Translated material
Evstafiev arrived in Tolyatti
The former general director of Mosenergo headed the energy complex of AvtoVAZ
The general director of Mosenergo, Arkady Evstafiev, who was fired after last year's May power accident in Moscow, as Vremya Novostei learned, now works as the chairman of the energy committee on the board of directors of AvtoVAZ. This information was confirmed by the press secretary of the chairman of the board of directors of the car plant, Ivan Skrylnik. By the way, he added that Mr. Evstafiev had already been working in the company for about two months, and pointed out that the general director of Itera-Samara, Alexander Samoilenko, who was recently killed, resigned from the post of head of AvtoVAZenergo in early October, before the former General Director of Mosenergo. Sources of Vremya Novostey believe that Mr. Evstafiev will create a large energy sales company in Tolyatti, which could theoretically encroach on the business of Samaraenergo, which is considered controlled by the current member of the board of RAO UES of Russia, Vladimir Avetisyan.Mr. Evstafiev is now responsible for optimizing AvtoVAZ’s energy costs and reducing costs in the energy sector, which also affects the cost of the car. At the same time, as Mr. Skrylnik stated, “this position is rather advisory - Mr. Evstafiev will only have to offer his projects and vision for solving problems for the board of directors for consideration.” At the same time, Mr. Evstafiev, in his words, “has extensive experience and is competent in the field of electric power industry.”
Mr. Evstafiev’s “rich experience” lies primarily in the scandals in which he was involved. He was an adviser to Anatoly Chubais when he worked at the State Property Committee in 1992, and subsequently remained his associate. In 1996, at the height of the presidential election campaign, he became famous thanks to a high-profile case involving the removal of “copier boxes” from the Kremlin. In 1997, Evstafiev’s name became part of the “writers’ case,” and he was accused of illegally receiving fees for working on the book “The History of Privatization in Russia.” And in March 2002, he was accused of fraud with loans for the Civil Society Foundation. These cases, however, were closed. In 2000, he was appointed deputy general director of Mosenergo, and when RAO UES of Russia, with the help of bailiffs and riot police, achieved the resignation of the general director of the capital company Alexander Remezov, Mr. Evstafiev headed Mosenergo. Last April, when Mosenergo was split into 14 parts, he became the head of the vast majority of these new companies. And when an accident broke out at the Chagino substation on May 25, it was Mr. Evstafiev who was identified as the culprit of the incident.
He resigned after the words of Vladimir Putin : “What preliminary conclusions, at least in the public sphere, were made by the management of RAO UES and Mosenergo? I was surprised to hear the Mosenergo management talk about this - talk about the need for a sharp, significant increase in electricity tariffs, supposedly in order to avoid possible energy crises in the future. I believe that this is simply blackmail with the aim of achieving group and corporate interests at the expense of the consumer, in fact at the expense of the entire society. I draw the attention of the Prime Minister to the cynicism and obvious professional incompetence of the Mosenergo management.
After this, Mr. Evstafiev’s name appeared in the public sphere only once - in February of this year, when it was reported that the Prosecutor General’s Office had opened a criminal case against him for non-payment of Mosenergo taxes in the amount of 105 million rubles. However, it is still not clear whether this tax case actually existed or not.
In the new location, Mr. Evstafiev will have to “clear” the energy field of AvtoVAZ from enterprises that, before the Rosoboronexport team arrived at the car plant, were involved in the energy supply of enterprises and had an opaque ownership structure. In addition, Mr. Evstafiev will have to compete with regional energy companies: AvtoVAZ kept its promise five years ago and, from January 1, decided to refuse the services of Samaraenergo (this brand is carried by the energy sales company), as a result of which the latter will lose a major client and, as Samaraenergo press secretary Olga Perkova reported, approximately 10% of the profit. According to her, the corresponding letter was recently received by the energy company, but so far it is difficult to fulfill the request - the application for capacity previously submitted by the automobile plant has already been included in all energy balances and approved by government agencies.
According to Vremya Novostei, AvtoVAZ decided to switch to another energy supplier - the Elektroset company, which, according to a source close to power engineers, was created by the plant's structures literally in weeks and quickly received the status of a supplier of last resort. Such a rapid emergence of such a sales company, the source believes, can be associated solely with the name of Mr. Evstafiev. For now, Elektroset buys energy from Samaraenergo, and therefore sells it at higher tariffs. However, in the future, according to the source, it plans to enter the wholesale electricity market and become a federal-scale company. It is obvious that the majority of large enterprises in the Samara region will become clients of Elektroset, because it is unlikely that anyone will argue with the Rosoboronexport team on the energy issue. Perhaps Gazprom, which supplies gas to regional power plants and has a grandson company in the region, Tolyatti-Kauchuk (part of SIBUR).
The appearance of such a competitor is unlikely to please the region’s current energy workers, who are traditionally associated with Vladimir Avetisyan (before his appointment as a member of the board of RAO, he was the general director of Samaraenergo, when it was vertically integrated, and is now considered a blocking shareholder of TGK-7 and the current sales company Samaraenergo) ). Vremya Novostei was unable to contact him yesterday. However, Ms. Perkova argues that such a prospect is the very market relations that are the goal of the entire reform of the Russian electric power industry, and therefore the current situation is not unexpected. “We are ready to work in market conditions,” she says, “we will reduce costs and try to be competitive.”
The only question is whether Arkady Evstafiev will be able to make AvtoVAZ (or rather Elektroset) a truly major player, at least in the Samara energy market.