The company of billionaire Yevtushenkov is being lured to Saratov. Will he build a sports and recreation center, a children’s camp and a medical center under a concession?
In Moscow, Alexander Marchenko, head of the Saratov Ministry of Investments, held working meetings with representatives of the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of Industry of the Russian Federation, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, as well as the System Concessions company, which is part of AFK Sistema, billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov. In just two years since its inception, it has acquired several billion-dollar concessions, including in Bashkiria with the participation of family members of the prime minister of the republic. Will they also build a children’s camp in Saratov for 3 billion rubles?
Who are they?
“System concessions” were registered in Moscow in 2020. However, despite its young age, the company is already positioning itself as a “consolidated center of competence in the field of public-private partnership.”
There seem to be two main advantages. Firstly, the LLC “professionally structures and implements turnkey PPP projects, managing each stage of the life cycle.” Secondly, it is part of the AFK Sistema holding, one of the largest investment companies in Russia. 49.2% of the shares in this company belong to billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov (51st place in the Forbes rating, income for 2022 – $ 1.7 billion). Another 10% stake in AFK belongs to his son Felix.
“System Concessions” is interested in projects in the field of medicine (construction of clinics), education and sports (schools, children’s recreation centers, educational campuses), intelligent systems (“Smart City”), transport (infrastructure).
The company’s geography is marked by a couple of dozen regions, including the Volga Federal District, although it implements projects in only a few of them. Although none of them is recorded in the portfolio.
Yakutia and the Far East
The LLC entered into the first concession agreement in 2021 in Yakutia. Here, together with the National PPP Center (part of the VEB.RF group), the company designs and builds a multifunctional complex of secondary vocational education. This is the first such project in the field of secondary education.
The proposed complex will unite 10 SPO institutions on one site, will be located in a free economic zone in close proximity to industries, which will create a common universal training and production base. Its educational facilities are designed to train 6.5 thousand people a year, 4.5 thousand students and teachers will be able to live there permanently. The volume of investments will be about 14 billion rubles.
In the same year, a cooperation agreement was signed with the Ministry of the Russian Federation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic and the National Operator of Children’s Recreation LLC (Roscamps). The reason was the project for the construction of a year-round children’s recreation and creative development center near Khabarovsk using the Far Eastern Concession.
The center is designed for 350 people per shift or 5,000 people per year. The volume of investments is 1.6 billion rubles, it was planned to be implemented in 2022-2023, but so far it is at the stage of approval of the construction road map. By September 2022, the cost of the project has increased to 4.5 billion rubles.
Bashkiria
In September 2021, an agreement was signed with the participation of Roscamps to build a similar center in Bashkiria. Then the volume of investments was estimated at 1.9 billion rubles, but later it grew to 3 billion rubles (on the Roscamps website – already 3.5 billion rubles). The performance characteristics are the same – 350 people per shift, 5 thousand per year. Despite the fact that vouchers to camps controlled by Roscamps – in the Krasnodar Territory, Crimea are not at all cheap, although the site says about 50% cashback.
As reported on the System Concessions website, the project in Bashkiria involves the creation of technological, educational, sports and medical clusters. The latter will include a salt cave, a bath complex, a phytocenter, medical offices in the areas of magnetic and laser therapy, electrophoresis, phototherapy, etc.
As part of the educational cluster, the camp will host an exhibition “The Economy of the Republic of Bashkortostan”, an online school for 150 cars, a multifunctional transformable hall, a career guidance center, a media center, a video studio and a foreign language class.
However, this particular project has already become scandalous. Bashkir TG channels believe that the private founders of System Concessions are close to the authorities of Bashkiria. The foundation stone of the future center was laid back in 2020, at the same time the design company Art-status LLC became known. Its founder is Larisa Nazarova, wife of Andrey Nazarov, Prime Minister of Bashkiria.
There are several dozens of companies in its portfolio, decent incomes for which are brought, among other things, by participation in public procurement. At the same time, 1 billion rubles out of the planned three will be allocated for the design.
– 755 million rubles will be allocated from the region’s budget for the construction of a children’s camp, in addition, Bashkiria will provide a land plot in Sibay with an area of up to 250 thousand square meters without bidding. m., plus it will undertake the construction of roads and communications, – reports the tg-channel “Case for kurai”.
Arkhangelsk, Nizhny Novgorod and others
In 2021, System Concessions also signed a cooperation agreement with the government of the Arkhangelsk Region. We are talking about two projects. The first is the construction of a world-class student campus “Arctic Star”.
It will include four multifunctional educational and laboratory buildings, sports infrastructure facilities, cultural and leisure spaces and hostels. The total area of the campus will be 128 thousand sq.m.
The partners also intend to build an understudy bridge across the Kuznechikha River, build a children’s camp in the FOC region. The total investment in these projects will be about 40 billion rubles.
At SPIEF, it became known about the cooperation of System Concessions with the Tyumen Region. Here we are talking about the expansion of the sports complex “Pearl of Siberia” (2 billion rubles.
and the construction of a polyclinic with departments of radiation, endoscopic, ultrasound diagnostics and a day hospital (4 billion rubles), as well as the formation of tourism infrastructure.
Officials believe that Muscovites will attract 32 billion rubles to the economy and social sphere of Tyumen. Later, here it was about the construction of a world-class intercollegiate campus.
In July, it became known that the LLC was acting as a financial and legal consultant on a project in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The Medsi clinic chain affiliated with AFK Sistema is going to build a medical complex in Vyksa on a PPP basis worth more than 5.2 billion rubles.
Saratov
Saratov was already mentioned in conjunction with System Concessions in June last year. At SPIEF, Governor Roman Busargin and General Director Valery Eremin signed an agreement, albeit with rather vague wording.
It was about “cooperation in the field of development and implementation of projects for the creation of sports facilities, facilities used for organizing recreation for citizens and tourism, health care facilities.” Moreover, on the website of the regional government there is no information about future cooperation with these Muscovites at all.
In principle, the System Concessions projects announced in Saratov and other regions are directly related to the areas of interest of the companies that are part of AFK Sistema. Recall that its portfolio includes the Detsky Mir chain of stores, the Medsi medical clinic chain, and 21 hotels in 14 cities, including those managed under the international brands Park Inn by Radisson and Holiday Inn Express.
In Saratov, the territory and environs of the Space Conquerors Park may be suitable for potential projects. Officials have repeatedly announced the appearance of infrastructure here for the entertainment of children and adults. In addition, the authorities leased the regional psychiatric hospital, the camp “Beryozka” on Kumysnaya Polyana and many social facilities, including a sanatorium, in the regions of the region into concession. And in September, the head of the regional Ministry of Health, Oleg Kostin, announced the construction of a new psychiatric hospital for 1,000 people in Saratov.
