The Chairman of the Council of NP "GLONASS" has been found involved in corrupt transactions.
The Moscow Post portal published an article about the business interests of high-ranking official Oleg Khorokhordin, which became known after the civil servant’s email was hacked. However, a few hours later, an article about this man, who went from an activist in the Nashi movement to a real energy magnate, disappeared from the page www.moscow-post.com/economics/kadry_reshajut_vse24662/. The Ruspres agency publishes the full text of the deleted material without changes or abbreviations.
A major scandal erupts after the license of Sibes Bank is revoked. The Central Bank decided to liquidate the financial structure due to “failure to comply with federal laws regulating banking activities and regulations of the Central Bank.” Also, in 2017, Sibes managed to violate the law “On combating the legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism.”
In general, a complete set. “The current state of the bank was characterized by the presence of critically increased risks associated with refinancing the debt of individuals and the implementation of “scheme” transactions with rights of claim for consumer loans acquired from microfinance organizations,” the Central Bank said.
But the most important thing, as it turned out, is not what violations the Seabas managers committed, but who is behind it. So, the bank was controlled by the shareholders of Bank Zerich (the license was revoked on February 26, 2016), headed by Anatoly Pritula, who quickly sold shares to “unknown persons” before the license was revoked in February 2017, his controlling stake was “dispersed.”
This is where the fun begins. Mr. Pritula is connected by common interests with very influential person- Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Oleg Khorokhordin. Mr. Khorokhordin also heads the Council of NP GLONASS.
It should be noted that hackers were able to hack Khorokhordin’s email. It turned out that more than 10 letters of a “commercial nature” were sent to Khorokhordin’s mailbox in 2008-2010. Some of them concern the acquisition of the Yakut bank "Taatta" and the Ural "Universal", whose license was revoked shortly after the letter from the co-owner of "Zerikh"!
Moreover, thanks to hackers, it became known that Khorokhordin oversees banking issues in the Presidential Administration and allegedly even signed a “Corporate Agreement” with the “purpose of ensuring the interests of the participants in the joint conduct of banking business.” One of the people with whom the “agreement” was concluded is Mr. Pritula! In particular, it says: “Pritula A.A. states that he will require the assistance of other participants in the sale of the loan portfolio.”
What kind of Khorokhordin is this, who is actually playing “the game on the side”? Here again it’s worth turning to the hackers: “From his mail we learned that for just one visit to the dentist he can pay almost two million rubles and 90,000 rubles for a bouquet for another fan. It is to this little-known official that people turn to him with the most humble requests for help in winning tenders for government procurement in the Altai Republic,” the hackers characterize Khorokhordin.
By the way, among Khorokhordin’s informal affairs there may be a DDoS attack on the Kommersant publication, for which Kristina Potupchik (former press secretary of the Nashi movement) was also accused.
A guy with a bag of money in the office of AP employee Timur Prokopenko
By the way, after this “leak,” Prokopenko, instead of the post of Oleg Morozov, who resigned in March 2015, was transferred to “party construction.” But Khorokhordin retained his position.
After hackers hacked Khorokhordin’s email, his “commercial negotiations” became known. A businessman named “Eduard” addresses an influential official: “If you negotiate with Yakobashvili on my issue, and if the deal with him goes through, 10% of the money I receive is yours.” The author calls himself "Edward".
Let us recall that in 2015, Mr. Yakobishvili sold 49% of Petrocas Energy to Rosneft for $144 million. Participants in business processes said that the price was too low. Here it is worth remembering that the “right hand” of the head of Rosneft is Eduard Khudainatov. Maybe it was that “Edward”?
Among other things, Mr. Khorokhordin was also one of the highest paid employees of the Administration.
"Skeletons" Khorokhordin
Let us note that Oleg Leonidovich literally left the village. He was born in 1972 in the town of Gulshinsky Altai Territory. He worked as a janitor, carpenter, concrete worker, etc.
Khorokhordin’s career took off after he became director of the Barnaul company Altaienergostroy Trading House LLC in 1997. And it seems that the now influential official has not forgotten this. In a letter dated August 20, 2009, the owner of the box [email protected] refers to "without" unnecessary words straight to the point": "Next week the Altaienergo tender will be announced... In 2009, when Oleg Leonidovich was already working at the AP, he received a letter in his inbox where a person clearly close to him wanted to win the tender: "I am interested in winning this tender. If You have the opportunity, help, on your terms.”
The author signs himself with the name "Andrey". By the address [email protected] V social network"My World" is registered by Andrey Uporov. And here’s the most interesting thing: Andrey Uporov is the full namesake of the former director and co-founder of Altaielectrotechkomplekt LLC. In a letter we're talking about about "electricity meters, transformers and switchboard equipment." Altai businessmen say that Uporov was previously affiliated with the Altaienergostroy Trading House LLC. If this is true, then one can at least say about Khorokhordin that he “remembers good things.” But what assessment can be given to this situation from a legal point of view?
Khorokhordin’s real bureaucratic career began after he was accepted into the Office of the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President in 2002 Russian Federation in Central federal district. Then the plenipotentiary representative in the district was Georgy Poltavchenko, the current governor of St. Petersburg. He allegedly introduced the “young man” to the “St. Petersburg people.”
But now these are not the best times for Khorokhordin. The 2018 elections are approaching, and it is necessary to imprison corrupt officials not only among governors, but also in federal structures. Adding to the problems is the fact that Khorokhordin’s boss, Arkady Dvorkovich, is in an informal conflict with Igor Sechin, who could have framed Minister Alexei Ulyukaev, who is now under arrest. There is information that Dvorkovich was being developed by the FSB. If the assumptions about possible “kickbacks” by Khorokhordin are confirmed, then he will not only be removed from office, but also imprisoned. In this case, Dvorkovich will also lose his place.
