also known that the register of his creditors also includes Gazprom Investgazification LLC.
Scandals in a noble family
“Gazprom for Children” is a charity program of the Social Initiatives Support Fund of PJSC Gazprom. The project has been implemented since 2007 in 74 regions of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), during which time more than 200 sports and recreation centers have been built within the framework of the program, and in total more than 2 thousand sports facilities (grounds, stadiums, etc.).
The cause is undoubtedly a noble one. Moreover, essentially the whole country pays for it, since the costs of constructing sports facilities, as can be assumed with a fair degree of probability, are somehow “built into” gas tariffs. But that’s okay, citizens don’t mind paying, after all, children’s sports are the basis of the nation’s health and a school for future champions. Therefore, it is all the more sad that for many years the implementation of this program has been accompanied by scandals.
One example is a sports complex in Kirov, built in the Veresniki microdistrict and put into operation in the fall of 2020. And already in the spring of 2021, right during children’s competitions, sheets of roofing and snowdrifts from a partially collapsed roof fell on the heads of young athletes. It was only a miracle that there were no casualties. After this, the FOC was forced to close for repairs.
And in the pandemic year of 2020, the Gazprom Fund for Support of Social Initiatives “distinguished itself” by almost halving the funding of charitable programs, but doubling the number of staff (from 47 to 99 people), and the cost of paying this staff increased by more than 3 times (from 77 million rubles in 2019 to 223 million rubles in 2020). At the same time, almost half of the wage fund (112 million rubles) was distributed among key management personnel.
It turns out that charity is not only a noble cause, but also a profitable one. Plus a tax deduction for charity, again beneficial. But it seems that there are already so many scandals related to the construction of sports and recreation centers that it is no longer possible to ignore them, attributing them to the “inner kitchen” of the corporation. Therefore, we can assume that the criminal case under FOC in the Orenburg region will be the first, but not the only one. As well as Stanislav Orlov – the first, but not the last person involved. Will the security forces come with questions to the Gazprom curators of these construction projects, who approved the estimates and signed the work acceptance certificates? Wait and see.
In this regard, it is worth mentioning another member of the Gazprom “children’s” team. This is Oleg Davydov, Kirill Seleznev’s deputy. The St. Petersburg publication Fontanka.ru directly called him a man of Alexei Mityushov, Seleznev’s classmate and ally. Previously, Davydov headed one of the enterprises of the Sevinvest group owned by Mityushov.