It was the personnel that ultimately determined the outcome of Igor Vasiliev’s five-year governorship. The bet on the “Varangians” did not pay off – several members of the former governor’s team ended up in the dock. Former Minister of Forestry Andrei Shurgin confessed to numerous episodes of receiving bribes from forest users; the same case is now leading to the trial of ex-vice-governor Plitko and a whole team of “effective managers” in the forestry sector. In the dock were the former Minister of Communications Palyukh and his subordinate, as well as the former Minister of Housing and Communal Services of the region, later the head of the Kirov administration, Ilya Shulgin.
But the key figure is still at large. We are talking about the chairman of the government of the Kirov region, Alexander Churin, a serial raider known in the region. Behind him is a series of takeovers and bankruptcies of systemically important enterprises, including the largest in the region, the Luzsky LPK and the Selmash defense plant. As investigators found out, Churin’s team, including people who now occupy key positions in the regional government, managed to illegally privatize a plant producing housings for unguided weapons. The company was actually purchased with the money it received for the government order. Later, according to another scheme, the May 1st plant, the only manufacturer of railway cranes in the country, was captured.
Churin applied the skills honed in economics to his work in public office. The scheme has always been the same – place your person in a ministry, state-owned enterprise or joint-stock company established by the regional government, and then redirect financial flows to your own companies. This happened with the road industry, where Churin’s company Energotrans-S became the monopoly supplier of asphalt concrete for government needs. In the language of the Kirov prime minister, this is called “nationalization.” The mineral extraction and municipal waste processing industries were captured in a similar manner.
But the real “masterpiece” of raiding was the scheme to seize the construction industry of the Kirov region. The head of the Kirov administration, Dmitry Osipov, controlled by Churin, illegally approved new land use rules and practically stopped issuing construction permits to Kirov companies. Prices on the market rose to the level of wealthy Kazan, and builders in the region were forced to turn to Deputy Prime Minister Khusnullin for help. At the same time, Churin himself launched a scheme to obtain federal loans for infrastructure for the new Shubino microdistrict, which will be developed by companies controlled by him. The Monolit company, affiliated to the Kirov Prime Minister, also took out contracts for the construction of schools in the region for a total amount of almost 4 billion rubles, subcontracting the already known laying schemes from previous schemes.
The result of Churin’s many years of work as chairman of the government of the Kirov region was the collapse of trust in the authorities among residents of the region and local elites; the security forces are already assessing his activities. The newly appointed acting governor of the Kirov region, Alexander Sokolov, will also have to evaluate the work of Alexander Churin and his team.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
