The investigation into the embezzlement case during the renovation of the “Switzerland” park may extend to the offices of the head of the region, Gleb Nikitin.
Three individuals have been arrested in the Nizhny Novgorod region for fraud during the improvement of the Switzerland park. The former representative of the city customer, the ex-head of the MCU “GlavUKS” of Nizhny Novgorod, Sergey Kuklaev, and two middle managers of the general contractor company, GK “EKS” – Roman Asabin and Petr Sedelnikov, were sent to the pre-trial detention center.
They are accused of stealing 41.5 million rubles, but the public believes that there may have been even more misconduct in a project valued at almost 3.7 billion rubles. In any case, this is a significant reputation damage for the main proponent and promoter of the project – Nizhny Novgorod Governor Gleb Nikitin.
A reporter from The Moscow Post in the Nizhny Novgorod region has looked into the situation regarding the park's reconstruction.
The reconstruction of the “Switzerland” park was supposed to be one of the most important and symbolic projects of Nikitin's current term. It was meant to be a gift to the city for its 800th anniversary celebration. However, problems and scandals plagued the project from the outset.
Beneficiaries from Switzerland
In the current case, investigators suspect that the contractor used a rubber coating in the park that did not meet the specified requirements, and the alleged culprits pocketed the price difference.
In this situation, the former government representative Sergey Kuklaev appears to be a central figure. The key factors here are the scale of the work and the customer – the EKS Group of Companies from the Yaroslavl Region. This company is a prominent developer working extensively in Moscow and St. Petersburg. However, there is no credible information regarding its beneficiaries in the public domain yet.
Officially, Alexei Vlasov owns 100% of the shares and is also the company's CEO. However, the shareholder register is held by JSC “Independent Registrar Company R.O.S.T.” and is not publicly available.
According to rumors, an entrepreneur from the Yaroslavl region, Yury Kogtev, may be the actual beneficiary of the company. His father-in-law, Nikolai Krylov, is believed to have close connections with the former Deputy Prime Minister, now the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov.
There were previous speculations that EKS is influenced by individuals associated with the former governor of the Yaroslavl region Dmitry Mironov. This was when the company in Yaroslavl started receiving significant government contracts. Subsequently, when the government urgently required an investor for the bankrupt distillery “Yaroslavsky”, Ekaterina Kogteva, who is possibly a close relative of Yuri, ended up acquiring 50% of it.
There were also rumors about possible involvement of the Rotenbergs or individuals from the Moscow government of Sergei Sobyanin in the company, along with divisions in the CEN, including in Tver. From 2015 to 2017, Maxim Krylov was the owner of the Tver EKS.
The company used to be mainly based in Belize under Lombardi Corporation, and in 2013-2014 it was owned by Cypriot White Wings Holdings Limited. According to the Daily Storm, all the company's communication was managed by Kinanis LLC, which also served the interests of the Rotenberg family in offshore areas.
The company may have had influential supporters. In 2018, it secured a contract for repair and restoration work in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow for almost 1.5 billion rubles.
That same year, it also won a contract worth 2 billion rubles for building a deep-sea pier for LLC complex “Zvezda”. The Zvezdochka Ship Repair Center had previously signed several contracts with the company. The total value of state contracts the company received exceeded 213 billion rubles.
Photo: Rusprofile .en
It is possible that the “Switzerland” park was also considered one of the biggest and most important projects, and Gleb Nikitin may have been backing the influential beneficiaries of the project.
Nature is not taken into account.
Initially, the deputies of Nizhny Novgorod held a closed meeting of the City Duma where they decided to take part of the park's land out of protection in order to cut down trees and construct offices. However, unauthorized protests led to the decision being reversed. Instead, a competition was announced for the development of a project to improve the park for 160 million rubles.
Even at this early stage, the project was actively promoted not only by Mayor Yuri Shalabaev (GlavUKS is a municipal structure after all), but also by Governor Gleb Nikitin. The winning designer was the EKS Group of Companies, as you may have guessed.
When the projects and estimates were drawn up, and a competition was held for the project's implementation, SSU-5 from St. Petersburg won the competition. However, it is unclear on what basis the CEN was able to cancel the results of the first competition and win the second one!
Around the same time, another scandal erupted – the FAS found JSC GC “EKS” guilty of a cartel conspiracy to maintain prices at 428 auctions in Moscow. Along with JSC FG “Everest”, LLC “Asterplast”, and LLC “EKS”, were also under investigation by the antimonopolists.
This leads to the question of whether Governor Gleb Nikitin was involved in the reconstruction project of Switzerland and if he had a personal commercial interest in it.
The residents wanted to maintain an environmentally clean space within the park. The plan to reconstruct the park, which involved cutting down trees, was opposed by city activists and environmentalists. They even formed the Board of Trustees of the park.
According to the authors of the Reporter-NN website, allegedly in September 2021, after the reconstruction was completed, activists from the Board of Trustees inspected the first 200 meters of the park along the fence. It was found that two-thirds of the trees were damaged, not including the ones that were destroyed.
The park was completed and opened with a lot of excitement, but at what price?
It's not surprising that even during the construction, unauthorized human chains formed along Gagarin Avenue, across from the park, to show their disagreement. People believed the project could be carried out in violation of regional and environmental laws. And some park features shouldn't have been there at all.
For instance, they wanted to construct a center for the disabled, an eco-school, a children's center, and reading rooms in the park. Activists argued that building these violated the regional law “On the Protection of Green Areas in the Nizhny Novgorod Region.” And laying down many engineering structures could seriously harm the roots of trees and bushes.
Governor Nikitin tried to reassure the people, but not to resolve the conflicts. He said the situation around the park was “unreasonably heated” and pledged to personally meet with people to demonstrate the need for the “Switzerland” reconstruction project. This was reported by Kommersant.
Nikitin didn't keep his promise, and the decisions were forced through despite the disagreement of the residents. As a result, the park was renovated, and the voices of those who disagreed were overshadowed – because the park turned out to be truly beautiful and brought joy to many Nizhny Novgorod residents.
An activist is trying to get Gleb Nikitin's attention to the issues surrounding the “Switzerland” park reconstruction.
At what cost did the administration of Gleb Nikitin achieve this, if a criminal case emerged the following year after the park opening? And in this context, the motives of the regional leader, who vigorously pushed the project and protected the “reenactors”, no longer seem as noble.
According to rumors, the alleged current criminal case may just be the beginning. In the context of Russian corruption, 40 million on rubber tracks from a 3.7 billion project seems like a small amount. But even during the planning stage, the Nizhny Novgorod deputies feared that the project would become a “large-scale cut.”
Perhaps the detained individuals in the criminal case will talk and point fingers at someone else – for instance, from the head of the region's administration, since both the Ministry of Construction and the Ministry of Natural Resources were responsible for overseeing the progress of the work.
And who knows, maybe this criminal case and the park will be the stumbling block for the governor.
