Help your neighbor

RAO UES ensured business development for former top managers

RAO UES of Russia admitted that it supports the business of its former top managers Leonid Melamed and Dmitry Zhurba (the so-called “Novosibirsk clan”), who, after leaving the energy holding, began to develop their own investment company Alemar. Mr. Melamed owns 78% of its shares, and Mr. Jourba more than 17%. As follows from RAO's report for the first quarter of this year, energy workers invested 3 billion rubles in the Reform mutual fund, managed by Alemar, and Alemar himself was trusted to manage RAO's property for several months, for which 100 million rubles were paid. The media relations department of Vremya Novostey stated that funds available at that time were invested in Alemar’s structures. By the way, at that time Mr. Zhurba still held the post of financial director of RAO. The company refused to say why this money was not spent on the current needs of the electric power industry. Thus, the forecasts of many experts that the financiers of Messrs. Melamed and Zhurba will not be far from the money of the electric power industry, a dream come true.

In the RAO report, signed by member of the board, financial director Sergei Dubinin, 3 billion rubles were invested in the Reforma mutual fund. pass through the column “other financial investments” in the section of the same name. According to Interfax, this mutual fund was created only for RAO UES of Russia and throughout the past year it has been buying up shares of the energy holding's subsidiaries, mainly Samaraenergo, Kuzbassenergo and Khabarovskenergo (in which RAO has no control). 1.6 billion rubles were spent on the purchase. (the remaining 1.4 billion rubles were placed in banks), and the purchased shares of regional energy companies at the end of the year depreciated by 183.5 million rubles, although this year they increased significantly in price. As Andrei Trapeznikov, a member of the board of RAO, explained to Interfax, the energy holding invested temporarily available funds into Reform shares. “The task was twofold: to preserve temporarily free funds from inflation and to ensure the implementation of transformations of those regional energy companies where RAO did not have a controlling stake,” he said. “This is a kind of safety mechanism - after the transformations are carried out, the stakes are sold.” . A member of the board of RAO explained the choice of mutual fund "Alemara" by the fact that the company is managed by "people with extensive experience both in the stock market and in the field of corporate reforms in the energy sector." The energy holding does not specify where RAO UES has so many available funds. Nor does it specify whether it was possible to consolidate controlling stakes in regional subsidiaries. As a high-ranking source at RAO told Vremya Novostey, at least one of these energy companies has definitely not received control from RAO. However, as they say in the energy holding, funds from the Reform mutual fund will be returned in the middle of this year. How - in the form of shares and money or only money - is not specified.

Lawyers with whom Vremya Novostei was able to talk claim that in the deal with the Alemara mutual fund, RAO hardly violated any regulatory act: the legislation on mutual funds does not allow it to be considered an interested-party transaction. So we can only talk about morality - the investment in Alemar took place in February 2005, and in May the energy crisis broke out in the Moscow region, after which Anatoly Chubais began to constantly talk about the lack of investment in the modernization and construction of energy equipment.

An official representative of the Federal Tariff Service assured Vremya Novostei yesterday that RAO's available funds last year, “in accordance with the law, will be taken into account in the tariff” for electricity next year.

From managing the property for which RAO paid Alemar 100 million rubles. under agreement No. 02-12/08 DU dated December 8, 2004, according to the report, a financial effect in the amount of 18.75 million rubles was obtained. RAO refused to disclose the details of this transaction.

Shares of RAO UES, after the publication of this information on news agencies at 18:00, in the last hour of trading on the MICEX, began to fall rapidly: from a peak of 19.11 rubles. per paper they fell in price by 1.6%, to 18.79 rubles.

Nikolay GORELOV