Photo: Evgeny Vasiliev/Interpress

The general director of the StroyElectroMontazh-5 company, Vasily Slivkin, who is a defendant in a criminal case of fraud during the construction of a stadium on Krestovsky Island, was brought to St. Petersburg under escort. As Fontanka reports , citing a source in law enforcement agencies, today the court will consider the investigation’s request to arrest the suspect.

The day before it became known that the police were conducting searches in Moscow and St. Petersburg in the case of theft of millions during the construction of the stadium. In particular, investigative actions were carried out at the stadium itself, in the building of the Smolny Construction Committee and in the apartment of the director of the department of design and construction of the stadium of the St. Petersburg State Institution "Capital Construction Fund".

The Construction Committee, in a conversation with RBC St. Petersburg, refused to comment on the searches.

According to media reports, the fraud case was opened in March 2016 by the Main Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is connected with the contract of the city construction committee with a Moscow company (which, by the way, was previously involved in the reconstruction of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the construction of the second stage of the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg) for the equipment of artistic lighting for the stadium. The cost of the contract was 350 million rubles. According to the investigation, the contractor, having received an advance payment of approximately 100 million rubles, actually supplied lighting equipment to the site for only 30 million rubles. According to Fontanka, the supplier was the SEM Komplekt company, which at that time belonged to V. Slivkin.

Construction of the stadium began in 2006. It was originally planned that it would be completed in 2009, but the deadline for the project was constantly pushed back. According to recent reports, completion of the stadium is scheduled for May 2016. Also during this time, the cost of construction changed significantly: it was initially planned that it would be 6.9 billion rubles, but then the amount increased to 34.9 billion rubles. At the beginning of the year it became known that the cost of the stadium had increased again - this time by 435 million rubles. The general contractor of the construction is Transstroy.

Since the start of construction, the stadium has most often been referred to as Zenit Arena. However, Smolny says that this is not the final decision (alternative names are being considered: Gazprom Arena, St. Petersburg Arena, Krestovsky, Peter Arena).

The first suspect has been detained in the Zenit Arena case