Development with a criminal trail
The head of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation, Alexander Zyryanov, is suspected of bribery. The manager, whose career took off sharply under Vladimir Gorodetsky, continued it under the new governor, despite the organization’s losses. Zyryanov’s detention occurred against the backdrop of the recent arrest of one of the regional ministers and a new rotation of governors, which may affect the stability of the current head of the region.
The Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against the 47-year-old general director of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation JSC Alexandra Zyryanova and the head of the management company “Industrial and Logistics Park” subordinate to her, 53-year-old Alexandra Gomanova. It is also known that in the case appear companies “Tehstroy-NSK” and “Stroytekh”.
We are talking about cases of bribery (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) and Part 5 of Article 291 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country)). According to the investigation, representatives of legal entities whose shares in the authorized capital belong state, in January-March of this year they received a bribe from two directors of commercial organizations for holding a public event in the regional center in the amount of more than 9 million rubles. In return, according to security officials, an agreement worth over 60 million rubles should have been concluded with these contractors as a matter of priority and bypassing competitive procedures.
According to media reports, this public event could have been the Family Traditions film festival that took place in March of this year. One of his guests was an actor Nikita Kologrivy, who became famous thanks to his role in the series “Words of a Boy. Blood on the asphalt.”
Team from the past
According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, JSC “Development Corporation of the Novosibirsk Region” was created in 2005, and initially had a different name – “Investment Development Agency NSO” (IDA NSO). It was reformatted into its current form in 2014 as a specialized organization for attracting investments and working with investors. The acting governor at that time was Vladimir Gorodetskynow a member of the Federation Council.
Alexander Zyryanov, detained on Monday, came to the company in that very year 2014 as deputy general director, and three years later became a manager here. He began his career in the 90s as a laboratory assistant at the Department of Chemical Technology in the Novosibirsk branch of the Moscow Institute of Light Industry. Later he led various companies until in 2008 he moved to work at the Vector scientific center. At first he worked in the development department, then headed it. Since 2011, he again worked in the private sector, in particular, heading the construction company InterStroy. And two years later Settled to the Novosibirsk City Hall for the position of deputy head of the public relations department.
Around the same time, the head of Novosibirsk United Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) Vladimir Znatkov tried to be re-elected for a second term. The campaign was not without scandals. One of the rivals demanded that Znatkov be removed from the elections due to the fact that the mayor did not go on vacation during the elections and could take advantage of his official position. The district court satisfied the plaintiff’s demands, later the Novosibirsk Regional Court canceled this is a decision, but Znatkov still lost the election to the communist Anatoly Lokt. New Governor Gorodetsky appointed former mayor and first deputy chairman of the regional government. Around that time, the future defendant in the criminal case, Alexander Zyryanov, moved from the mayor’s office to the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation.
Too many losses
According to financial statements published in open sources, most of the time the NSO Investment Development Agency and the Novosibirsk Development Corporation worked in the red. Thus, at the end of 2023, its loss amounted to 32.7 million rubles. However, this cannot be compared with the record of 2015 – the first full year of Zyryanov’s work in the organization – 925.2 million rubles in losses.
It is likely that the money went into some long-term projects designed to affect the economy of the region as a whole. So, at the beginning of this year, Alexander Zyryanov stated, which over the past seven years has attracted more than 134 billion rubles of private investment to the region, contributed to the creation of more than 8.5 thousand jobs and tax payments worth more than 10 billion rubles. At that time, according to the manager, they had 14 projects in the works with a declared investment volume of more than 13 billion rubles. But the following circumstance raises new questions about the activities of the former AIR.
Since 2020, the organization began to actively announce various tenders. This process reached its peak in 2023, when contracts worth 61.4 million rubles were signed. At the same time, an analysis of the data from the Government Procurement portal shows that auctions were especially often held for services such as the production and placement of advertising and information materials, as well as related activities – design and printing. It turns out that an organization under complete government control has driven itself into the red by advertising itself?
It is also known that the Family Traditions film festival, which apparently became the cause of the current management problems, was not the only event of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation. The organization acted as a co-organizer of various business events, including the XII All-Russian Forum of Development and Investment Territories “InPark”, accomplished in September last year, and this year – the Forum of Siberian Hospitality “Wild plants”.
A Tangle of Troubles
The criminal case against the head of the Novosibirsk Region Development Corporation is not the only bad news for the governor Andrey Travnikov. Suffice it to recall the recent loud scandal surrounding concession agreements, within the framework of which the VIS Group of Companies was supposed to build a road bridge and seven clinics in the city. The projects have still not been completed, and moreover, as Versiya recently wrote, multi-billion-dollar violations are seen in them. Here it is worth recalling the problem of Sibanthracite, which paid billions of rubles to the budget of the Novosibirsk region, but after the change of owner found itself in an elevated state, as well as the March detention Minister of Housing and Communal Services and Energy of the region Denis Arkhipov.
Last September, the governor of the Novosibirsk region, Andrei Travnikov, was re-elected to a second term, which will end in 2028. However, as the experience of the Samara region has shown, given the presence of a large number of criminal cases of corruption in the region, even a recent election victory does not grant its leader absolute immunity. This means that Travnikov’s second term as governor may not be easy for him.