Balashikha got rid of the landfill and mayor

Why did the head of the city near Moscow resigned after the closure of the Kuchino training ground

The mayor of Balashikha Evgeny Zhirkov resigned on June 27. This happened shortly after the question of a landfill in the city, which is just a few hundred meters from residential buildings, often light up on the “direct line” of Vladimir Putin, and it is not possible to close it in any way. In recent years, the surname Zhirkova has repeatedly appeared in a series of scandals, but this did not affect his political career.

Evgeny Zhirkov has occupied posts in the power of the Moscow region since 2001: at first he was elected head of the Zheleznodorozhny city district, three years later he became mayor, and in 2014 - the head of Balashikha. In 2015, Balashikha and Railway were united in one district, and local deputies chose Zhirkov as mayor.

Since the 90s, Zhirkov owned the construction company "Skopa". In 2011, “New” wrote about the mayor of the railway, who at that time owned the “Skopa”, an enterprise for the production of paving slabs, and his wife and daughter earned a rental of real estate ( No. 76 of July 15, 2011 ) .

The townspeople then complained that in the city there are only a few kindergartens in the city for 120 thousand people, due to the lack of doctors and medicines, it is almost impossible to get normal medical care, there is not a single cinema. At this time, the mayor was seen in a car at a cost of 8 million rubles. City activists combined in the “Our City of Zheleznodorozhny” movement and found out that the firms associated with Zhirkov bought up urban real estate at catchy prices: for example, in 2005, Alina, owned by the wife of the mayor and family of his acquaintance Valery Smirnov, won the administration auction and received a building for 363.4 square meters. m. at a price of 484 rubles per meter!

The wives of Zhirkov and Smirnov owned several dozen firms in Balashikha. The activist of the movement “Our city of Zheleznodorozhny” Natalya Osipova told “rain” that in close relations with Zhirkov and Smirnov was the former head of the Balashikha Rubop Viktor Stepanov, who then became the deputy Zhirkova. As the media wrote, in 2010 in Balashikha they detained a gang of killers from Penza, who killed local businessmen, and it turned out that the customer worked in one of Zhirkov’s companies.

In 2015, the landing of observers, including from Moscow, came to the elections of city deputies of Balashikha. They recorded violations and stuffing, and the then chapter of the election commission of the Moscow Region, Irek Vildanov, had to make excuses on Channel One, explaining the scandal with the machinations of “foreign agents”. In those elections of the observer Stanislav Pozdnyakov, right near the WIK, when he recorded an attempt to throw. The spleen was removed in the Pozdnyakov hospital.

In October 2016, the Moscow Region prosecutor's office began an audit against the mayor and companies controlled by him: the security forces suspected abuses in organizing city tenders.

At the end of the year, several officials of the Balashikha administration were detained, the prosecutor's office opened a criminal case of receiving a bribe. Ilya Lezhnev, the head of the administration advertising department, according to the press secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Irina Volk, “extorted 500 thousand rubles a month from the entrepreneur for general patronage and non-conservation of business.”

However, the whole country learned about these scandals mainly in Balashikha, but the whole country learned about the garbage training ground. A landfill in a clay career has existed in Balashikha since 1964, garbage from all over Moscow Region has been brought there, and in 2015 residential buildings were built next to it. According to TASS, the area of ​​the landfill is more than 50 hectares, and annually he received up to 600 thousand tons of waste.

On June 15, during a “direct line” with the president, a resident of Balashikha Elena Mikhailenko complained to Vladimir Putin: “On the city, 200 meters from kindergartens and a clinic, there is the largest landfill in the Moscow region. This is a violation of 89 federal law. Every day, fires occur at the training ground, it is impossible to breathe. This is unbearable. We turned to many authorities, but always received unsubscribes. ”

After the “direct line”, the Governor of the Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyov arrived at the Kuchino training ground, and on June 23, the authorities reported that the training ground was closed. True, this was needed for the FSB power support.

In the political sense, Zhirkov is not the figure that is suitable as a “sacred victim” for the story that has become a federal one. The situation in which business partners of the former mayor were left by the loss of business are much more likely.

We will follow the development of events.