I want to tell you the story of my love. Perhaps the collective wisdom will help me figure out what's what.
Now I am 24 years old, seven and a half of which I have been married.
I want to tell you the story of my love. Perhaps the collective wisdom will help me figure out what's what. So. Now I am 24 years old, seven and a half of which I have been married to N. I have two children, six and four years old. We live well, like everyone else. We try not to swear, but not without it. An ordinary family, there are many of them. My husband is good, he loves me and the children. He and I have an age difference of eight years. But this does not bother us and we do not attach any importance to it.
So the story. At the age of 16, at one of the parties, my best friend introduced me to a young man. His name was Khorokhordin Oleg. At that time, I was a virgin and I had no thoughts of starting a relationship. He noticed me before we met and watched me dance. He looked at me like that for a long time, then we started talking until he kissed me. We hid from everyone, kissed and hugged, he told me a lot of nice words and compliments. Everything was so pleasant, but we just couldn’t get along. As soon as we wanted, all sorts of cataclysms happened to us that simply did not allow us to be together, did not allow us to get closer. I broke up with my boyfriend, but that didn’t help our rapprochement. When I was 17, a neighbor came to me one evening, now he is my husband. But then he worked at the Anonymous company. His grandmother lived here and he visited her twice a year. Of course I knew him because he was friends with my brother. And we communicated, we could chat for hours.
He confessed to me that when I grew up, he fell in love, but before that he didn’t pay any attention. One day we were sitting on a bench and he asked me to marry him. I still don’t know what drove me then, but I answered him with consent. Before the wedding, I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Oleg, so I wrote him a letter and inserted a photo with the signature Khorokhordin - Rossius. My heart ached very much because I understood that after the wedding I would no longer have the opportunity to see him, since we lived quite far from each other, a hundred kilometers away. Three months later, I calmed down a little and decided that it was time to forget everything and be a decent married woman. I decided to go to college for extramural. And when I arrived in the city for the session and walked into the technical school’s assembly hall, I saw him right in front of me. His whole life flashed before his eyes, all the memories associated with him appeared before his eyes. He sat down next to me, and we talked through the entire meeting. The session ended and I had to go home. We haven't seen each other for six months. Six months later, I came to the session again, and we met in the store. They couldn't tear themselves away from each other.
We sat at the bus stop and talked until late at night. Unable to bear it, he kissed me, and I reciprocated. I know that I shouldn’t have done this, but I couldn’t tear him away from me. I am drawn to him like a magnet. He hugged me and didn’t want to let me go. What should I do, I’m a married woman, why was I so indecisive? Everything would be different. And now nothing can be changed. I went home. Six years have passed since then. I have a wonderful family, children are busy. My husband works to provide for his family. I don’t think about him anymore, it took me two long years. I completely switched to my husband, we love each other and understand. But fate presented me with another surprise-test. And you must help me overcome it, because I am weak in such matters. By chance I saw his photo on a friends website. All the memories came flooding back. I did not sleep all night. And about a month later, on another site, he invited me as a friend. I answered. I found out that he was married but had no children. We are texting and I can’t figure out what to do about it? What to do to make it right?
Commercial projects, kickbacks, appointments and “excuses” from authorities - from the correspondence of ex-subordinate Vladislav Surkov
Original of this material© "Russian Forbes", 03/07/2012, "Our-leaks": The Kremlin as a business, Photo: via slivmail.com, "Kommersant", "Parliamentary newspaper"
Ivan Osipov, Alexey Petyaev, Roman Badanin
February 9th Publishing House Kommersant sent to the police statement on the initiation of a criminal case against members of the pro-Kremlin youth movement “Nashi” - Kristina Potupchik, Artur Omarov, Roman Verbitsky and others. “Kommersant” suspected “ourists” of organizing DDoS attacks on the ID website, the suspicion was based on information published by anonymous hackers correspondence between members of the movement.
Department “K,” which investigates cybercrimes, conducted an investigation at the request of “Kommersant” (as a representative of the department called it in a conversation with Forbes, “institutional measures”). The materials were redirected to the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Sokol district (the response of the “K” department on this matter was published on March 5 in the blog of the general director of “Kommersant” Demyan Kudryavtsev).
As part of the investigation, the correspondence itself may receive a legal assessment, says Kudryavtsev.
Hackers hidden behind the Anonymous “brand” are still publishing the opened correspondence; several gigabytes of information have become available - hundreds of letters from about ten regular authors. As members of Anonymous reported in correspondence with journalists, the targets of the hack were Potupchik and her boss, the head of Rosmolodezh Vasily Yakemenko, followed by their correspondents.
Forbes investigated some of the facts of a huge array of letters from one of these: a person identified in the correspondence as Oleg Leonidovich Khorokhordin, who until recently held the post of deputy head of the management department domestic policy presidential administration (AP). In January, the official went to work in the government, which was confirmed by a White House staff member in an interview with Forbes.
“From his mail we learned that for just one visit to the dentist he can pay almost two million rubles and 90,000 rubles for a bouquet for another fan. It is this little-known official who is approached with the most humble requests for help in winning tenders for government procurement in the Altai Republic,” the hackers characterize Khorokhordin in their “appeal to the people of Russia.”
Khorokhordin, like Potupchik, did not answer the editor’s questions. “I do not comment on slander about myself published on the Internet,” the official answered the question about the authenticity of the correspondence.
