"Valer, what are you doing here?"

Dmitry Velikovsky , editorial office 11/25/2021

Gazprom pays billions of rubles to the investment group, which is associated with the 26-year-old son of a long-time comrade Vladimir Putin for the KGB, the former deputy chairman of Gazprom Valery Golubev

This summer, Gazprom decided to finally change registration and move from Moscow to St. Petersburg. In fact, the move has been going on for about nine years. At first, even in the Russian government, they joked on this subject. In 2014, one of the deputy prime ministers, having heard the question, does Gazprom move to Petersburg, clarified : “With all the pipes?” And the press reasoned: whether Gazprom is going to save on renting offices in this way or increase the receipt of money to the St. Petersburg city budget.

As “important stories” found out, not only the budget of St. Petersburg won from the move of Gazprom. But the family of a long -standing colleague Vladimir Putin in the KGB - Valery Golubev. Comrade President Golubev was the deputy chairman of Gazprom until 2019. When he worked there, his son Vyacheslav through offshore firms became a co -owner of the structures of the investment group, which Gazprom pays billions of rubles for the rent of St. Petersburg offices. The contract was signed in 2016 and is valid until 2024.

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Documents about the offshores of the son of Golubev became available thanks to the global project “Archive of Pandora” of the International Consortium of Journalists of Investigators (ICIJ) and the Center for the Study of Corruption and Organizational Process (OCCRP). The project revealed the materials of the largest registrars of offshore companies, trusts and funds with the names of their real beneficiaries. “Important stories” took part in a joint investigation, which combined the efforts of hundreds of journalists around the world. You can read more about the "Archive of Pandora" here .

The deal of the year

In 2016, Gazprom rented the Fort Tower business center on Moskovsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg. The business press immediately called this a deal of the year to rent offices. The subsidiaries of Gazprom then occupied almost the entire 21-story complex (more than 29 thousand square meters) and all 170 cars in the underground parking, the newspaper Vedomosti reported .

The rental of this business center until February 2024 cost Gazprom more than 4.5 billion rubles, the Interfax agency reported , noting that Gazprom concluded a deal with the only supplier-the Petersburg company Fort Group, specializing in commercial and trade real estate management.

Photo: Fort Tower

Fort Group knew that she belonged to the St. Petersburg lawyer Maxim Levchenko and former general director of Gazprom’s daughter (Gazprom Socinvest) Boris Paykin-in 2015 they took 22nd place in the Forbes rating “Korols of Russian Real Estate” with a rental income of 114 million (about 7 billion rubles for the average rate of that rate of that rate time).

But the documents of the Panama Law Firm Aleman Cordero Galardo & Lee (Alcogal), available in the Pandora archive, show that in addition to Levchenko and Paykin, the major owner of the offshore Fortground Holding, registered on the British Virgin Islands, was Vyacheslav Golubev - the son of Valery - the son of Valery Golubeva. The co -owner of FortGroup Holding (with a share of 47.5%), he was already listed at 23 years old after another offshore company - Macrodom Holding with the same British Virgin Islands. At that time, Golubev Sr. was still working as the deputy chairman of the rule of Gazprom.

According to the Pandora archive, FortGroup Holding in the British Virgin Islands belonged to three other offshore firms: 47.5% of the Panama VBS City, behind which Paikin stood another 47.5%-Macrode Holding Golubev, Beliza LSP Holding. In turn, FortGroup Holding through Cyprus Jiski Assets controlled Russian companies Fort Building, Fort Operation Groups and Fort Group Management. Another offshore, where the beneficiaries were Golubev Jr., Paykin and Levchenko-Elmcroft Valley-in 2011-2012 owned Macromir, a network of St. Petersburg shopping centers acquired by Fort Group in 2011, which became the basis of this group. When Paykin in 2017 was elected State Duma deputy, his share in FortGroup and Elmcroft moved to his eighty -year -old mother Tamara.

