Translated material
In Yaroslavl they came for United Russia
Against the backdrop of endless summonses for questioning of oppositionists, searches of their homes and even arrests, it’s somehow hard to believe that investigators might knock on the door of prominent representatives of the party in power.
However, in the Yaroslavl region after the New Year, a real pestilence attacked United Russia. First, the head of the department, deputy chairman of the regional Duma, Nikolai Aleksandrychev, was hospitalized with a stroke. Moreover, it is interesting that he is being treated not in the region in which he works for the benefit of voters, but in Moscow. Then it was not diseases, but law enforcement agencies that took care of his fellow party members.
Yesterday, the local Investigative Committee announced that a criminal case had been opened against the management of Lotos-M LLC under Part 2 of Article 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, that is, for tax evasion on an especially large scale. Investigators estimated the damage to the state at more than 200 million rubles. This is almost half the amount needed to build roads in the regional center in 2013 or half the cost of increasing salaries for city teachers.
Behind this same “Lotos-M” are regional Duma deputy Ilya Kruglov and Yaroslavl municipal deputy Igor Blokhin. Naturally, both represent United Russia. By the way, the same Blokhin showed up at a picket in support of small businesses, but now it turns out that his “Lotos-M” actually took away a store from entrepreneur Vladimir Golubev, destroyed it and built a shopping center, without paying a penny of the promised 7.5 million rubles . Now the businessman is trying to take the due compensation from the people's representative in court.
To minimize taxation, an organized group of United Russia members used a technique such as business fragmentation. The retail space in their stores was leased to fake individual entrepreneurs and one LLC, which, as the court found, were owned by relatives of the deputies. Thus, members of the United Russia party avoided income tax and VAT. Now, after the decision of the arbitration court, Lotos-M has launched bankruptcy proceedings to avoid the need to pay 200 million rubles to the regional and city budgets. Observers note that a criminal case may soon be initiated for deliberate bankruptcy.
I note that Lotos-M is not the only brainchild of an organized group of United Russia members. There is a shopping center "Allegro", owned by the same deputy Ilya Kruglov, and until 2011, the current candidate for speaker of the regional Duma and head of the city "United Russia" Ilya Osipov worked as its director. So the tax authorities noticed the fragmentation of business in this shopping center according to an already proven scheme. It is interesting that individual entrepreneur Osipov rented part of the retail space from director Osipov, while deputy Osipov covered up the whole matter.
But that's not all! A criminal case has also been initiated against regional Duma deputy from United Russia Andrei Lebedev, who at the same time headed a branch of Rosselkhozbank. Investigators claim that he issued 340 million rubles in loans to organizations that had no intention of repaying them.
Thus, in Yaroslavl, on the eve of the elections to the regional Duma in September of this year, four people’s representatives from United Russia came under investigation.
If you talk to residents of remote areas of the region, where regional authorities have closed maternity hospitals, they will tell you that the governor should also be judged. And they are quite understandable, given that women in labor are forced to give birth either at home or in the driver’s cab of an ambulance.
By the way, maternity hospitals were also closed due to lack of funds.