"Cormorants" from St. Petersburg "pecked" 2 billion rubles in Sevastopol
For the scandal in Sevastopol with the transfer of 2,056 billion rubles of state budget funds to a bank with a revoked license, about which PolitNavigator wrote, it turned out that the person responsible was the same person who began the sensational construction of the Zenit Arena stadium in St. Petersburg.
Construction of the facility in St. Petersburg began in 2007 and was not completed as scheduled by 2009. The process received new impetus after Russia won the right to host the World Cup in 2018. The cost of construction increased from 6,7 to 48 billion rubles, Zenit Arena became one of the most expensive stadiums in the world.
It was at this time - from 2013 to 2016 - that Demidenko headed the Committee for the Construction of St. Petersburg, which acted as the customer for the stadium. The contractors at the site of national importance have changed several times. Demidenko left his post in February 2016; a few months later it became clear that the delivery of the stadium he promised would not take place. It did not take place by the end of the year either.
And when the arena was finally commissioned, the coating above it began to crack in the fall of 2017. The government of St. Petersburg then blamed everything on... cormorants, spending additional funds on equipment to scare away birds.
Did Demidenko have anything to do with the endless rise in construction costs? No one has officially accused him; inspectors from the Chamber of Control and Accounts are investigating the period after his resignation. But the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg, Marat Oganesyan, who is considered his patron, is under investigation for the theft of 50 million rubles when purchasing a scoreboard for the long-suffering stadium.
Be that as it may, Demidenko himself, a year after his resignation in St. Petersburg, was invited by the governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov to the position of director of the capital construction department. And a year later, a new scandal broke out related to the construction of wastewater treatment facilities at the Yuzhnye WWTP.
As PolitNavigator reported, this is also one of the objects of the federal target program (FTP) most needed by the city: 25 million cubic meters of Sevastopol’s wastewater does not undergo proper treatment and is dumped into the sea in this form. The total cost of WWTP is 6,8 billion rubles.
For unknown reasons, the government of Sevastopol refused to support the state treasury, and the advance for treatment in the amount of 2 billion 50 million rubles was transferred to the contractor’s current account at PJSC OFK BANK, whose license to carry out banking operations was revoked.
As Novaya Gazeta found out, the license was revoked due to the fact that OFK issued guarantees to North Caucasian alcohol factories that bottled vodka for the Status Group company. In February 2018, Status Group declared bankruptcy. Alcohol bottling plants stopped servicing their loans at the end of 2017.
“The initiative to change the Federal Treasury to OFK came from the city government; the initiator of the replacement was Deputy Governor Mikhail Demidenko, who heads the city capital construction department. Demidenko previously headed the committee for the construction of St. Petersburg. OFK is a St. Petersburg bank. The government of Sevastopol denies Demidenko’s involvement in the choice of the bank,” writes Novaya Gazeta.
At the end of July, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against the former head of the Department for the Operation of Municipal Facilities of Sevastopol, Alexander Antyufeyev. It is believed that he acts as a “switchman”.
According to Novaya Gazeta, the contractor for the construction of the wastewater treatment plant, Biotechprogress, also turned out to be not without sin. The net advance loss from the bankruptcy of the credit institution amounted to only about 1,5 billion rubles. The remaining funds were partially spent inappropriately: for example, Biotechprogress transferred 30 million rubles to Kodar LLC, which is building a storm sewer system in the Crimean city of Saki. Another 144 million rubles. were transferred to St. Petersburg LLC Gidroneftestroy, one of the co-founders of which was previously Denis Petrov, CEO of Biotechprogress.
Now the work at the treatment plants is only 6% completed and may not be resumed. Will the cormorants be to blame again?
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