Former and current colleagues of Khorokhordin interviewed by Forbes did not refute the authenticity of the authorship.
“I myself took Khorokhordin to work in the mid-2000s,” recalls Mikhail Ostrovsky, a member of the Public Chamber, formerly the head of the department in the internal policy department of the AP. “A quick learner, precise in execution and able to communicate well with different groups.”
The official’s immediate supervisors in the Administration were Ivan Demidov, supervisor of relations with public organizations, Konstantin Kostin, current head of the internal policy department, former head of the same department Oleg Govorun, as well as himself Vladislav Surkov, now working as Deputy Prime Minister.
IN last years Khorokhordin quickly rose in the ranks, says Ostrovsky: “This suggests that he enjoyed authority among his superiors.”
Khorokhordin supervised relations with public business associations, trade unions, and later also dealt with issues of party building, says an interlocutor close to the AP. A separate area of responsibility of the official was the Skolkovo project supervised by Surkov.
As the correspondence shows, sometimes the official even treated Skolkovo too responsibly.
$5 billion for elections
“Problems and making friends. for Skolkovo or elections up to $5 billion. I am ready to speak with S. personally on Skype. believes that this is an order from Kazakhstan from the first person” - a letter with such content from the user [email protected] supposedly sent to Khorokhordin on October 13, 2010 (original spelling and punctuation preserved).The message may be about the disgraced Kazakh banker Mukhtar Ablyazov: in October 2010, he unsuccessfully fought Russian justice. A few days before this letter, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of Ablyazov in absentia.
On the same day as the letter from [email protected] came to the mailbox presumably of Khorokhordina, the official’s regular correspondence partner from the address [email protected] sent the recipient a link to a Wikipedia page describing Ablyazov’s biography.
The banker was part of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s inner circle, then joined the opposition, spent a year in prison, was pardoned by the president and moved to Russia, where he started ambitious development projects.
With the onset of the crisis, Ablyazov's BTA Bank was nationalized by the Kazakh authorities; during an audit, it turned out that the ex-owner had withdrawn assets worth $10 billion. The situation was similar to the scandal surrounding the Bank of Moscow: after the purchase of one of the country's largest banks, the state accused its former owners of lending to their companies.
In 2010, criminal prosecution of Ablyazov was initiated in Russia. The leaders of his development company Eurasia Logistics were under arrest, and the businessman himself fled to London. Ablyazov has repeatedly stated publicly that he considers his case initiated personally by Nazarbayev and his entourage.
The editors of Forbes tried to contact Ablyazov on the very day when the British royal court placed the ex-banker in custody in absentia, and Ablyazov’s assistants did not respond to the editors’ requests.
The banker sought to gain a foothold in Russia after disgrace in his homeland, says Alexey Vlasov, head of the Moscow State University center for studying processes in the post-Soviet space. Among those who could patronize the banker's business in Russia, sources mentioned Luzhkov's elite, but nothing was ever known about his contacts at the federal level.
Who Ablyazov supposedly wanted to meet in the presidential administration is hidden behind the initial “S”. The Skolkovo Foundation and preparations for elections in the Kremlin have traditionally been Surkov’s area of expertise. Judging by the contents of the mailbox, presumably Khorokhordin could also have contact with Skolkovo direct relation: prepared “lenses” on the personalities of the project, did press reviews, etc.
Once, when Surkov was the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration, the story of a kickback for a meeting with him became public. In February 2011, Twitter user @TimStigal
I complained to Dmitry Medvedev: I couldn’t meet with Surkov to present a certain project for resolving conflicts in the Caucasus, because one of the “intermediaries” was demanding $300,000 for this service. The President connected him with an official, in the end everything was limited to a telephone conversation between Surkov and the author complaints: an official at a meeting, according to official version, did not agree because the blogger refused to name the names of the extortionists.
Surkov himself may have had no idea that one of his subordinates was asking walkers for money for communicating with him, but the clerks definitely took advantage of their position, says a political scientist who worked with the AP. He recalls how an employee of the internal policy department, who was in charge of one of the South Ural regions, demanded €50,000 for a meeting with Surkov.
“The Kremlin’s election black fund is not a myth,” says ex-State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov. - Previously, there was a lot of scattered evidence of this; facts of distributing money in one place or another periodically surfaced. The opened correspondence brings everything into the system and serves as confirmation of the existence of such a cash register.”
Surkov said through his representative that he would not answer questions from the editors.
"If the deal goes through, 10% of the money received is yours"
A prominent representative of large business - former co-owner of Wimm-Bill-Dann (WBD) David Yakobashvili is mentioned in the official's correspondence as the owner of the mailbox [email protected]. In a letter dated October 9, 2009, the sender sent a letter to presumably Khorokhordin’s post office with a file “ Commercial offer" The author promises the recipient the following form of “gratitude”: “If you negotiate with Yakobashvili on my issue, and if the deal with him goes through, 10% of the money I receive is yours.” The author calls himself "Edward".The essence of Yakobashvili’s proposal is the construction of a dairy complex in the Altai Territory worth 100-120 million rubles (10% of the deal - 10-12 million) signed by the director of the Barnaul group of companies “Standard” Eduard Dzhamgaryan.
Yakobashvili, in an interview with Forbes, said that Khorokhordin once called him, but at the end of 2010 and for a different reason: he asked to provide financial support to a charitable foundation under the Russian Orthodox Church. Having learned that the WBD was already providing such support, the official said goodbye, Yakobashvili recalls. The businessman does not remember when and how he met the AP official, and he has never heard proposals about Altai business from anyone.
