A chef is not for everyone

Investigation by “Vestka” with the participation of the channel “We Can Explain”: What helped Yevgeny Prigozhin to sharply increase income from government contracts during the war year, when expenses for his PMCs increased noticeably, and who helps the businessman in power

Main

— During the year of the war, Prigozhin’s catering companies became rich: they received government contracts for a record amount of almost 100 billion rubles.

— Prigozhin is expanding his holdings, servicing military camps: he received several hectares of land and dozens of real estate properties in the Moscow region.

— He continues to buy land and build in St. Petersburg: the total area of ​​his mansions is 6 thousand square meters. m.

“However, Governor Beglov is preventing him from doing business in his hometown: this explains the public attacks of “Chef Putin” on the governor.

— But Prigozhin has improved relations with Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and his entourage. The businessman helped form the “Moscow” volunteer regiment.

— Prigozhin’s son Pavel also got into business: he owns the Sinop business center on Sinopskaya embankment; The land under the building alone costs more than 1.2 billion rubles.

— Not everyone in power favors Prigozhin. His restaurant in the Russian government building was closed after Mikhail Mishustin came to the White House.

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food chain

“I, Evgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, ardently support the special operation in Ukraine and am ready to further support it both ideologically and financially. As for the residents of Rublyovka and other hot spots, they should spend at least 50% of their funds on supporting the special operation,” this is how the owner of the Wagner PMC responded to a question from journalists about support for the war among the elite at the end of June.

There were no responses from residents of Rublevskoe Highway to Prigozhin’s proposal. However, the businessman himself could have spent at least 50% of his family’s funds to support the “special operation” - and would not have remained destitute.

In 2022, Prigozhin became one of the main participants in the war in Ukraine. Against this background , the size of his contracts in Russia itself increased sharply . The main way to earn money within the country remains government contracts for the supply of food to social institutions.

Over the past year, companies associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to Vorstka calculations, received government contracts for catering for almost 100 billion rubles (91.5 billion). This is a record for the entire period of operation of the companies. For comparison: in total over ten years - from 2011 to 2021 - companies associated with “Putin’s chef” won tenders worth 184.6 billion rubles. Prigozhin received all this money in Moscow and the Moscow region.

What contracts did Prigozhin’s companies receive?

Russotskapital LLC received the most contracts in 2022—25 billion rubles. This company began participating in competitions for the supply of school meals in 2019 - after Concord-M and Concord Food Plant, owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, stopped submitting applications for tenders (the company changed its owner in 2019, and its name in 2020). The company, as of 2019, was part of the “Association of Social Catering Enterprises in the Field of Education and Healthcare,” which belonged to two more of Prigozhin’s companies—AVK and Prodfutservice.

The Verona company received government contracts worth 18 billion rubles in 2022. CJSC KDP secured contracts worth 17 billion rubles. One of the main customers is the Artek International Children's Center. In addition, the company supplies meals to several schools in the capital. Another one, Vilmap, received contracts worth 7.4 billion rubles. The Shkolnik-YUZ company won tenders worth 10.6 billion rubles. RBC wrote about the company’s connection with Prigozhin in 2016.

Another company that received contracts was Vito-1. She was linked to Prigozhin in an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Center of the Yabloko party. "Vito - 1" was also a member of the "Association of Social Catering Enterprises in the Field of Education and Health." In 2022, the company won tenders totaling almost 9 billion rubles.

Several companies won almost all the tenders to provide food in the capital’s medical institutions and facilities under the jurisdiction of the capital’s Department of Health . LLC "AVK" received government contracts worth 4.4 billion rubles, LLC "Social Nutrition Center" - for 137 million rubles and "Prodfutservice" - for 42 million rubles.

Friendship with Sobyanin

Yevgeny Prigozhin really has quite warm relations with the Moscow leadership, a source in the capital’s mayor’s office told Vorstka. Ever since he helped Mayor Sergei Sobyanin get re-elected to this post in 2018, they began to communicate quite closely, he said. Cooperation with the mayor’s office helps Prigozhin receive numerous contracts for meals for schools and kindergartens: according to data for 2021, over ten years, companies associated with him received 94.8% of contracts for school meals . At the same time, there have been numerous complaints about the quality of the food offered.

Thus, in 2021, after an appeal, the Moscow City Court ordered Prigozhin’s Concord food factory and the VITO-1 company, which journalists associated with him, to pay compensation totaling more than 1.5 million rubles to the parents of children who were poisoned in kindergartens.

In the products of the “Kremlin cook” companies for schools and kindergartens, they found cockroaches (in a container for semolina porridge), the taste of “ technical oil with old beets and an unpleasant odor” in borscht,and E. coli .

