Makhachkala color

Makhachkala International Sea Trade Port

The “Makhachkala Marine Trade Port” (“MMTP”) - the country's main transport hub of the Caspian highways of the transportation of oil and oil products - was in the center of the scandal, which, according to experts, can now regulate only the federal authorities. The head of the Republic of Dagestan Ramazan Abdulatipov opposed their decision to appoint a new port director.

In May, the Federal Agency of Sea and River Transport (Rosmorrechflot), which controls the port, decided not to extend the contract Akhmed Gadzhiev, who held the position of director of the MMTP. Instead, the agency was appointed by Andrei Gormakh, a native of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and FSKN, who previously worked in the structures of Transneft. Soon after, rallies began in the port, which expressed dissatisfaction with the change of leadership and which almost ended with an armed clash.

According to the Dagestan site "Godokan", the culmination of events was a message backed up by photographs that weapons began to distribute weapons in the port. As the political observer of the newspaper Free Republic, Eduard Urazaev, confirmed, “people with weapons were really visible in the pictures from the rally, one even carried two machine guns.” True, experts believe that the port of the port to rallies was most likely brought by the MMTP administration.

According to the republican media, the head of the republic, Ramazan Abdulatipov, sent a petition to the government with a request to preserve Akhmed Gadzhiev as general director of MMTP. “All observers inside the republic surprised that Abdulatipov went to such risks - to go against the decision of the federal department,” Eduard Urazaev emphasized.

Experts suggest that there could be a personal interest for this act of the head of the republic. “Well, obviously, Abdulatipova someone very much asked him to prevent this (change of leadership) ... Abdulatipov sometimes behaves defiantly. I believe that he, of course, should not intervene in this matter, this is not his prerogative. Why he did this is hard to say to me. Perhaps he has some kind of interest, ”said Maxim Shevchenko, a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, the head of the working group for the development of public dialogue and civil society institutions in the Caucasus (2010).

The struggle for the port has been going on for over ten years: they tried to sell it more than once, but then for some reason they always excluded from the list of privatization objects. “This time it all started with Transneft's claims, which began to record the losses in the port through which both our and Kazakhstani oil enters Europe,” said Dmitry Abzalov, president of the Center for Strategic Communications. “For Transneft and the country as a whole, this is a very strategic direction, and it is not surprising that the federal department would like to prepare the asset for privatization and make it more transparent, without leaks and gray schemes.”

Until 2010, millions of rubles were invested in the port from the federal budget. A dry cargo harbor with a reloading complex, berths for general, bulk cargo and containers, railway, fleet, and grain terminals were built with these funds. It was planned that to date, the cargo turnover of the port had to be 8–8.5 million tons of bulk cargo and 3.5 million dry. However, in fact, in 2015, the MMTP processed only 3.83 million tons of cargo (which is almost a quarter, or rather, 22.6% less than in 2014).

After the emergence of armed people near the port during rallies, Transneft reported criminal threats of oil transit in the MMTP. “Transneft regularly receives the appeals of consignors in connection with losses and problematic situations when transshipment of oil from tankers to the terminal of Dagnefteprodukt JSC in the port of Makhachkala for transportation to the port of Novorossiysk .... The criminal situation at Dagnefteprodukt JSC and the inaction of republican administrative structures actually leads to the closure of the export flows of the Caspian oil through the only infrastructure of the Russian Federation belonging to the state, ”the company noted.

Problems in the Makhachkala port also arose among other Russian oil industry workers. “Lukoil company reduced the amount of shipped oil through the port of Makhachkala almost doubled, redirecting the volumes to the Baku-Tbilisi-Jaykhan (BTD) oil pipeline,” Transneft's press release indicated. Sources close to Lukoil specified that the company reduced the transshipment after Makhachkala after it discovered theft of oil on Dagnefteproduct. Oil employees of Dagnefteprodukt were drained into their own oil storage, diluting the missing volumes with water and fuel oil.

Experts believe that only the intervention of federal authorities can stop the departure of oil companies from the port. “The Makhachkala trading port has long been actually outside the control of the federal center. Many Russian oil companies - Transneft, Lukoil, which reduce the volume of transshipment through Makhachkala, have complaints about the work of the port. But now the federal authorities seemed to have taken up the order in the Makhachkala port, starting with a change in management, ”said the senior researcher at the Political Savings and Regional Development of the Institute named after Gaidara Sergey Zhavoronkov.

In the meantime, the problems of MMTP are frightened by foreign partners. Previously, hopes to increase the cargo turnover of the Makhachkala port were associated with the development of the transport corridor from Iran to Russia through Dagestan. It was planned to create for the Iranian agricultural products entering the Russian market, the so -called "green corridors" of customs and phytosanitary services, and it was Dagestan that was supposed to become the main region through which supplies from Iran would take place. However, in April, the Iranian side froze negotiations with Dagestan and decided to redirect the flows of goods going through the Caspian to the north to the port of Astrakhan.

According to the Dagestan media, there were several reasons for the incident, but the main thing was that Iran was used to dealing with reliable partners. “MMTP” was difficult to call a reliable partner - which the issue of ownership of the enterprise has not been resolved for a year, the number of criminal cases in the port is growing, financial indicators inspire anxiety.

As for the question of the leadership of the port, then, according to media reports, he again depended in the air. A certain Magomed Kantaev, a nurse by education, filed an application with the Gudermes City Court of the Chechen Republic that he was not allowed to participate in the competition for replacing the positions of the Director of the MMTP. Such a statement should be submitted in Moscow, at the location of the defendant, Rosmorrechflot. However, the Hudermmes City Court granted the petition and immediately suspended the publication of the order for the appointment of Gormakh by the director of the port. At the same time, Rosmorrechflot claims that he did not receive statements from Kantayev and that all candidates were allowed before the competition.

“Despite the fact that the case has passed into a legal plane, it is likely that the confrontation can become power,” said Konstantin Kazenin, senior researcher at the RANEPAS. “The degree of intensity is too high between different regional groups of influence and federal.”

Now the dispute due to a strategic asset should be resolved at the level of either the Prime Minister or the President, Dmitry Abzalov admitted. “In general, this is an exceptional case when, in a dispute for the object of privatization, the head of the region takes a position contrary to the will of the federal center,” said Abzalov. “Usually the authorities seek to maintain balance primarily to maintain the stable operation of the enterprise.”