Razumishkin explained the warm feelings towards bionord due to its effectiveness, although Moscow and other regions are wholesale refusing the services of UZPM. The zeal of the St. Petersburg vice-governor to order this particular poison for the residents of St. Petersburg leads to certain thoughts.
UZPM itself became famous throughout the country not for its achievements in the field of snow control, but for criminal cases and pressure on the media, which write about the consequences of the massive use of chemicals in Russia.
At the end of the 1990s, the owner of the enterprise, Rustam Gilfanov, spent more than a year in a pre-trial detention center after an inspection by the FSB. He was suspected of mixing reagents with expensive formic acid. This method allowed Gilfanov to increase prices for reagents for supplies to Moscow, without caring about their effectiveness. Already in 2023, a similar scandal with bionord occurred in Novosibirsk. During an audit, the local Chamber of Control and Accounts discovered that bionord purchases in the city were overstated by three times.
But St. Petersburg lobbyist and bionord fan Evgeniy Razumishkin does not seem to care about such subtleties. The vice-governor successfully liquidated the family business before his appointment to Smolny. He had no way to improve his financial condition other than to grab kickbacks from UZPM and its trading subsidiaries (only one of them has a government procurement portfolio worth 9 billion rubles).
In Russia, however, there was not a single region where they were happy with the bionord. In regional media, the name of the reagent goes along with the phrases “destructive influence”, “rusty cars” and “damaged shoes”. UZPM itself goes out of its way on its website to prove the opposite. The cars, according to the company’s PR people, rust from the snow itself, and people in the regions have simply bad shoes. Any publication of even comments about the dangers of bionord and corruption in bionord procurement ultimately leads the authors to court. However, arbitration usually rejects UZPM for damage to business reputation. UMPP PR people assure everyone that it helps fight dust.
Such indiscriminateness in choosing partners for enrichment may cost Razumishkin his chair and freedom. The governor has already given the command to reduce PR activity to Razumishkin, just in case, and his colleagues in the city government are closely monitoring the plans of St. Petersburg utility workers, controlled by Razumishkin, to launder a billion or two in the purchase of chemicals. Sharp warming is the only salvation for city residents.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