At the end of 2021, Moscow school No. 1279 “Eureka” filed a lawsuit against the Shkolnik-YUZ company. An inspection by Rospotrebnadzor found that the food supplier violated sanitary standards: raw vegetables were carried through the cooking shop, and daily samples were not taken from the prepared food. But the school's claim was denied.

Prigozhin “communicates well” not only with Sobyanin himself, but also with the most influential deputy mayor of the capital - with the head of the Moscow Department of Trade and Services Alexei Nemeryuk and with the Deputy Mayor for Social Development Anastasia Rakova (she is called the right hand of the mayor and the “ mistress of the city ”). Another interlocutor in the capital’s authorities reported this to Vorstka. Cooperation with Nemeryuk brings great benefits to the “Kremlin chef”. The Trade Department oversees virtually everything related to trade turnover in Moscow, including food products.

According to one of the sources, Prigozhin “had a hand” in organizing the “ Sobyanin regiment ”. This is a volunteer battalion formed shortly after the start of the war and financed from the city budget. The interlocutor of “Verstka” called the relationship between the mayor of Moscow and the businessman “unclouded.”

How Prigozhin took hectares of land in the Moscow region from the Ministry of Defense

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Yevgeny Prigozhin makes money from the construction and maintenance of military camps, including for the Russian Ministry of Defense. The main company in this scheme is St. Petersburg LLC Megaline, affiliated with the billionaire (Prigozhin himself actually confirmed this connection in 2022). In 2015, Megaline received contracts for public services for military camps in the Moscow, Bryansk and Tver regions . In addition, the company began construction of a military camp in the city of Valuiki, Belgorod region, bordering Ukraine. The cost of the contract was 3.3 billion rubles. One of the customers for the work in Valuyki was the “Main Directorate for the Arrangement of Troops,” subordinate to the Ministry of Defense. Megaline completed all the work, but the GUOV did not pay the company more than 300 million rubles. Yevgeny Prigozhin’s company filed a claim in the arbitration court. As follows from the case materials , the parties eventually came to an amicable agreement. GUOV pledged to transfer to Megaline a large number of real estate properties in Shchelkovo near Moscow with a total area of ​​64 thousand square meters. m. Including land plots, a soldier's barracks, a soldiers' canteen, a club, an educational building, a parade ground, warehouses for building materials, a sawmill and more.

As follows from the cadastral extracts (available from Vorstka), all these objects became the property of Megaline two months before the war - at the end of 2021. At the same time, in the documents, the cost of some objects is seriously underestimated (for example, the building of the soldiers’ canteen was valued by the Ministry of Defense at 8.2 million rubles, although its cadastral value is 44.8 million, according to Rosreestr; the concrete sites at the forestry workshop were valued by the Ministry of Defense at 518 thousand rubles, and their real cadastral value is 40 times higher and amounts to 21.1 million). According to the calculations of “Vestka”, in total all the real estate transferred to “Megaline” costs about 466 million rubles, although the Ministry of Defense valued it at only 328 million. Thus, the Russian budget could have lost more than 138 million rubles on this dubious deal.

How Prigozhin was removed from the White House

Not everyone in the elite is in awe of Yevgeny Prigozhin. In 2020, Vladimir Putin dismissed the government of Dmitry Medvedev. New Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin appointed his associates to key positions in the White House. His deputy at the Federal Tax Service, Dmitry Grigorenko, became the head of the government apparatus. The government apparatus, among other things, is responsible for the placement of certain services on the territory of the government building on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment.

An unexpected victim of these changes was the restaurant “Cabinet 1237” located on the 12th floor. It was opened without competition or tenders by Yevgeny Prigozhin back in 2009, when Vladimir Putin was prime minister. The restaurant evoked mixed feelings among government residents. It was distinguished by beautiful views of the Moscow River and a more varied fusion menu with Russian, Japanese and Italian cuisine than in usual dining rooms. A former White House official recalls that the restaurant was characterized by “unstable and slow service,” and he is also aware of several cases of poisoning, including one of the deputy prime minister.

Six months after Mishustin’s team arrived, the restaurant changed owners, two government employees told Vorstka. Now Mishustin’s longtime acquaintance, restaurateur Arkady Novikov, is responsible for lunches and dinners for officials.

One of Vorstka’s interlocutors notes that there is also a utilitarian reason for the change in control over the restaurant. “With any restaurant in the Government House, there is always a question, relatively speaking, who installed the wiretap,” he clarified.

Prigozhin in a NATO country

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Today, St. Petersburg media controlled by Prigozhin (for example, Nevskie Novosti) call him a “patriot of Russia” who “implemented several dozen investment projects in St. Petersburg” and also “ helped Alexander Beglov become governor of St. Petersburg.” But they are silent about the fact that one of Prigozhin’s companies, created in the 90s, was located not in the Russian Federation, but in a NATO country.

