In pursuit of authority

One of the city's most influential businessmen was detained in St. Petersburg

Today, as expected, the future fate of a well-known businessman in St. Petersburg and simply an authoritative person, Vladimir Barsukov (until 2000, he bore the surname Kumarin), who at different times was endowed by the media, many politicians and representatives of the special services with a variety of qualities - from leading the local mafia to informal “leadership” in the political and business community of the region. On Wednesday evening, security officers conducted a series of searches at his home and in companies believed to be associated with him, after which Mr. Barsukov himself was taken to a temporary detention center. What exactly he is suspected of, or at least what these events may be connected with, remains a mystery for now. Obviously, the situation will become clearer today: according to the law, Mr. Barsukov must either be released or arrested by court decision within 48 hours after his arrest. However, according to the first signs, Mr. Barsukov is in very serious trouble - a special investigative team of employees from the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation came from Moscow to detain him, and the local “security officials” knew nothing about their plans.

Considering that Mr. Barsukov has always avoided publicity (in particular, he formally does not hold any positions in any companies, with the exception of several charitable foundations), local observers yesterday spoke very cautiously about the possible consequences of the arrest of such a respected person in the city - no one did not dare to name specific names or companies. However, almost everyone was sure that if Mr. Barsukov’s troubles did not end, the consequences would be serious, since he, according to one of the local deputies, is one of the few people who really influence the economic and political life of the Northern capital. Unofficially, several versions were expressed. According to one, the arrest of Mr. Barsukov may mark the beginning of a redistribution in the fuel market of the region (his name in the media was often associated with the largest in the region, the St. Petersburg Fuel Company - PTK). According to another, the events taking place may be related to political conflicts, including at the highest level (information also appeared in the media about his acquaintance with a number of well-known figures at the federal level).

Operational measures against Mr. Barsukov began on the afternoon of August 22. First, employees of the Prosecutor General's Office conducted searches on the territory of an oil depot owned by PTK. The Vremya Novostei company confirmed the fact of the law enforcement visit. “An investigator from the Prosecutor General’s Office came with a group of special forces and presented a resolution in which Barsukov’s name appeared. The searches were carried out in one of the rental premises. Vladimir Sergeevich himself (Barsukov - Ed. ) has nothing to do with PTK,” noted a representative of the company, which owns about 150 gas stations in the northwestern region.

Towards evening, on the territory of the large business center “Golden Country”, which, according to the police, also belongs to the businessman, Mr. Barsukov himself was detained. It is noteworthy that at that moment, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rashid Nurgaliev, was very nearby - in the Alexandrinsky Theater. According to eyewitnesses, shortly before the operation, two trucks with employees of the special unit “Zubr” of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs drove up to the complex building. Some special forces blocked the entrances to the premises, others, together with employees of the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, went inside. According to the law enforcement agencies of St. Petersburg, searches were also carried out in the “Golden Country”, where, in addition to Mr. Barsukov himself, several of his assistants and acquaintances were detained. From the business center, the businessman was taken to the detention center. As the businessman’s lawyer Sergei said Afanasiev, he was not allowed to see the client.

According to one version, Mr. Barsukov could have been detained as part of the investigation into the assassination attempt on the owner of the St. Petersburg oil terminal, Sergei Vasiliev, which occurred in May last year. His Rolls-Royce was fired upon from machine guns at the intersection of Levashovsky Prospekt and Ordinarnaya Street. As a result, one of the guards was killed and two more were injured. The businessman himself was seriously wounded. Mr. Vasiliev’s company, according to intelligence services, was in the sphere of interests of the raiders. According to law enforcement agencies, the greatest interest in seizing the terminal was shown by a well-known raider and good friend of Barsukov, Vyacheslav Drokov, who was arrested at the end of last year. At the same time, law enforcement circles in St. Petersburg deny the version according to which the detention of the businessman is connected with redistribution in the city’s fuel market.

