A developer close to the mayor of Novy Urengoy left people without apartments, and the city without social facilities. State money was cashed out and “taken out in packages”
The Municipal Economy Department refused to work with SeverStroyService. According to the Unified Register of Developers, the second largest company in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, in terms of the number of housing being built, failed to complete the construction of a large residential complex in Novy Urengoy in four years. Shareholders of the Happiness Residential Complex fear that they may find themselves in the status of deceived, since SeverStroyService has already been at the center of scandals with the timing and quality of work.
After the mayor’s office of the city could not get a warranty repair of an apartment building, in which people were moved from dilapidated barracks, the head of the city, Andrei Voronov, said that he feared for the fate of “Happiness”. At the same time, participants in the construction market talk about close cooperation between the official and the management of the developer. The companies helped with raising loans to complete the construction of houses, handed over numerous municipal contracts, and even forgave shortcomings in the creation of social facilities. Today the situation has worsened. Due to problems with the quality and timing of the work, even the Municipal Administration of the city terminated one of the last contracts with this contractor. True, market participants do not exclude that SeverStroyService may be led to bankruptcy in order to hide the “financial schemes” that were previously turned. Amirkhan Tsulaev even registered a company that entered the construction site of a new residential complex, the design and preparation of documents for which was carried out by SeverStroyService.
In the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, hundreds of families could not get their apartments in the residential complex “Happiness” at 31A Sibirskaya Street in Novy Urengoy. The nine-story, eight-entrance building with 348 apartments was started by the specialized developer SeverStroyService back in 2018. They promised to put the housing into operation no later than the fourth quarter of 2022, and even the external insulation and finishing of the apartment building has not been completed yet.LCD “Happiness”
“The delivery of the house is planned for April this year. The builders are working, there are few apartments left for sale,” the developer’s sales department said. At the same time, a wider time lag for completion of construction is stated on the LCD website – the second quarter of 2023.
It is worth recalling that back in 2021, after the scandal with the refusal of SeverStroyService to carry out warranty repairs in a high-rise building on Yuzhnaya Street, 52a, built for migrants from dilapidated and dilapidated housing, residents talked about a certain “special status in Novy Urengoy”, which has a construction a company owned by Amerkhan Tsulaev. Deputy of the Tyumen Regional Duma Ivan Vershinin described the meeting with the developer as follows: “Instead of an adequate dialogue, the representative of SeverStroyService was frankly rude to the residents, interrupted, behaved aggressively and defiantly. One gets the impression that he is sure of his 100% impunity.”
After politicians and public figures got involved, the city's leader, Andrey Voronov, started talking about the construction quality issues and initiated a lawsuit for warranty repairs. He also expressed concerns about meeting the deadlines for completing the Happiness residential complex. However, the city continued to make new contracts with the company, including appointing them to renovate the hospital complex at Geologists, 7 (costing 125 million rubles) in July 2021.
Apart from problems with housing construction, the company is facing difficulties in fulfilling government contracts. For instance, by the end of last year, SeverStroyService promised to complete the renovation of the Polar Owl IDC building in Novy Urengoy for 217 million rubles, to be turned into the Art Residence Center for Creative Spaces and Creative Development of Youth. According to the State Procurement portal, the Municipal Economy Department accepted work worth 99 million rubles from the contractor.
Meanwhile, the director of MKU, Elmar Gadzhiev, told Pravda UrFO that the company had only completed less than 30 percent of the planned work. In January, they terminated the contract and are now looking for a new contractor due to dissatisfaction with the pace and quality of work. The source could not provide information on the fate of other social construction projects commissioned by district government agencies.
A source in the political circles of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug mentioned that many successful government contracts in Novy Urengoy coincided with the periods when Andrei Voronov held positions in the city administration and as deputy governor. He also expressed concerns about the quality of built real estate. Additionally, Mr. Voronov stated that he would discuss lending to the organization with banks to complete the construction of the house.
Since 2012, the company has received over a billion rubles in orders from the municipal structures of the YaNAO. It also constructed housing for migrants under a contract with YNAO FZhS. In the past, the company was convicted of serious financial fraud involving budgetary funds by security officials and the Federal Tax Service.
SeverStroyService was found guilty of tax evasion and was required to pay tens of millions of rubles to the budget. The company tried to appeal the decision in the Arbitration Court of the YNAO, but only managed to cancel part of the penalties.
The tax authorities verified that funds were taken out through the company Arkada, which was supposed to do construction work at the site “Engineering support for the building site on the street. Tundra town Novy Urengoy.
Yekaterinburg Stroykolorit LLC was supposed to build networks for 169 million rubles, but the work was actually done by subcontractors, including SK Arkada LLC, which received 45 million rubles for work at a budget construction site.
The cash flow on the account of IC Arkada LLC indicates that the account was used to move funds using organizations with signs of “one-day firms”, after which the same individuals withdrew funds, according to arbitration materials.
The security forces and the Federal Tax Service found two people who, through front companies, received money from banks. They turned out to be Sergei Zorin and Igor Vargich. Zorin said he provided cash withdrawal services for 5 thousand rubles a month and transferred money to people whose full names he did not know.
Igor Vargich, a courier at TrustM LLC, withdrew cash under a power of attorney and handed it over to unknown people at the post of Gazprom in Novy Urengoy. The transfer was carried out in UAZ 89 cars.
Transactions to the accounts of IC Arkada were fake, and SeverStroyService had to pay taxes and penalties for tax crimes. The fate of the budget funds has not been established, but there is talk of bankruptcy of the developer and the transfer of Tsulaev’s assets to a new legal entity.