In October 1998, RT-Consulting, a company engaged in the purchase of goods for their subsequent resale, was registered in the Czech Republic. Its founders were two people - Evgeny Prigozhin and his wife Lyubov, as follows from the documentation of the legal entity. It was also indicated there that the couple was registered in the Czech Republic - in an apartment on Ruska Street, located in the resort town of Teplice. Looking ahead, it is worth saying that this living space does not belong to the Prigozhins today; archival data on it could not be found.

The company existed for more than 8 years and was liquidated by court decision. The reason was the fact that she stopped submitting reports and did not answer calls from regulatory authorities.

Why did Prigozhin quarrel with Beglov?

In his native St. Petersburg, the market for government contracts is inaccessible to Prigozhin. He last worked here in 2011. Then Concord entered into contracts for the supply of food with 14 schools, but a year later the work of the company’s plant in Yanino, which produced lunches for schoolchildren, was suspended due to claims from school directors about the quality of the products.

During the elections for the new governor of St. Petersburg in 2019, Prigozhin actively supported the candidacy of Alexander Beglov. But then the relationship suddenly deteriorated. Their quarrel with Beglov began to be discussed at the beginning of 2022, when the media, primarily owned by Prigozhin himself, criticized the St. Petersburg government for problems with snow and garbage removal. At the same time, the leader of the Leningrad group, Sergei Shnurov (he probably also received money from the “Kremlin cook”) recorded a video against the backdrop of an overflowing garbage container, criticizing the St. Petersburg authorities and the “Beglov shovel.” Since then, the conflict has been growing, Prigozhin even wrote a complaint against the governor to the Prosecutor General's Office.

Vorstka sources close to the authorities of St. Petersburg and the federal government name several reasons for the conflict. The main one, which has spilled over into the public sphere, is the disruption of the redevelopment project for the Gorskaya embankment zone on the shores of the Gulf of Finland worth 60 billion rubles. First, the contract went to Prigozhin. In 2021, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the city authorities with great fanfare signed a contract for the development of a former industrial zone with Prigozhin’s Megaline. But a year later the contract was terminated, and the project was transferred to Gazprom structures.

In addition, Prigozhin laid claim to the reconstruction of the Stables Department building in the center of St. Petersburg (now this luxurious historical ensemble is in a semi-abandoned state) and the creation of the Tuchkov Buyan park complex. None of these projects have been implemented, and Prigozhin’s structures are not involved in them.

Prigozhin would like to return to the food market of the northern capital . “They didn’t do it right,” commented Vorstka’s interlocutor in the Russian parliament familiar with the situation. Another, close to regional authorities, suggested that the “Kremlin chef” hoped to “make the city his own” after the 2019 gubernatorial elections in St. Petersburg in terms of contracts for children’s and school meals, as well as purchases related to the rental and reconstruction of historical buildings. He failed, despite Beglov’s promises, and now Prigozhin is taking revenge, the source said.

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How Prigozhin is buying property in St. Petersburg

While in Moscow Prigozhin makes money from government contracts, in his home city his main income comes from development and rental businesses. As Vorstka found out, the Prigozhins own land plots and commercial buildings worth at least 7 billion rubles.

In 2005, construction equipment unexpectedly occupied an area of ​​more than 10 hectares located near the Lakhtinsky Razliv of the Northern capital. Local residents reacted extremely negatively to the construction of several dozen mansions. “Farewell, Lakhtinsky Razliv!”, “The proletariat is being built up,” they wrote on the Wikimapia website.

The site was commissioned in 2014. The new cottage community was called “Northern Versailles”; it consisted of 49 stylized mansions, each of which was built according to an individual project , but in compliance with the general architectural style.

“Elements of classicism are harmoniously combined with Peter the Great and French baroque,” ​​says the project description on one of the real estate websites.

In 2016, Fontanka reported problems associated with Northern Versailles. A barrier and security guards appeared in this area, consisting of people in black uniforms who prohibited photographing the local beauty. And ordinary people actually lost access to the coastline (which is a violation of the law). Local officials turned a blind eye to what was happening - Vice Governor Igor Albin then replied that “the coastline is freely accessible.” However, Fontanka clarified that this is “not entirely true.”

The passage to the reservoir was closed and as of 2021, photographs from Yandex. Panoramas." The photographs show that the approaches to the spill are fenced with a solid green fence, that is, the publicly accessible area was in fact in private hands. The reason for this can be found in one of the advertisements on the Cyan website. It mentions the name of the developer who built the Northern Versailles - Concord Management and Consulting. And this name always means only one name - Yevgeny Prigozhin. His family has the most extensive holdings in this village. In total, the Prigozhins own land with an area of ​​17 thousand square meters. m, as well as mansions with an area of ​​more than 6 thousand square meters. m.

