Director General of the Federal Energy Service Company subordinated to the Ministry of Energy (FGUP FESCO) Nikolai Myagkikh was detained in Moscow during a joint operation between the Moscow police and the FSB. He is suspected of involvement in a major fraud.
According to the preliminary version, heading one of the most important federal state unitary enterprises of the ministry, the range of tasks of which is very wide, Nikolai Myagkikh was involved in a rather trivial scheme for the sale of cars of the departmental fleet. With the help of a fictitious assessment, the cost of cars was underestimated by 90%, but they were sold at a real price. At the same time, it is not ruled out that the remaining 10% was not returned to the treasury of the enterprise. The damage caused so far is estimated at approximately 80 million rubles, despite the fact that at the moment only a short period of work of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise has been verified. Investigators intend to ask the court to arrest Nikolai Myagkikh, who denies his guilt.
According to Kommersant’s sources, Nikolai Myagkikh was detained by operatives of the Economic Security Service of the FSB, the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and investigators from the Department of Internal Affairs of the SAO of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow on Thursday morning upon arrival from Perm at the capital’s Domodedovo airport. He was immediately sent for interrogation as a suspect in the framework of a criminal case on especially large-scale fraud (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) previously initiated in the department for the investigation of organized criminal activity. At the same time, teams of detectives carried out searches, seizures of documents, interrogations of witnesses, etc. in other cities – Perm, Samara and Saratov. In the first of them, whose native is Nikolai Myagkikh, he, according to some sources, actually lived permanently, and rarely came to the head office of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise on Leningradsky Prospekt in Moscow, preferring to manage the enterprise remotely from his small homeland or from one of the many regional branches FESCO. In Samara, searches were carried out in the office of Otsenka LLC, which specializes in intermediary services for property valuation, as well as in the places of residence of its employees. Two employees of the firm – some Popova and Bykova – refused to testify during interrogation, according to Kommersant, using Art. 51 of the Constitution. In the meantime, all documentation related to FESCO, mobile phones, computers, etc., were confiscated from apartments and offices. car sales.
Everything seized should become material evidence in the materials of the investigation, which has been ongoing since October last year on the basis of the operational developments of the employees of the SEB FSB. Initially, it was said that some “unidentified persons” from among the leadership of FESCO set up a criminal business for the sale of departmental cars, deceiving and misleading officials of the Ministry of Energy.
The plan itself was very simple. According to counterintelligence officers and investigators, Samara appraisers from the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Ministry of Energy received false reports about the need to repair 108 vehicles belonging to FESCO between January 2018 and mid-2019. The documents came from 26 regions of Russia, but the information about the need for repair or scrapping of the cars was only created in one place, the metropolitan car service LLC Primeavto-M. However, the Samara “Assessment” representatives didn't care and reduced the cost of the cars by 90%.
The FSUE cars were then sold by its leadership to “an indefinite circle of people” at the new price, and according to the detectives, the money went into the pockets of swindlers from FESCO.
During the investigation, it was found that the assessment in Samara was done only on paper without inspecting the cars, the capital’s car service had no branches in the regions, and the documentation, including the false reports, seemed inaccurate. The Ministry of Energy stated that the technical inspection reports didn't reflect the real condition of the vehicles and cannot be trusted. It is also being investigated whether the remaining 10% of the car costs were not deposited into FSUE's Sberbank accounts. The estimated damage to the enterprise is about 80 million rubles, but this is preliminary because the verification measures have only covered a year and a half of FESCO’s activities. Nikolai Myagkikh has been in charge of the company since February 2017, despite being listed as the CEO. The new checks will affect other periods and aspects of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise's financial and economic activities.
After the initial questioning, Nikolai Myagkikh was detained for two days under Art. 91 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on suspicion of committing a crime.
According to some reports, during testimonies and face-to-face confrontations, he denies involvement in fraud, insisting on the authenticity of car cost estimates.
The investigators plan to request detention for Nikolai Myagkikh from one of the capital’s courts this weekend. They also intend to qualify the actions of appraisers from Samara and those involved in the investigation from Saratov according to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, as they may be directly linked to the car sales. The legal status of the latter has not been determined yet. Sources from Kommersant emphasize that Nikolai Myagkikh's detention shows that law enforcement officers are actively fighting corruption and restoring order in the fuel and energy sector, even at the highest levels, not just focusing on violations and crimes by regular entrepreneurs.
In the Ministry of Energy itself, the scandal in the federal state unitary enterprise subordinate to them has so far been left without official comments.
True, Kommersant’s sources explained that they were talking about scams with FSUE cars, and not the ministry, whose representatives, by the way, took part in the verification activities.
It should be noted that the range of tasks of FESCO is very wide and includes several dozen types of activities – from market research of energy-saving technologies and equipment to commissioning and from consulting and reconstruction of electric power facilities to information and analytical support for projects and the creation of a single information space.