Dzhamgaryan did not answer questions about contacts with Khorokhordin.
Altai business often asked the AP official for dubious help. In a letter dated August 20, 2009, the owner of the box [email protected]“without further ado” he goes straight to the point: “Next week the Altaienergo tender will be announced... I am interested in winning this tender. If you have the opportunity, help, on your terms.” The author signs himself “Andrey”. By the address [email protected] Andrey Uporov is registered on the social network “My World”. This is also the name of the former director and co-founder of Altaielectrotechkomplekt LLC. The letter refers to “electricity meters, transformers and switchboard equipment.”
On February 6, 2007, Altaienergo was mentioned in a letter to Khorokhordin by the owner of the mailbox [email protected]. The author does not sign his name, but in other messages from the same address he identifies himself as Alexei Ostroukhov (that was the name of the former head of the company’s equity sector). The essence of his proposal to the official: the purchase of a stake in the energy company. “My proposal is that I buy at par (you cover this deal from inspections for three years), give the difference minus 13% of the Barnaul price, the rest for myself for the idea, or we spend 4,400,000 rubles each, the rest is higher than the cost between us, minus 13 %, but I’m more for the idea,” the author writes, at the end expressing hope for the “decency” of the recipient.
Ostroukhov’s name was mentioned several times in connection with Altaienergo. His other letters to the revealed address concern proposals to purchase a 25% stake in the Mongolian coal company Shiiriz Stone HKhK, the Barnaul-based LLC NPK Logocomposite and other “business” issues. Moreover, in 2009, messages came from the address [email protected]- corporate mail of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.
Ostroukhov worked at the Public Chamber (PC) from July 2008 to August 2009, having arrived on “someone’s high recommendation,” recalls a representative of the OP (how meeting Khorokhordin helped get a job, see the chapter “Kremlin Recruitment Agency”).
The press service of Altaienergo was unable to answer Forbes’ questions: the name Khorokhordin was unfamiliar to the company representative. Restrictions on conducting commercial activities do not apply to employees of the OP; they are not civil servants, says the head of the chamber’s press service, Marina Ryklina.
The practice of entrepreneurs turning to AP employees with a request to resolve business issues existed, recalls Vice President of Business Russia Anton Danilov-Danilyan, who headed the Kremlin’s economic department until 2004. They contacted us all the time, and not only the oligarchs, he says, but according to the regulations, officials were supposed to forward all written requests to the government.
The participation of officials in resolving business issues for a “kickback” is a common practice, explains the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, Kirill Kabanov: officials may refuse applicants, but the psychology of corruption is such that everyone believes that officials can “help.”
From Altai to Solyanka
As the investigation showed, the Kremlin hacker’s victim could arrange not only other people’s affairs: he himself was a businessman...The addressee's permanent correspondence partner is Yuri Korsakov. This is the name of the chairman of the board of JSC Bank Zerich. From the address [email protected] More than 10 letters were sent to presumably Khorokhordin’s mailbox in the period 2008-2010. Many relate to commercial proposals: the purchase of the Yakut bank "Taatta" and the Pervouralsk CB "Universal" (from the latter, a month after Korsakov's letter, in which he compared the bank to a "hot pie", the Central Bank revoked the license), the Nizhny Novgorod Verkhne-Volzhsky Neftebank and the bank Bankhaus Erbe. Confirmations of none of the transactions in open access could not be found.
Why the AP official is in charge of these issues becomes clear from one of the letters (dated September 29, 2009), to which the “Corporate Agreement” file is attached. It declares that five individuals enter into an agreement “to ensure the interests of the participants in jointly conducting banking business.” We are talking about Korsakov and Khorokhordin, as well as Viktor Yarmolenko, Anatoly Pritul and Vitaly Chernomor. The names of the last two coincide with the names of the chairman of the board of directors of Bank Zerich and the head of the NOVAEM group - a supplier of rolled pipes (the group's underlying asset is, again, the Altai OJSC Sibenergomash). There are no signatures in the file.
Korsakov, as follows from the questionnaire attached to one of the letters, like Khorokhordin, is a native of the Altai Territory - until 2005, he worked in the banking industry in the region.
Khorokhordin is not listed as a shareholder in Zerich’s documentation. Korsakov did not answer Forbes’ questions. But a representative of the credit institution confirmed that the mailbox [email protected] really belongs to the head of the bank.
According to the SPARK-Interfax database, O. L. Khorokhordin in 2002-2003 was one of the co-owners of the companies TD Altaienergostroy LLC, Rentier LLC and Energopodryad LLC. The last LLC ceased its activities in 2009. The first two are registered in Barnaul. In the branch of TD Altaienergostroy, Khorokhordin was listed as a manager. Today, the owners of the company are Svetlana Khorokhordina (that’s the name of the official’s wife) and Alexey Andronov with shares of 15% and 85%, respectively, and the head is Svetlana Onishchenko.
The most famous in the Altai Territory, Alexey Andronov, is the former managing director of the same Altaienergo, and now the head of Altaiavtodor and a deputy of the regional legislative assembly on the United Russia list. His name is mentioned several times in the letters. In March 2009, Khorokhordin allegedly books for himself, Andronov and seven other people rooms at the Alpenhof Hotel, located on the slope of Mount Sheregesh in Kemerovo region, for a total amount of 272,800 rubles.
In the posted correspondence, there are also documents about Andronov’s purchase of an apartment in the center of Moscow on Solyanka, building 1/2, building 1. Khorokhordin’s name is not mentioned in the materials about the acquisition of an elite real estate property, however, it was the owner of the opened mailbox, apparently, who controlled the transaction: In addition to documents on transactions with apartments, the mail contains many letters about the details of the furnishings, the purchase of furniture and equipment.