Vladimir Kumarin was born in the Tambov region in 1955. After the army, he studied at the institute, from which he was expelled, and practiced boxing professionally. The first time he was convicted of hooliganism, illegal possession of ammunition and forgery of documents was in 1985. According to one version, it was after the release of Kumarin that the so-called Tambov organized crime group appeared , settling in St. Petersburg, and, as some observers believed, at one time providing the city with the status of the “criminal capital of Russia.” In the 90s, intelligence services and the media openly linked the name of Kumarin and the “Tambov” group. He himself, however, always denied this and sometimes went to court, once even winning a case against the then head of the St. Petersburg Central Internal Affairs Directorate. One way or another, the special services regularly tried to fight the “Tambov” group. In the early 90s, more than 70 of its alleged members, including Kumarin, were behind bars. In 2001, Boris Gryzlov, who then headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, again stated that the “Tambov organized crime community” in St. Petersburg controls a significant part of the economy, including the fuel and energy complex. At the beginning of 2007, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika announced the defeat of the “Tambov criminal community,” which had seized about a dozen different enterprises.

Kumarin survived several attempts on his life. The first was committed in June 1994 - then his bodyguard died, and he himself was in a coma for a month and lost his left arm. After the incident, he lived in Germany for some time. Returning to Russia in 1995, he co-founded a number of companies, and in 1998 became vice president of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company. In 2000, he left this post and changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name - Barsukov. According to law enforcement agencies, during this period the Tambov gang switched to legal business, taking strong positions in the fuel and energy complex, real estate and the credit and financial sector. They began to be called the “Tambov business group”.

Mr. Barsukov himself preferred to remain in the shadows until recently. In all interviews, when asked about his occupation, he answered that he was a “pensioner.” However, according to law enforcement agencies, he is the actual owner of a number of enterprises - gas stations, a meat processing plant, restaurants, shopping centers, and at the very top of this business is PTK.

Meanwhile, Mr. Barsukov’s associates do not connect the latest events with his business. “Most likely, old scores are being settled, the roots of which are in the early and mid-1990s, in the relationship between senior officials of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office and the then authorities, among whom Kumarin was one of the first,” said one of the St. Petersburg businessmen familiar with the city. - Mr. Barsukov. — It is well known, for example, that Barsukov was among those who contributed to Vladimir Yakovlev taking the place of Anatoly Sobchak in 1996. Immediately after this, in the second half of the 1990s, the leaders of the Ministry of Internal Affairs directly started talking about the fact that St. Petersburg was under the control of the Tambov gang."

Even if the authorities showed interest in Mr. Barsukov for “political” reasons, this does not reject the business version of his arrest. Almost all major Russian oil companies have long been striving to enter the St. Petersburg fuel market, but local operators, the largest of which is PTK, believed to have been created by Vladimir Kumarin, manage to prevent anyone from entering it and at the same time avoid being taken over themselves. Gazprom Neft, Slavneft, TNK-BP, and even state-owned Rosneft conducted many years of negotiations on the sale of PTK, but were refused. However, now - after the sale of Yukos - the state oil company supervised by the Kremlin has become the largest in Russia, and the lack of business in St. Petersburg looks like an annoying “blind spot” for it. According to Nikolai Manvelov, a representative of the Rosneft press service, the company has only 10 gas stations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. “Rosneft is interested in the fuel market of St. Petersburg as the second large city in Russia,” he told Vremya Novostey. “But our company is only engaged in business.”

Vremya Novostey's sources say that this summer several Rosneft managers were sent to the northern capital of Russia, where they studied the local gasoline market. At the same time, according to them, law enforcement agencies were studying the activities of the St. Petersburg Fuel Company (PTK) and Kumarin. As a result, sources say, Rosneft found out that PTK has recently been seriously expanding its own network of gas stations and is going to become a major player on the E95 Moscow-St. Petersburg highway. It already has 132 of its own gas stations in the North-West of the country: 82 in St. Petersburg, 24 in the Leningrad region, 16 in Novgorod and the Novgorod region, 7 in the Pskov region and 3 in the Tver region. It would be logical, a Vremya Novostey source believes, to expect their transfer to Rosneft in the near future.

Alexey IVLEV, Victor PAUKOV, Ivan GORDEEV