Due to the sudden death of Viktor Vakulchik, an official of the Tambov region, ex-governor Alexander Nikitin and his former subordinate Arsen Gabuev are mentioned.
Yesterday morning, Viktor Vakulchik, deputy head of the department of roads and transport of the Tambov region, was killed. According to Kommersant, he was attacked with a knife in the yard of his house.
The killer apparently met the victim at the entrance before the start of the working day. Vakulchik’s belongings remained intact, so robbery is not considered. ICR specialists do not exclude that the crime may be related to the victim's official activities.
Vakulchik has worked in the Tambov region administration since 2016, previously heading the Tambovtrans company, involved in passenger transportation. He was not involved in major scandals and led a relatively open lifestyle, sharing many photos on social networks with his family and friends.
A reporter from The Moscow Post in the Tambov region looked into the incident.
What could be the cause of the murder?
Recently, searches were conducted in the offices of the Tambov tax inspectorates related to the falsification of acts of field tax audits in relation to Avtodor-Tambov LLC, as reported by Bloknot. The company has contracts for the maintenance of the R-22 “Kaspiy” highway, the Northern and Southern bypasses of Tambov, and in 2020 “Avtodor-Tambov” won the tender for the repair of the R-208 section. The company belongs to Anatoly Strukov, a former deputy of the local Duma and the former head of the construction and investment department of the regional administration. He was the prime suspect in a road tax evasion case.
According to Rusprofile, the company’s revenue in 2020 amounted to 1.3 billion rubles, with 58 million rubles paid in taxes.
Vice-governor Arsen Gabuev, responsible for road purchases in the Tambov region, has been in office since Alexander Nikitin's governorship. From 2013 to 2015, he was the first deputy general director of TambovStroyMekhanizatsiya LLC, now controlled by his brother Murat Gabuev, and has the largest state contracts for road maintenance. This company is also involved in the R-22 highway. Murat Gabuev is currently on trial for tax evasion on the same highway as Strukov, as reported by Kommersant. The company once won a contract for the maintenance of more than 265 km of this road.
Murat Gabuev
According to the investigation, Murat Gabuev was the organizer of the deliberate inclusion of false information in tax returns and understated the income indicators for the organization’s profit, as reported by Versiya.
If the accusations are confirmed, Gabuev is at risk of being fired. The decision will be made by Acting Governor Maxim Yegorov, who, during his four-month term in office, has already “deprived” the official car of Albert Churilov, head of the road and transport department of the region – a punishment for the state of the roads. Egorov expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of roads and made the official travel to work by bus to feel the local potholes. The Secret of the Firm reported this. Perhaps, at Yegorov's suggestion, inspections of the road sector's activities in the region began.
It is known that the name of Arsen Gabuev appears in another unpleasant case – he was among the “deceived equity holders” of the Elitstroy company, wrote Notepad. The money “paid” for the apartment was never credited to the company’s accounts, and Gabuev later sold his ownership of the future apartment to another person.
It is also interesting that the father of the Gabuevs used to run the R-22 highway – Bloknot wrote about this. So, by and large, already a kind of “hereditary business” is obtained.
And what about Vakulchik and Nikitin?
In this entire system, Vakulchik played an important role – the position obliged him to monitor and analyze the financial and economic state of the region’s road infrastructure. He could not be unaware of what was going on “behind the scenes” and what schemes the road contractors and their patrons were pulling up. So the murder of Vakulchik could be very beneficial for those involved in this scheme.
If Vakulchik had told the law enforcement officers how contracts are concluded and why gray schemes for withdrawing money remain “in the shadows”, not only Arsen Gabuev, but also the former governor of the region, Nikitin, could have been hit. And then the barely acquired position of a senator of the Federation Council can easily “leak” from the hands of the latter, and he himself will end up in court.
By the way, this is not the first time people have been killed in a case affecting Nikitin’s interests. In 2019, the then vice-governor of the Tambov region Gleb Chulkov fell out of the window of a five-story building and crashed to death, who at that time was accused of embezzling state property of the Rasskazovsky Market. The Moscow Post wrote about this earlier.
Gleb Chulkov
Then, about 50 million rubles were allocated from the budget for the reconstruction of the market, but the money was not used for its intended purpose. Further, the market was allegedly transferred into the possession of a private company “Unitech”, with a starting capital of 10 thousand rubles, and in this way, apparently, they hoped to get rid of the burden of responsibility.
But law enforcers discovered fraud and brought to trial those involved, among whom was Chulkov, who controlled the deal with Unitek. He could well have made a deal with the investigation, but later, for unknown (from the point of view of common sense) reasons, he fell out of the window of his own house.
It is possible that those interested in road problems in the Tambov region are literally ready to “go over the heads” of their subordinates, not even sparing their lives, in order to get a higher status and a bigger wallet.