[slivmail.com, Solyanka 1-2-220 (correction).doc:
Apartment purchase and sale agreement
Moscow city, April 1, two thousand and eleven
We, Popova Svetlana Yurievna, born June 16, 1986, Russian Federation citizenship [...], Popova Galina Anatolevna, born February 1, 1965, Russian Federation citizenship [...], acting for himself and for Hodgman Edward Bailey, born August 6, 1964, US citizenship [...], hereinafter referred to as “Sellers”, on the one hand, and
Khorokhordin Oleg Leonidovich, born April 3, 1972, Russian Federation citizenship, gender male, place of birth: s. Glushinka, Kosikhinsky district, Altai Territory, passport: 01 01 577933, issued on December 26, 2001 by the Department of Internal Affairs of the Zheleznodorozhny district of the mountains. Barnaul, division code: 222-068, registered at the address: city. Moscow, st. Sivtsev Vrazhek, 15/25, apt. 37 a, hereinafter referred to as “Buyer”
have entered into this agreement as follows:
1. The Sellers sold and the Buyer bought, in accordance with the terms of this agreement, the ownership of the following real estate: an apartment located at the address: Moscow, Solyanka Street, building 1/2, building 2, apartment 220, located on the 6th floor, consisting of 1 living room, total area 47.8 square meters, living area 23.5 square meters. [...]
3. The specified apartment is sold at a price agreed upon by the parties of 3,000,000 (three million) rubles 00 kopecks. - Insert K.ru]
[slivmail.com, Additional agreement.doc:
Additional agreement
to the apartment purchase and sale agreement dated April 1, 2011
I, Popova Galina Anatolevna, born February 1, 1965, citizenship of the Russian Federation [...], hereinafter referred to as “Seller”,
received from
Khorokhordin Oleg Leonidovich, born on April 3, 1972, citizenship of the Russian Federation [...], hereinafter referred to as “Buyer”,
for the apartment I sold, located at the address: Moscow, Solyanka street, building 1/2, building 2, apartment 220, located on the 6th floor, consisting of 1 living room, with a total area of 47.8 square meters, living area of 23.5 square meters, a sum of money in the amount of 12,270,000 (twelve million two hundred and seventy thousand) rubles.
I received the full amount of money and have no complaints. - Insert K.ru]
Today the price per sq. m in a house of 1/2, fluctuates around the mark of 300,000 rubles. Thus, the market value of a two-room apartment on Solyanka is about 20 million rubles.
There are about a dozen letters from Onishchenko in the mail. They are talking about the most different topics: Andronov’s bank account numbers, tax arrears, insurance of the 1999 Mercedes Benz G320 owned by Khorokhordin (the correspondence contains a scan of the car’s registration certificate with the official’s name), samples of sales contracts, etc.
The Civil Service Law directly instructs officials to transfer shares in commercial companies to trust management; civil servants in principle cannot establish enterprises while performing their functions, recalls Elena Panfilova, director of the Russian center of Transparency International.
Recruitment agency "Kremlin"
“Commercial” activity of mailbox correspondents [email protected] overshadows another cross-cutting topic of correspondence - personnel. The authors of the letters regularly ask the recipient for help in finding employment for a particular person and sometimes actually receive the assignments they were interested in.The owner of the boxes is especially zealous in the matter of “personnel”. [email protected] And [email protected]. The author's name coincides with the name of the head of the apparatus of the Public Chamber of Russia, Alina Radchenko.
Radchenko is Surkov’s creature; she came to the OP from the position of adviser to the Kremlin’s internal policy department before the 2007 elections, says an interlocutor in the Public Chamber. Before joining the civil service, Radchenko was engaged in business and was vice-president of Opora Rossii.
On August 8, 2011, Radchenko allegedly forwarded a letter from Pavel Chelnokov to the address presumably Khorokhordin, indicating that he was part of the presidential personnel reserve of 500 top specialists. In the message, a certain Chelnokov asks for help with employment in the legal service of Gazprom Neft. The author claims that he worked for 7 years as director of legal affairs of the Russian Steel division of Severstal. In Alexey Mordashov’s holding, a top manager with that name actually worked in the specified position.
April 13, 2010 owner of the address [email protected]“convincingly” asks Khorokhordin supposedly to “promote the candidacy” of the husband of his colleague, the head of the department card products Promsvyazbank Sergei Rudnev for the position of head of the debit card development directorate of Uralsib Bank - the letter is accompanied by a link to the corresponding vacancy on the Headhunter website and the applicant’s resume.
There are no publicly available traces of the activities of “Chelnokov” or “Rudnev” in the companies where they tried to get a job under the patronage of an official. The press service of Gazprom Neft reported that they have no information about the employment of the former top manager of Severstal. A representative of Promsvyazbank told Forbes that Rudnev has not been working for a credit institution for six months or a year, and Uralsib noted that there is no employee with that name on staff.
In February 2007, Radchenko allegedly sent Khorokhordin the resume of a “girl for employment” - the senior treasurer of the Federal Treasury branch of the Krasnogorsk district of the Bryansk region, Galina Arshan, with a question about the opportunity to “help”. At the beginning of May of the same year, Arshan won the competition for “filling vacant positions in the state civil service of the Federal Treasury.” The supposed creature of the heroes of the correspondence received the post of “leading expert specialist of the Financial Forecasting Department.”
