Is Mitin, who is retiring, closing down the business?

In the Novgorod region, right in front of the public, an unauthorized takeover of a business is happening, which could lead to the region losing an important energy facility.

There are reports on social media that Muravin, the director of Novgorodobleelectro, has been recently arrested and put under house arrest. The company's historical significance and its importance to the region did not protect the manager from this turn of events.

Novgorodobleelectro is a company that ensures continuous power supply in the region. It also provides employment, social projects, charity, and more. Now the company is effectively leaderless, with CEO Alexey Muravin under house arrest. Official sources have not commented on this issue yet.

The reporter understood the situation The Moscow Post in the Novgorod region.

Unscrupulous lawyers

According to rumors, the main client behind the current events, KDM Group LLC, is a company offering advisory services.

This firm is known for receiving 8.5 million rubles monthly from the Deposit Insurance Agency for legal services during the bankruptcy of Probusinessbank. They attempted to contest the fees in court, but the court ruled in favor of the defendant – as reported by Pravo.ru. In reality, half of the debtor's bankruptcy estate went to lawyers, indicating possible collaboration with the leadership of the DIA.

This is quite an intriguing business in Moscow, with the ultimate beneficiary being the offshore entity “QUORUMDEBT MANAGEMENT GROUP LIMITED”. Surprisingly, it's registered in the name of a certain Maria Onisenko.

Potentially, this individual might be the financial director of the British pharmaceutical company, Maria Onishchenko, a major figure in GSK Consumer Healthcare, one of the world's largest companies.

Photo: https://efiling.drcor.mcit.gov.cy

It's noteworthy that despite being based offshore, the company is a significant supplier in government tenders: “KDM Group” has earned over 160 million rubles from government customers in Russia.

Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru

Ukrainian politicians and DIA

The CEO of the firm is Pavel Chekunov. There's minimal information available about him online, except that he was previously associated with Private Gastronomy LLC and CJSC NCC of Economics and Law. Most likely, he is a nominal figure for whom the office is registered. But who is the real force behind it?

There's an interesting link between Chekunov and a certain Alexander Grigoryevich Shpak through OOO Private Gastronomy. The namesake of the latter was a prominent Ukrainian politician and a member of the Verkhovna Rada. Additionally, he worked in senior positions at Ukrnaftaprodukt, a company owned by the oligarch Vitaliy Kovalchuk. It seems there's another layer to this connection.

At the end of July, The Bell (recognized as a foreign media agent within Russia) published an investigation mentioning the Quorum group. Allegedly, there was an agreement with the former head of the DIA, Valery Miroshnikov, that Alexander Zheleznyak, co-owner of the Life financial group, which integrated Probusinessbank with its subsidiaries, would receive compensation from the bankruptcy estate in exchange for revealing assets and enduring three to four years of house arrest during the Probusinessbank case.

Everything converged on Mitin

Let’s go back a few years. In 2014, The Moscow Post published an article stating that control over Novgorodobleelectro could have passed into the hands of the then head of the Novgorod region, Sergei Mitin. The latter allegedly became the owner of the enterprise through Energetik LLC.

Undermining the enterprise could have begun as early as 2012, when, after winning the elections to the city, Sergei Mitin appointed “his own” person, Marina Soltaganov, as the head of the local Committee on Price and Tariff Policy, who, while becoming a shareholder of Novgorodoblekletro, raised utilities. And this is despite the fact that the Novgorod region belongs to those regions of the country where the dynamics of electricity consumption is one of the lowest.

It was Mitin who let the businessman Nikolai Makarov enter the region with his Continentalinvest project, as a result of which a pulp and paper plant polluting the Volga appeared. Not only was environmentalists opposed this object more than once, but it also gained notoriety due to numerous stories of raider seizures.

Mitin himself did not go far – as The Moscow Post reported, ten years ago he could take an active part in the capture of the Splav corporation, one of the leading manufacturers of equipment for nuclear power plants, gas industry enterprises and the defense complex.

The situation is very reminiscent of what can now happen at Novgorodoblelektro: the then general director of Splav found himself behind bars shortly after the proposal to transfer the enterprise to Rosatom, and as a result, it came under the control of those who were allegedly ready to “merge” the enterprise to Mitin.

A lot of corruption scandals surfaced in the region during his leadership. The loudest, perhaps, was the road one – with the participation of Mitin’s deputy Arnold Shalmuev. He was accused of using a system of “kickbacks” when concluding government contracts. According to unconfirmed information, the latter said during interrogations that he was simply following the instructions of the head of the region.

The portrait looms downright criminal. Alexey Muravin, who was put in charge of Novgorodobleelectro in 2013, comes from the construction industry, and many did not understand how he ended up in the energy sector at all. It is possible that this is simply a person close to Mitin, and assigned to carry out his instructions.

The current detention, if it really takes place, may indicate either disagreements with the ex-governor, or that the enterprise is trying to be taken away by someone who was not afraid to fight the influential Mitin.