Now Vyacheslav Golubev is 26 years old. You will not meet his name in the lists of large entrepreneurs. But it is known that at the age of 19, he became the owner of the mansion on Rublevka in a classic style of 4000 square meters, which is spread out on four hectares: there is a river and a tunnel for cars on the territory. This was reported by the FBK*.

Comrade President

Valery Golubev “Freely entering the President” as his old acquaintance, said Forbes in 2014. Putin and Golubev in the past served in the KGB, and in the nineties worked at the St. Petersburg City Hall. Then their paths parted. Golubev at the beginning of the two thousandth became a senator from the Legislative Assembly of the Leningrad Region. And Putin is the president of Russia.

In early 2003, after the next presidential meeting, Putin noticed a familiar face in the back rows. As Forbes reported, the president asked: "Valer, what are you doing here, what are you doing at all?" And in the same year, Golubev became the general director of the structure of Gazprom (GAZKUKKULEKITIMPEX), who was responsible in Gazprom for procurement, and in 2006 - the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom.

Photo: Sergey Kiselev / Kommersant

The change in the career of Golubev also affected his wife Tatyana, who in the eighties and nineties worked as a physics teacher and the head teacher of one of the St. Petersburg schools. By 2010, she became a co -owner of the company ("Interstiltech"), which bought up large -diameter pipes from manufacturers and sent them to the companies of Putin's friends - Arkady and Boris Rotenbergs. Those, in turn, supplied them with Gazprom.

Golubev’s wife was also a co-owner of TGi-Trans, which in 2009-2010 was the operator of railway transportation of large diameter pipes for Gazprom.

TGi-Trans was a member of the Trustgazinvest group. In 2006, another company of this group received half of Gazprom’s contractor for the construction of bridges on the Gazprom railway Obska - Bovanenkovo.

I did not notice my own

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin arranged a famous variety to energy, having discovered a conflict of interests in many of them. The main claims were that the heads of state energy companies and their relatives staged a profitable business, receiving contracts from the same state -owned companies. Checks of the relations and businesses of state power engineers began to be carried out in November of the same year. It all ended with dismissal and criminal cases.

“He said, directly said: check, please. Put on order. Still heard. No, everyone who concerns this was not moved with a finger: they did not get rid of the offshores, nor the company did not close their company, where they themselves and their close relatives are sitting. Everything continued! It’s strange even honestly, just strange! Well, at least a sense of self-preservation should be some kind of?! " - Putin was indignant at a government meeting. As a result, he also ordered checks in Gazprom and other companies controlled by the state.

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But Putin’s friends in state -owned companies did not affect and do not affect, although the giants controlled by the state have since been obliged to report on the final owners of large contractors.

As the documents of the Pandora archive show, not only the son of Golubev turned out to be a co -owner of the company, who received billions of rubles from Gazprom. The company's son -in -law of the head of Transneft, Nikolai Tokarev, another long -standing acquaintance of the Russian president, also received billions of Transneft. In both cases, ownership schemes were built through offshore firms that hid real owners.

“The conclusion of the national economy, its strategic industries, from the offshore shadow is our priority task,” Putin said at a government meeting on energy problems in 2011.

Commenting on the publication of the Pandora Archive this year, the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he did not see the reasons for checks. In the reception of Peskov, they answered “important stories” that the people mentioned in publications do not relate to civil servants and the restrictions on them do not apply.

Vyacheslav and Valery Golubev, Boris Paykin and Fort Group did not answer the questions of “important stories”.

Addition of 11/30/2021

After the publication of the material, a response came to our request from Gazprom:

“Information about the beneficiaries [contractors] is collected. The company has accepted all the necessary anti -corruption procedures, and they are met, ”Gazprom said in the information department.

*FBK is recognized as an extremist organization. By law, we are obliged to indicate this. But we believe that this contradicts the Constitution of Russia.

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