Another successful example of employment is associated with the same Altaienergo. In March 2007, “the coordinator of regional projects of the ANO Institute of Public Design, Ekaterina Grechanyuk,” sent her resume to Khorokhordin’s email with a request to provide “information on a meeting with the company’s management.” Presumably Radchenko motivates: “If the car is guaranteed with a driver, connections can be developed and existing ones can be used, then she needs it.” Already at the beginning of July of the same year, “Grechanyuk” tells in a letter to “Oleg” “about the state of affairs of the property of OJSC Altaienergo in Moscow and signs himself as the “director of the representative office” of the company in the capital.
“Getting rid of” the authorities is another theme of the messages.
In a letter dated December 10, 2009, Radchenko allegedly asks the owner of the Kremlin mail if there is any “new news” on the case of a “well-known (to the recipient) petitioner.” The text of the anonymous author's appeal is attached to the letter. The essence of the request is to “remind the chief prosecutor” that a decision on choosing a preventive measure will soon be made in the criminal case of the petitioner’s brother. “It is not yet known which judge will make the decision... It is known that this will be the judge of the Zheleznodorozhny district of the city of Krasnoyarsk. I have already sent you the names of all the other main persons who will participate in making a decision on this case,” the author addresses his patrons.
Radchenko did not answer Forbes’ questions.
Many officials continue to use administrative influence to resolve various personnel and everyday issues of friends and acquaintances, says Vladimir Yuzhakov, director of the administrative reform department of the Center for Strategic Research. For example, last year the ex-head of the North-West Department of the Federal Fisheries Agency Sergei Muravyov collected bribes worth 18 million rubles for appointment to various positions in the department (his story became public after the initiation of a criminal case). The roots of this practice are from the USSR, then it was succinctly called “blat,” the expert concludes.
The most important of the arts
“When you watch a film, you feel proud of our Armed Forces, of those who fought,” stated Dmitry Medvedev after watching the action film “August. Eighth" during a visit to the new cinema and television complex "Glavkino" on February 23 this year...On the holiday, the president, accompanied by Surkov and Demidov, personally came to evaluate the artistic merits of the patriotic epic, designed to reinforce the “correct” perception of the recent conflict with Georgia among the younger generation.
The presentation of the film for the head of state was carried out by the co-founders of “Russian Hollywood” - the Glavkino group of companies. The complex of the same name was created through the efforts of three prominent figures in the domestic television and film industry: producer Ilya Bachurin, director Fyodor Bondarchuk and general director of Channel One Konstantin Ernst. The total investment in the project is estimated at $300 million. The general contractor is F.S.G. Centrstroy" built a complex with an area of 33,000 sq. m, including the largest in Eastern Europe filming pavilion of more than 3000 sq. m.
Officially, Glavkino is a private project. 50% of the company's shares belong to Bondarchuk, Ernst, Bachurin and Uralsib, 50% to investor Vitaly Golovachev. However, the presidential administration's tight control over the creation of the complex has never been a secret.
The same correspondence gives a clear idea of the true scale of the project’s affiliation with the Kremlin. According to the search query “Glavkino”, more than 40 messages are found in the mailbox attributed to Khorokhordin, mainly authored by Bachurin, in the company holding the post of general director.
The letters are devoted to a variety of issues: from the construction of water supply and sewerage systems for the cinema complex and gasification of premises to the scheme for obtaining loans from VTB and financing the project as a whole: we are talking about “additional” amounts of up to 600 million rubles.
What relationship AP employee Khorokhordin might have had with Glavkino is not stated in the company’s documents, however, judging by the correspondence, it was presumably he who oversaw “Russian Hollywood.”
As it turns out from the correspondence, the fate of the creation of “August” was not easy. Eighth." In mid-August last year, Bachurin forwarded letters from the film’s director, Dzhanik Fayziev, presumably to Demidov.
“Vanya, dear! - the blockbuster director writes in one of his letters. “I am sending you a letter listing our misfortunes.” The director assures that the creators of the patriotic film “didn’t waste a single ruble” and are fighting “for every penny and every meter of film.” However, insurmountable difficulties stood in the way of Fayziev and the team: “according to preliminary estimates, the cost overrun looms within 10-12% of the estimate.”
In the second file attached to the letter, “Demidov” is already referred to as “dear Ivan Ivanovich”, the tone becomes official. The reasons for the overspending are being clarified: the Ministry of Defense detained for 12 days “military transport aircraft, on board which were all the game vehicles and pyrotechnics”; Abkhazia greeted the film crew with a month and a half of weather anomaly in the form of cold and heavy rains; the death of Sergei Bagapsh distracted part of the “rented Abkhaz film” from filming military equipment"; Opposition demonstrations in Tbilisi prompted Moscow to “mobilize Russian military equipment.” All these factors led to a “budget increase.”
Bachurin, forwarding “Dzhanik’s letters” presumably to Khorokhordin, assures: “Everyone understood and knew that we were losing not only days, but also money. Yes, God be with him. Now we need a way out, not a debriefing.”
Glavkino did not answer questions about the connection with Khorokhordin’s project. Forbes was unable to contact Demidov.
In projects like Glavkino, it is almost impossible to draw the line between private and public, says Daniil Dondurei, editor-in-chief of the Art of Cinema magazine. The co-founders of the company have sufficient authority to prove to the authorities their ability to manage the allocated budgets, the expert notes.
Topic for service review
The audience and those involved in this correspondence are actively arguing about the reasons for the publication of “Russian wikileaks” (in contrast to the topic of the authenticity of what was published). It is possible that the publication was carried out for the purpose of a personnel purge initiated by the new deputy head of the presidential administration Vyacheslav Volodin in relation to the personnel of his predecessor, suggests blogger and political strategist Marina Litvinovich.If the authenticity of the letters is proven as part of a criminal investigation, public organizations will be able to appeal to the authorized bodies with a request to initiate an audit of the official’s spending, Ivan Ninenko from Transparency International does not exclude. His organization is now reviewing the correspondence.
