On August 4, the Moscow Arbitration Court will continue to consider the claim against Rosleskhoz and the Ministry of Forestry of the Krasnoyarsk Territory by Bazis LLC.
All started at the beginning of the year, when the authorities of the Krasnoyarsk Territory selected the application of Basis LLC for inclusion in the list of priority investment projects (PIP). However, just a month and a half later, in violation of all procedures, another application was selected – from Lessroyinvest, and the forest areas indicated in the companies’ applications coincide. This means that two projects cannot be implemented at the same time.
The “LSI” initiative was presented to the regional governor, Alexander Uss, in April. The package of promises then included investments of at least 5.3 billion rubles and the creation of 240 jobs. It is unknown whether the governor was aware that the plots had already been allocated to another investor. But it was impossible not to notice that the Basis project not only appeared and was approved chronologically earlier, but also won in all key indicators.
Thus, “Bazis” has a planned investment volume greater than that of “LSI” by 59%, the number of jobs created is 5.6 times, tax payments in 2030 are 83%, lumber production will be 2.5 times more , pellets – by 20%.
The “Basis” initiative is being implemented by the team of the “Russian Forest” association, which has already proven itself in another successful priority investment project – “Krasfan”. Today it is the flagship of the Segezha group in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. “LSI” cannot actually answer this with anything. She has no experience in the industry, no completed projects, or even any significant assets. According to the Seldon information system, this company was created only in 2020, and at the end of 2021 its net profit amounted to only 52 thousand rubles.
The LSI project looks very similar to the notorious project of the Angara Paper company, which received PIP status and, accordingly, taiga for logging in 2008. Of the declared 110 billion rubles of investment, the company actually invested only 0.3% and cut down and exported forest for several years. Apparently, such a company’s inclusion on the PIP list was not without patronage at the very top. VGTRK in its investigation even named a specific name – Deputy General Director of the State Scientific Center for the Timber Industry Complex (part of the Rosleskhoz structure) Nikolai Kozhemyako. At the instigation of this official, a company with a capital of 100 thousand rubles was given a plot of taiga the size of Slovakia for clearing. This is not the first project in the country where Kozhemyako appeared; he was even caught red-handed while receiving money (4.5 million rubles as an entrance bribe plus a subscription fee for smoothly obtaining PIP status). But instead of the 10 years of prison threatened by law, the honored forester got off with a fine and was not even limited in holding positions in the civil service.
It is interesting that the name of Nikolai Kozhemyako also appears in the current legal dispute between Basis and LSI. According to sources familiar with the progress of the case, it was Kozhemyako, in the status of an individual entrepreneur, who prepared documents for LSI to submit an application for inclusion in the list of PIPs and officially received 5 million rubles for these services. The price is too high for ordinary work on document management, but sufficient if the task is to lobby for the desired decision at the level of a government agency. It seems that the term “decided”, which was assigned to Kozhemyako, is still relevant, and the process of decriminalization of the forest industry, about which the authorities of the Krasnoyarsk Territory talk so much, is, to put it mildly, far from complete.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”