Interrogated by agency managers

Yesterday it became known that the FSB forcibly brought in for questioning the head of the affairs department of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use (Rosnedra, part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology) Alexander Romanchenko, who is also the first vice-president of the Association of Geological Organizations and a member of the audit commission of OJSC " Transneft". Mr. Romanchenko is a witness in two criminal cases initiated in Murmansk and the Komi Republic.

As the FSB Directorate for the Murmansk Region explained to Kommersant, the head of the department of affairs of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use, Alexander Romanchenko, endorsed the contracts concluded by his subordinates - the director of the FSUE Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka Oleg Mnatsakanyan and the head of the Rosnedra department for the Komi Republic Alexander Segal. The damage from the first deal to lease nine ships and drilling rigs belonging to Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka to companies from Norway and Singapore was estimated by the Federal Property Management Agency at 873 million 281 thousand rubles. As for Komi, according to the investigation, the head of the territorial department of Rosnedra, with the knowledge of the federal department, illegally issued a license to Nevtegazpromtekh LLC for geological study of the subsoil of the Zapadno-Vodnensky section of the Ukhtinsky district of the republic.

Messrs. Mnatsakanyan and Segal were charged with exceeding official powers and abusing them (Articles 285 and 286 of the Criminal Code of Russia). As they say in the FSB, the investigation has no complaints against Mr. Romanchenko himself, but there are questions. “In the framework of the Murmansk case, the witness Romanchenko was interviewed,” they say in the FSB Directorate, “but for some reason he did not want to meet with the investigators from Komi, who had already sent three summonses to the official by mail. Then his colleagues sent him to the FSB department for Moscow and Moscow region, the so-called order to deliver a witness by force." According to Kommersant's interlocutor, this procedure involves the physical detention of a person and his forced delivery to the place of questioning, but unlike suspected witnesses, they are delivered without the use of handcuffs.

This is what they did with Mr. Romanchenko. On Monday morning, an official arriving at the Rosnedra office was stopped by two plainclothes FSB officers and politely asked him to get into their car. Instead of work, Alexander Romanchenko was forced to go with the security officers.

It is still unclear where the managers of Rosnedra will be interviewed. The security officers say that they did not plan to take the responsible employee to the North, since their Moscow colleagues could well get an explanation of the case from him. The FSB Directorate for Moscow refrains from commenting. And the investigative department for the Komi Republic of the Investigative Committee under the Russian Prosecutor's Office stated that the conversation with witness Romanchenko will be conducted in Syktyvkar, where he is allegedly already going. It was impossible to reach the official at his work number in Moscow yesterday. The press service of Rosnedra did not comment on anything.

In turn, Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka told Kommersant that drilling rigs and vessels were and are being leased to foreigners under pressure, since the largest state-owned enterprise for geological exploration of the northern seas in Russia has not received a single order from the state over the past ten years.

Sergey Kommersant-Mashkin

The FSB delved into Rosnedra