The basis for verification, according to the law, is information provided by law enforcement or tax authorities; governing bodies of parties and all-Russian public associations, the Public Chamber and the media. In addition, according to the Anti-Corruption Law, civil servants are required to report to management, the prosecutor's office and law enforcement agencies about attempts to bribe them or otherwise induce them to commit official crimes, and in the opened correspondence there are signs of such an act. Failure to fulfill this obligation threatens officials with dismissal or administrative or criminal liability.
As a result of the scandal, legislative changes could be initiated, the most effective method the fight against corruption schemes - a ban on conflicts of interest, which should include the interests of relatives, and not only relatives, but also friends and acquaintances, Yuzhakov sums up. [...]
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On February 9, the Kommersant publishing house sent a statement to the police to initiate a criminal case against members of the pro-Kremlin youth movement “Nashi” - Kristina Potupchik, Artur Omarov, Roman Verbitsky and others. Kommersant suspected the Nashists of organizing DDoS attacks on the ID website; the suspicion was based on the correspondence of members of the movement published by anonymous hackers.
Department “K,” which investigates cybercrimes, conducted an investigation at the request of “Kommersant” (as a representative of the department called it in a conversation with Forbes, “institutional measures”). The materials were redirected to the department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Sokol district (the response of the “K” department on this matter was on March 5 in the blog of Kommersant General Director Demyan Kudryavtsev).
As part of the investigation, the correspondence itself may receive a legal assessment, says Kudryavtsev.
Hackers hidden behind the Anonymous “brand” are still publishing the opened correspondence; several gigabytes of information have become available - hundreds of letters from about ten regular authors. As members of Anonymous reported in correspondence with journalists, the targets of the hack were Potupchik and her boss, the head of Rosmolodezh Vasily Yakemenko, followed by their correspondents.
Forbes investigated some of the facts of a huge array of letters from one of these: a person identified in the correspondence as Oleg Leonidovich Khorokhordin, who until recently held the post of deputy head of the department of internal policy of the presidential administration (AP). In January, the official went to work in the government, which was confirmed by a White House staff member in an interview with Forbes.
“From his mail we learned that for just one visit to the dentist he can pay almost two million rubles and 90,000 rubles for a bouquet for another fan. It is to this little-known official that they turn with the most humble requests for help in winning tenders for government procurement in the Altai Republic,” Khorokhordin hackers in their “appeal to the people of Russia.”
Khorokhordin, like Potupchik, did not answer the editor’s questions. “I do not comment on slander about myself published on the Internet,” the official answered the question about the authenticity of the correspondence.
Former and current colleagues of Khorokhordin interviewed by Forbes did not refute the authenticity of the authorship.
“I myself took Khorokhordin to work in the mid-2000s,” recalls Mikhail Ostrovsky, a member of the Public Chamber, formerly the head of the department in the internal policy department of the AP. “Quick to learn, precise in execution and able to communicate well with different groups.”
The official’s immediate supervisors in the AP were Ivan Demidov, supervisor of relations with public organizations, Konstantin Kostin, the current head of the internal policy department, the former head of the same department Oleg Govorun, as well as Vladislav Surkov himself, now working as Deputy Prime Minister.
In recent years, Khorokhordin has risen rapidly in the ranks, says Ostrovsky: “This suggests that he enjoyed authority among his superiors.”
Khorokhordin supervised relations with public business associations, trade unions, and later also dealt with issues of party building, says an interlocutor close to the AP. A separate area of responsibility of the official was the Skolkovo project supervised by Surkov.
As the correspondence shows, sometimes the official even treated Skolkovo too responsibly.
$5 billion for elections
“Problems and making friends. for Skolkovo or elections up to $5 billion. I am ready to speak with S. personally on Skype. believes that this is an order from Kazakhstan from the first person” - the user allegedly sent a letter of this content to Khorokhordin on October 13, 2010 (spelling and punctuation of the original have been preserved).
The message may be about the disgraced Kazakh banker Mukhtar Ablyazov: in October 2010, he unsuccessfully fought Russian justice. A few days before this letter, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow authorized the arrest of Ablyazov in absentia.
On the same day, when the letter from presumably Khorokhordin arrived in the mailbox, the official’s regular correspondence partner from the address (read more about her in the chapter “Kremlin Recruitment Agency”) sent the recipient a link to a Wikipedia page describing Ablyazov’s biography.
The banker was part of Nursultan Nazarbayev’s inner circle, then joined the opposition, spent a year in prison, was pardoned by the president and moved to Russia, where he started ambitious development projects.
With the onset of the crisis, Ablyazov’s BTA Bank was nationalized by the Kazakh authorities; during an audit, it turned out that the ex-owner had withdrawn assets worth $10 billion. The situation was similar to the scandal surrounding the Bank of Moscow: after purchasing one of the country’s largest banks, the state accused its former owners of lending to their companies.
In 2010, criminal prosecution of Ablyazov was initiated in Russia. The leaders of his development company Eurasia Logistics were under arrest, the businessman himself fled to London (read more in the article). Ablyazov has repeatedly stated publicly that he considers his case initiated personally by Nazarbayev and his entourage.
The editors of Forbes tried to contact Ablyazov on the very day when the British royal court placed the ex-banker in custody in absentia, and Ablyazov’s assistants did not respond to the editors’ requests.
