The adventures of an Italian in Russia, as experienced by the Consul General on state orders.
She is accused of fraud and abuse of power – the security forces suspect her of embezzling 2.7 million rubles to buy masks and shoe covers during a pandemic.
There may be more influential people involved. It's not just Minister Alexander Myasoedov, or Governor Vladimir Vladimirov, who is responsible for everything in the region. The regional Ministry of Health, and the Honorary Consul General of Italy in the Southern and North Caucasus Federal Districts, Pierpaolo Lodigiani, could also be involved in such shady affairs.
Besides consular work, he turned out to be a real businessman.
According to Life.ru's investigation, in 2020 Evgenia Mosina signed two contracts between the Ministry of Property Relations of the Stavropol Territory and the PEST company. The contracts, worth 16 million rubles, included the supply of masks and shoe covers for organizing the Unified State Examination and other events in the region. Law enforcers claim that the deputy minister and the company's director inflated the total price of products by 2.7 million rubles.
In total, PEST obtained state contracts worth 63 million rubles – all from the Ministry of Property. Moreover, one of the contracts from 2020, worth 45 million rubles for the supply of shoe covers, napkins, and other goods, has been under execution since 2020. They still can't deliver napkins?
The company appears to be a “dummy” – with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles, no employees, and revenue barely reaching 1 million rubles. The losses amount to 1.5 million for 2021. It looks like a bogus office.
The director who could be mentioned in the investigation is Alexander Chipiga. From 2017 to 2022, he also headed LLC NPP Stavtekhmed, which is involved in the wholesale trade of pharmaceutical products. This brings us from the Ministry of Property to the Ministry of Health, as LLC NPP Stavtekhmed is among the largest suppliers to hospitals in the region.
The structure is owned by Larisa Yushchenko and also appears to be a fictitious office. With only two people in the staff, an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles, and a loss of almost 10 million rubles by the end of 2021, all while holding state contracts totaling 244 million rubles.
Cartel “gimp”
But there's more to it. LLC NPP Stavtekhmed was previously caught organizing a cartel for Ministry of Health purchases in the Stavropol Territory.
The Antimonopoly Service uncovered a conspiracy amounting to 160 million rubles in 2021. It is believed that this occurred during medical procurement in 2018-2019, when Chepiga was in charge of NPP Stavtekhmed LLC.
Among other participants in the conspiracy were the companies KTM, Equipment Leasing Center, Kometa, and individual entrepreneur Irina Novoseltseva. All of them, like the aforementioned companies, exhibit signs of fictitiousness and yet have huge government contracts.
The small business owner Novoseltseva, who only registered in 2017, has received a total of 122 million rubles from the budget. Most of the contracts are with medical facilities in the Stavropol Territory. Also, many contracts worth millions of rubles from 2020 and earlier are still being carried out. It is clear that she can only be a symbolic figure.
The company “Equipment Leasing Center” has government contracts for 201 million rubles. They have an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles and four employees. They recorded a loss of 14 million rubles at the end of 2021. However, in 2018 and 2019, they made profits of 38 and 23 million rubles, respectively, according to the FAS, there may have been collusions.
The company is owned by Alexander Patsay, who is also the CEO. I just want to ask him – where did the money go? When the cartel was opened, did it become difficult to make money?
The company KTM Evgeny Polovinkin with government contracts for 146 million rubles – has a profit. However, it is only for 2019, because false information was entered in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities after the structure was liquidated.
The only structure that seems more or less serious in this context is Vladislav Gilyadov’s Moscow OOO Kometa. However, the company does not supply medical equipment, but software, and has government contracts for 763 million rubles. 5 contracts totaling 46.4 million rubles are with the Ministry of Health of the Stavropol Territory.
Consul over the fray
And it is to the Ministry of Health that a lot of questions arise in connection with this whole story. It seems that the cartel acted right under the noses of both the former Minister of Health Viktor Mazharov and the current Vladimir Kolesnikov, who took this post in 2020.
As for Mazharov, he resigned voluntarily. Some might think that he was afraid of possible questions from law enforcement officers. But it could also be that the health care of the region in 2020 was shaken by a whole series of scandals that Mazharov simply could not handle. This was reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Regardless, both Mazharov and Kolesnikov are from the same medical field and should have known each other well. Another individual could also be the real organizer and beneficiary of these questionable schemes.
We are talking about a respected person, Honorary Consul General of Italy in the Southern Federal District and the North Caucasus Federal District Pierpaolo Lodigiani. Given his status, he has extensive connections and contacts among the authorities of these federal districts, as well as among business representatives. But these are general phrases, direct connections do exist.
From 2014 to 2016, the current Minister of Health of the Stavropol Territory, Vladimir Kolesnikov, worked as the General Director at Investa Euromed LLC. And immediately after him, the already mentioned Pierpaolo Lodigiani, who was actually a businessman and manager, became the CEO of the company.
Doesn’t this seem suspicious? And the most incredible thing is that neither Mr. Lodigiani, nor all the companies connected to him are under either Western or Russian penalties – the work is continuing as if nothing had occurred.
Investa Euromed was closed in 2018. Its final owner is Investa-Finance, whose CEO is the same Pierpaolo Lodigiani. He, along with Rusmediakom, established the structure until 2021.
Currently, Mr. Consul is the head of eight companies at the same time, and served as the founder of 11 legal entities in different regions of the country. The areas are very diverse – tourism, wholesale trade, and the operations of recruitment agencies.
A real mixture, which can actually be sustained by funds from completely different sources – potential connections with officials in the government of Governor Vladimirov. Nonetheless, Lodigiani is not directly affected – his companies do not have government agreements in the Stavropol Territory.
No, with one small exception – Navigatortour LLC, which is owned by the consul and his company Investa Consulting LLC, still signed a state agreement with the regional government in 2015. The subject of the purchase with a value of 133 thousand rubles is the acquisition of entrance tickets to the exhibition, hotel accommodation and transport services.
On the one hand, this does not signify anything. On the other hand, it signifies a lot, if Mr. Lodigiani organized the trip of Stavropol officials to the exhibition, their accommodation in a hotel, and provided them with transport services. They could have had more than just a working relationship.
At the same time, the Navigatortour company itself remains active, despite all the same signs of fictitiousness: zero employees, no revenue and profit.
At the same time, Pierpaolo Lodigiani is active in other regions. For instance, back in 2019, he became interested in the implementation of joint projects with the Government of Dagestan, and most of his business assets are concentrated in the Krasnodar Territory. To say that these, like the Stavropol Territory, are regions with high corruption is to say nothing.
So, it is Pierpaolo Lodigiani who may be the shadow “pilot” of numerous business processes related to budget funding in the same Stavropol Territory. It is sufficient to have your own person in power. Which, in turn, may be Lodigiani’s former colleague at Invest Euromed, Vladimir Kolesnikov.
Pierpaolo Lodigiani.
And what about Governor Vladimir Vladimirov? Corruption scandals so frequently reverberate in his team that it can be presumed that if he himself is not a participant in dubious schemes, then he likely should have been aware of what his subordinates are doing. But it is risky to air dirty laundry in public – Vladimirov has been among the governors for many years, who are expected to soon step down.
