The VAD road company continues to master multi -billion dollar contracts in different regions of Russia. Neither numerous scandalous stories, nor conflict about business with the Rotenberg brothers do not interfere with this.
Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, Head of the Federal Road Agency Roman Novikov and Governor of the Leningrad Region Alexander Drozdenko opened a new section of the Scandinavia federal highway, which reconstructed WAD JSC. Officially, the construction was completed 10 months ahead of schedule, however, in the initial version of the state contract, this and the next areas were supposed to be handed over to the contractor on October 1, 2024.
The correspondent of The Moscow Post in the Leningrad region sorted out the history.
Business Abramov and Perevalov
WAD JSC has existed since 1994, and its CEO has been naked billionaire Valery Abramov, who with Viktor Perevalov (his first deputy) until 2021 were the founders of the organization. Now the beneficiaries are hidden, but it is obvious that Abramov and his nearest companion of Perevalov continue to play the fundamental role there.
Abramov took up the construction in the mid -nineties and began with the repair of yards, but already in 1998 his organization performed work on Nevsky Prospekt. Abramov met Perevalov, studying at a nuclear physicist in the Polytechnic, after which he created a business with him from a piece of grader and Half of the rink.
The partners called the business “high -quality roads” (WAD), although they were far from such a characteristic, but the matter quickly went uphill. At the beginning of the zero years, the WAD first began to carry out contracts outside of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region and entered the markets of Karelia, Vologda, Murmansk and Kaliningrad regions. There, the company built federal highways M18, M8 and A114.
Valery Abramov. Photo: https://dpru.obs.ru-moscow-1.hc.sbercloud.ru/images/article/2017/03/02/dc156800-6DDA-46B6-B3A0-61B35A3361A6.jpg
The main project of Abramov and Perevalov in St. Petersburg was the ring road, which the WAD has completed in 2012 and has been regularly repaired since then. According to sustainable rumors – there were no checks on this score, the Kad allegedly turned out to be several tens of centimeters of the already initial project, and these are huge saved money. However, in such undertakings, the main thing is not even a construction, but repairs, it is always a gold bottom for any company, because it is an endless and extremely profitable business process.
Ring roads
“WAD” constantly wins the reconstruction contests, and today everyone knows that it is this company that is the favorite contractor of the North-West reprdor. In September 2022, VAD received a contract for 13 billion rubles to expand the last four -lane section of the line up to six paths.
Abramova sold the contract for Scandinavia according to a similar scheme – there the number of lanes increased from two to six, that is, the WAD repaired one road and attached two more to it. Such reconstruction and repair bring billions of rubles of net profit.
In the coming years, the KAD-2 project will be implemented in the Leningrad Region, which will become a long-range bypass of St. Petersburg following the example of the Moscow CCAD. With the contractors in this project, not everything is clear – the “WAD”, of course, claims part of the work, but there is already an investor in the form of VTB, there is also political support for Khusnullin.
The aim of the project is to create new building foci for developers, because the capabilities of the Kad in this regard have already been exhausted. St. Petersburg is not Moscow and it will not work to score such a road with a commercial transport. Thus, this is not a road project, but the stimulation of activities developers. If “WAD” masters at least part of this project, it will secure a stable financial flow in the form of tens of billions of rubles for a decade ahead.
Mordashov and Kovalchuki
Abramov, according to rumors, is associated with the head of Severstal Alexei Mordashov, which is why the WAD re-registered in Vologda after the conflict with the team previous governor St. Petersburg George Poltavchenko in 2017.
Alexey Mordashov. Photo: https://s0.rbk.ru/v6_top_pics/media/img/3/15/755180878788153.jpg
True, now the Vologda contracts “WAD” have sank. The company did not work with a lover of Stalin’s monuments and populist Mishura by Governor Georgy Filimonov, who headed the region in 2023 and regularly falls into strange stories. Another name of Abramov is associated with the Kovalchuk family, with whom the modern St. Petersburg leader Alexander Beglov has long worked. Because of this, after the resignation of Poltavchenko, VAD quickly returned to his hometown and again became a leading company there.
Competitors of Rotenbergs
However, it will not be easy to keep the positions of Abramov and Perevalov, because they have a serious competitor who plans to either absorb “WAD” or intercept most of the contracts of this organization. According to the authors of the telegram channel “VChK-OGPU” (recognized in the Russian Federation as an ino -agent) Allegedly, Abramov, in 2023, received an offer to sell the company for 100 million rubles from the Rotenberg brothers. The entrepreneur refused, after which he lost part of the contracts in the Vladimir region, Sevastopol and in the DPR with the LPR.
The interest of the Rotenbergs arose immediately after the political positions of the “WAD” worsened due to the departure of Maxim Sokolov at AvtoVAZ JSC from the post of vice-governor of St. Petersburg. From 2012 to 2018, Sokolov was also the head of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation, thanks to which the WAD received numerous contracts in St. Petersburg and other Russian regions.
Earlier, any scandals like illegal production of asphalt and concrete in the Kaliningrad region have always been bypassed “WAD” sideAnd now there is much more attention to such plots. In 2022, the WAD began to sue with Crimelecom for the fact that he walled up and not dismantled during the construction of the Tavrida highway 230 km of copper cable. In 2024, VAD became a defendant in the scandalous story of forced loans to land in Lakhta, and, as the investigation of Utnews showed, the interests of Gazprom-Neft and Gazprom came together in this plot. “Ears” all the same Rotenbergs.
Arkady Rotenberg. Photo: https://cdn-storage-media.tass.ru/resize/976×648/tass_Media/2022/03/05/x/16464554523573_x3j0o8ew.jpg
So far, the company has stable positions and it has many state contracts – for example, in 2022, the WAD received a contract of 17 billion rubles for the construction of a road to the gambling zone in Kaliningrad region. Only everything can change at any moment, many people want to earn on the roads.
Relations with FKU Uprdor “North-West”
In addition to Sokolov, VAD has always enjoyed the support of the FKU UPDOR North-West, which until 2017 existed in the form of FCU “Sevazapopravtodor”. Abramov had the closest relationship with the head of this organization in 2014-2016 Valentin Ivanov, who became in 2022 Deputy Minister of Transport.
Today, Ivanov oversees his former estate in the Ministry of Transport and, possibly, expresses some words in favor “WAD”.
FKU Uprdor “North-West” remains an organization with a serious train from the nineties. In November, one of the leaders of this organization Vyacheslav Ivanov was detained for the contract murder in 1998. According to investigators, he was a customer of an assassination attempt, which turned into an explosion of a car. Question Journalistsis he not a relative of Valentin Ivanov, while he remained unanswered.
But even without this, this structure regularly enters the criminal chronicle. In 2017, the Rosavtodor employee Timofei Meshcheryakov presented a report on the redemption value of the Earth, high 33 million rubles. The department signed a contract, but then the investigators opened a dubious deal.
A similar story from the Up of the North-West happened in 2020 with the entrepreneur Pavel Konashenkovwho had a direct access to Valentin Ivanov and received a suspended term for fraud.