The banker sought to gain a foothold in Russia after disgrace in his homeland, says Alexey Vlasov, head of the Moscow State University center for studying processes in the post-Soviet space. Among those who could patronize the banker's business in Russia, sources mentioned Luzhkov's elite, but nothing was ever known about his contacts at the federal level.
Who Ablyazov supposedly wanted to meet in the presidential administration is hidden behind the initial “S”. The Skolkovo Foundation and preparations for elections in the Kremlin have traditionally been Surkov’s area of expertise. Judging by the contents of the mailbox, presumably Khorokhordin could also be directly related to Skolkovo: he prepared “lenses” on the personalities of the project, did press reviews, etc.
Once, when Surkov was the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration, the story of a kickback for a meeting with him became public. In February 2011, a Twitter user complained to Dmitry Medvedev: I could not meet with Surkov to present a certain project for resolving conflicts in the Caucasus, because one of the “mediators” demanded $300,000 for this service. The President connected him with the official, in the end everything was limited telephone conversation between Surkov and the author of the complaint: the official, according to the official version, did not agree to the meeting because the blogger refused to name the names of the extortionists.
Surkov himself may have had no idea that one of his subordinates was asking walkers for money for communicating with him, but the clerks definitely took advantage of their position, says a political scientist who worked with the AP. He recalls how an employee of the internal policy department, who was in charge of one of the South Ural regions, demanded €50,000 for a meeting with Surkov.
“The Kremlin’s election black fund is not a myth,” says former State Duma deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov. — Previously, there was a lot of scattered evidence of this; facts of distributing money in one place or another periodically surfaced. The opened correspondence brings everything into the system and serves as confirmation of the existence of such a cash register.”
Surkov said through his representative that he would not answer questions from the editors.
“If the deal goes through, 10% of the money received—yours"
A prominent representative of large business, former co-owner of Wimm-Bill-Dann (WBD) David Yakobashvili, is mentioned in the official’s correspondence as the owner of a mailbox. In a letter dated October 9, 2009, the sender sent a letter to the post office, presumably Khorokhordin, with a file “Commercial proposal”. The author promises the recipient the following form of “gratitude”: “If you negotiate with Yakobashvili on my issue, and if the deal with him goes through, 10% of the money I receive is yours.” The author calls himself "Edward".
The essence of Yakobashvili’s proposal is the construction of a dairy complex in the Altai Territory worth 100-120 million rubles (10% of the deal - 10-12 million) signed by the director of the Barnaul group of companies “Standard” Eduard Dzhamgaryan.
Yakobashvili, in an interview with Forbes, said that Khorokhordin once called him - but at the end of 2010 and for a different reason: he asked to provide financial support to a charitable foundation under the Russian Orthodox Church. Having learned that the WBD was already providing such support, the official said goodbye, Yakobashvili recalls. The businessman does not remember when and how he met the AP official, and he has never heard proposals about Altai business from anyone.
Dzhamgaryan did not answer questions about contacts with Khorokhordin.
Altai business often asked the AP official for dubious help. In a letter dated August 20, 2009, the owner of the box addresses “without further ado, straight to the point”: “Next week the Altaienergo tender will be announced... I am interested in winning this tender. If you have the opportunity, help, on your terms.” The author signs himself “Andrey”. Andrey Uporov is registered at the address on the “My World” social network. This is also the name of the former director and co-founder of Altaielectrotechkomplekt LLC. The letter refers to “electricity meters, transformers and switchboard equipment.”
On February 6, 2007, Altaienergo was mentioned by the owner of the mailbox in a letter to Khorokhordin. The author does not sign his name, but in other messages from the same address he identifies himself as Alexei Ostroukhov (that was the name of the former head of the company’s equity sector). The essence of his proposal to the official: the purchase of a stake in the energy company. “My proposal is that I buy at par (you cover this deal from inspections for three years), give the difference minus 13% of the Barnaul price, the rest for myself for the idea, or we spend 4,400,000 rubles each, the rest is higher than the cost between us, minus 13 %, but I’m more for the idea,” the author writes, at the end expressing hope for the “decency” of the recipient.
Ostroukhov’s name was mentioned several times in connection with Altaienergo. His other letters to the revealed address concern proposals to purchase a 25% stake in the Mongolian coal company Shiiriz Stone HKhK, the Barnaul-based LLC NPK Logocomposite and other “business” issues. Moreover, in 2009, messages came from the address - the corporate mail of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation.
Ostroukhov worked at the Public Chamber (PC) from July 2008 to August 2009, having arrived on “someone’s high recommendation,” a representative of the OP recalls (how meeting Khorokhordin helped get a job - see the chapter “Kremlin Recruitment Agency”).
The press service of Altaienergo was unable to answer Forbes’ questions: the name Khorokhordin was unfamiliar to the company representative. Restrictions on conducting commercial activities do not apply to employees of the OP; they are not civil servants, says the head of the chamber’s press service, Marina Ryklina.
The practice of entrepreneurs turning to AP employees with a request to resolve business issues existed, recalls Vice President of Business Russia Anton Danilov-Danilyan, who headed the Kremlin’s economic department until 2004. They contacted us all the time, and not only the oligarchs, he says, but according to the regulations, officials were supposed to forward all written requests to the government.
The participation of officials in resolving business issues for a “kickback” is a common practice, explains the chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, Kirill Kabanov: officials may refuse applicants, but the psychology of corruption is such that everyone believes that officials can “help.”
From Altai to Solyanka
As the investigation showed, the Kremlin hacker’s victim could arrange not only other people’s affairs: he himself was a businessman...
