Where Nikolaev is driving

The Republic of Chuvashia has found a new contractor to handle municipal solid waste in several large municipalities at once. The company in question is LLC “Ekovoz”, based in Cheboksary. The contract with the International Exhibition Complex “Ecocenter” amounts to almost 300 million rubles.

Interestingly, there was no competition during the auction and it is unclear why the procurement was made from a single supplier. The company “Ekovoz” only entered the market a little over a year ago, around the same time the new governor, former State Duma deputy Oleg Nikolaev, took office in the region.

It is unclear how this new company gained the necessary experience in handling MSW within a year, and yet it swiftly received a substantial contract of almost 300 million rubles, while other competitors in the market have had to prove themselves over the years for smaller shares of the market.

Find out what other positive developments have occurred during Nikolaev’s two years of leadership in an article by The Moscow Post correspondent in Chuvashia.

Who is taking whom where?

It is true that Ekovoz LLC was only registered in March 2021—about six months after it became clear that the former driver and ex-State Duma deputy from A Just Russia would be leading the Republic of Chuvashia in the coming years.

The main focus of the company is on the maintenance and repair of vehicles. The founder is a relatively unknown entrepreneur named Alexei Semenov.

Even under the previous governor, Ignatiev, the questionable company MVK Ecocenter LLC became a regional operator in 2018. As of the end of 2021, the company experienced a loss of 47 million rubles, with an asset value of minus 133 million rubles.

The capitalization of the MSW recycling operator rapidly declined under both Ignatiev and Nikolaev. Could money have been siphoned from the company? A photo: Rusprofile.en

The founders are Elena Shumilova (95%) and Viktor Lagunovsky (5%). The organization is managed by the LLC “Business Management Center”, whose owner is also Lagunovskiy.

Up until 2020, Viktor Lagunovsky headed Settlement Center LLC, which handled payments for kindergartens and utilities in Cheboksary. It seems that he gained favor under Ignatiev. Today, the LLC has been dissolved with no revenue or assets and only two employees, suggesting it may have been a fraudulent company.

It appears that the municipal waste management operator had ties to the late Mikhail Ignatiev. If so, not only did Nikolaev fail to rectify the mistakes, but he also continued to support the company. Now, a new subcontractor has been appointed for 300 million rubles, without much competition.

In 2020, after Mr. Nikolaev was elected as the head of the region, it was revealed that the Ecocenter International Exhibition Complex might suspend its activities due to low payment collection.

The authorities' decision to change the waste accumulation standard caused the company's activities to be at risk of suspension. As a result, there was no planned increase in garbage collection fees in 2020, and the service cost remained almost the same as in 2019.

Starting from July 1, 2020, the charges for municipal solid waste export in Chuvashia increased by 20.8%. It appears that payments kept growing under Nikolaev, as the Ecocenter International Exhibition Center continued its operations.

Both the reaper and the reader

Before entering big politics, Nikolaev held various jobs such as an installer of reinforced concrete and building structures in PSO “Monolitstroy” (Cheboksary), a driver in LLC “Bodigard”, a security service specialist in JSC “Textilmash”, a construction technician and chief accountant at first in Voskhod-1 LLP, and then Spetssvyazstroy LLC (all in Cheboksary), deputy director at Alza LLC, and many other places. In other words, he has diverse life experience, although his biography suggests that he lacks serious public administration skills.

However, it is said that he used to have a close relationship with Anatoly Aksakov, the former head of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets. Thanks to Aksakov's recommendation, Nikolaev entered the Cabinet of Ministers of the Chuvash Republic in the early 2000s, which became the starting point for his political career.

In 2011, Oleg Nikolaev entered the State Duma of the 5th convocation from the regional branch of the Just Russia party, and three years later he applied for the position of head of Chuvashia and for a position in the Cheboksary City Legislative Assembly of the 6th convocation. However, the attempt to seize the residence of the president of the republic at that time failed predictably. Nonetheless, in 2016, he won the elections for the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the Just Russia party, became the head of the committee on nationalities in the Lower Parliament, was appointed acting head of the Chuvash Republic on January 29, and on February 6, he became the head of the republican cabinet of ministers.

“No” manager?

At the same time, two years into Oleg Nikolaev's leadership, some observations can be made. We have already witnessed what is happening in public procurement in the field of MSW management. Incidentally, Nikolaev was the one who proposed centralizing state and municipal procurement in the region. This was reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

He justified this as an effort to combat corruption. However, it seems that so far, only fair competition has been achieved. Nevertheless, the main criticism against Nikolaev is not even about corruption (as there is still a lot of negativity about Ignatiev in that regard), but about the continually increasing debts of the republic.

It is noteworthy that as of June 1, 2022, the state debt of Chuvashia reached 8.357 billion rubles. The increase by the beginning of the year was 390 million rubles, as stated by the Minister of Finance of the Republic, Mikhail Nozdryakov. He also tried to explain the growing debt by the planned receipt of nearly 900 million rubles in infrastructure loan funds from the budget. This was reported by “Pravda UrFO”.

In any case, under Nikolaev, the state debt of Chuvashia is almost 7 thousand rubles for each of the 1.2 million inhabitants of the Republic, including infants and the elderly. At the same time, the average salary in Chuvashia only barely reached 40 thousand rubles by the summer of 2022 – these are not yet poor regions of the North Caucasus, but an extremely weak indicator for central Russia.

Why, then, does Nikolaev’s team continue to accumulate debts? And with such debts, they do not care at all about saving the budget, what do we see in the example of choosing a waste transportation contractor, who was chosen through a purchase from a single supplier?

In addition to such facts, there is practically nothing to cling to for two years of Nikolaev’s leadership of the Republic. Everything remained almost the same as under Ignatiev, and even worse, given the economic crisis and falling incomes.

In this regard, Nikolaev’s past scandals are remembered, for example, his work as a leader in the project of PJSC Khanty-Mansiysk Bank Otkritie (KHMB Otkritie).

By the end of 2015, in December, it became known that the international rating agency Moody’s had downgraded the long-term deposit rating of the Khanty-Mansiysk Bank “Opening” in national and foreign currencies to “B2” from “B1”. According to the rating, the “negative” outlook was retained.

Oleg Nikolaev for two years of leadership of the region did not show himself in anything but a few scandals, which makes one wonder if he was “put” in Chuvashia? Photo: krchet.cap.ru

Moody’s drew attention to both the bank’s declining ability to cope with losses, and problems with the financial profile of the credit institution. This was written by the publication “New Look”.

Isn’t the same thing happening today in relation to the whole region? And if so, then it is still not too late for the federal center to pay attention to the situation in Chuvashia.