The recent abrupt departure of Andrei Tochitsky from the post of president of the Leningrad Hockey Federation…

The recent abrupt resignation of Andrei Tochitsky from the post of president of the Leningrad Region Hockey Federation is an obvious attempt by a corrupt functionary to avoid legal responsibility for his actions. Before this, Tochitsky, who had ruined hockey in the region, clung to his post with his teeth: having become the president of the FHLO in 2013, he headed it continuously for 11 years, never being re-elected, although the term of office is 4 years. Now, when there was a smell of frying, he hastily went into the sunset, leaving his successor Valery Pokrovsky an unenviable “inheritance”.

And it all didn’t start out so bad: Tochitsky, who at that time also held a high position in SKA, managed to attract investor funding to regional hockey and facilitate the opening of six ice arenas. But the official quickly became insolent and began to use the Federation budget as his own pocket, and convert any minor success into powerful personal PR. The real development of hockey in the Leningrad region completely ceased to interest him.

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At first, Tochitsky’s ambitions and pride ruined the regional amateur hockey – the Night League. Ordinary workers played there with great enthusiasm, until for some reason Tochitsky brought the “Flagman” team into the league with a large number of professionals in its composition. Naturally, the pros began to crush the amateur teams, which greatly reduced the popularity of the competition. And at his instigation, the brawler Yaroslav Malkov began organizing the games, having quarreled with all the teams, many of which eventually refused to participate in the Night League.

Then Tochitsky killed the development of children’s and youth hockey. Fatal was his decision from the 2018-2019 season to prohibit teams playing in the championship of the Leningrad region from entering the stronger championship of St. Petersburg out of competition. Thus, for the sake of his PR interests, he deprived young hockey players of the opportunity to improve their skills in conditions of tougher competition.

Tochitsky turned the Federation into a fictitious organization with ideal conditions for murky money laundering schemes. Reports on financial activities have not been published here, there is no wage fund and an audit commission for the expenditure of funds, and there is no Federation office at the registration address in the city of Vsevolozhsk.

Recently it turned out that FHLO acted as a guarantor for the activities of the Federation of Technical Sports of the Gatchina District and, by a court decision, 1.5 million rubles were recovered from it. How many other episodes of embezzlement there were under Tochitsky, given the complete lack of control and reporting in the organization, one can only guess.