What belongs to the Prigozhin family in the “Northern Versailles”

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The largest landlord is the only son of the Prigozhins, Pavel. Personally, a mansion of 937 square meters is registered in his name. m, located on a plot of 25 acres. It can cost around 90 – 95 million rubles. Also in the Northern Versailles cottage community there is a three-story house of 2.6 thousand square meters. m (it stands on a plot of 26 acres). This is the multifunctional complex “Lakhtinsky Passage”. Inside there are 18 open-plan apartments, and on the ground floor there is a SPA center with a swimming pool. The formal owner of the land is Beta LLC, as follows from the Unified State Register of Real Estate, which is at the disposal of Vorstka. This company was created by Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2005, but now its only founder is Pavel. “Beta” is engaged in legal activities; at the end of 2021, it employed only three people, according to data from the SPARK system. Despite this, the company's profit in 2021 amounted to almost 37 million rubles. On Novaya Street a house is for sale, more than four times smaller, but standing on a plot of the same size. Its initial cost is 63.5 million rubles. This means that the minimum price of Lakhtinsky Passage can reach 260 million rubles (and this does not take into account auctions).

Another house, 674 meters high, located on 18 acres of land, belongs to the Lakhta Park company. Its owner is also Pavel Prigozhin. “Lakhta Park” was one of the developers of the residential complex of the same name, located in the same Lakhta - not far from “Northern Versailles”. It consists of 10 detached cottages with their own plots of land, 18 low-rise apartment buildings and 50 city villas (apartment hotels for three families). The approximate cost of this house of Prigozhin Jr. can reach 65 million, which means that only the son of “Putin’s chef” owns property worth more than 400 million rubles .

Prigozhin’s own estate is also located in the same “Northern Versailles”. As follows from the cadastral extract, he owns a 550-meter mansion, as well as a plot of 2 thousand square meters. m (can cost around 50 - 55 million). From a satellite, the site of “Putin’s cook” looks rather modest - there is only a house with a greenish roof, surrounded by a neatly trimmed lawn. Another thing is the lands of the wife of a St. Petersburg businessman.

In 2016, the Anti-Corruption Foundation showed a plot of land in Northern Versailles measuring more than one hectare. Judging by the footage taken from the drone, these lands contain two houses, a swimming pool and a helipad. According to the Fund, the value of the properties is 600 million rubles. Evgeny Prigozhin and his daughter were named as their owner, but FBK was mistaken: in fact, his wife, Lyubov, owns a significant part.

The cadastral extract indicates that Prigozhin’s wife owns a plot of 6.3 thousand square meters. m. Judging by satellite images, there are indeed several buildings on these lands, as FBK indicated. The area of ​​the first mansion is 612 square meters. m, the second - 734 sq. m. But there is one strange thing - Prigozhina’s site is closely adjacent to the ground with that same helipad. However, Rosreestr hides the owner with the wording “The requested information is not available.”

Finally, the Prigozhins’ eldest daughter, Polina, also has her own estate. She has the smallest estate, only 317 square meters. m, located on a plot of 1.8 thousand square meters. m. Its cost can be estimated at 50 million rubles. In total, in this cottage village alone, the Prigozhins own real estate worth approximately 1 billion rubles. The only “homeless” person is the youngest daughter, Veronica. But last year she became the sole founder of the famous St. Petersburg Red Stars Hotel, located next to the Mariinsky Theater. Of course, the Prigozhins’ assets are not limited to this. St. Petersburg became a real gold mine for them.

“Prigoginization” of St. Petersburg

Prigozhin tries to buy large objects in the center of the Northern capital as discreetly as possible. So in 2021, the little-known company Real Estate acquired a plot in the very center of St. Petersburg, on Moiseenko Street, 22, lit. About an approximate amount of half a billion rubles to build a business center here with an area of ​​about 30 thousand square meters. m. The company, according to SPARK, at the end of 2021 employed only one person, and the profit for the year before the purchase of the land plot amounted to only 3.9 million rubles. An explanation for what was happening was given by the publication Delovoy Peterburg: according to its data, Evgeny Prigozhin is behind Real Estate JSC.

The unfinished Sea Capital center was also purchased using the same scheme. The deal was concluded by the unknown JSC Retail, created shortly before the signing of the purchase and sale agreement. It is here that the PMC Wagner Center business space opened in 2022. Now the cadastral value of the property alone is 4.38 billion rubles.

Business of Pavel Prigozhin

A similar scheme made it possible to temporarily hide the business of Prigozhin’s son, Pavel. But “Verstka” managed to establish that the businessman’s son owns the Sinop business center on Sinopskaya embankment.

In 2018, the building and land were transferred to a little-known company with a single shareholder. The buyer was Biznesprof JSC, as follows from Rosreestr extracts. The cadastral value of the land and the building itself alone is more than 1.2 billion rubles .

JSC “Businessprof” appeared a few months before the purchase of the business center; its authorized capital was only 10 thousand rubles. And in the state, according to the Federal Tax Service, all these years there were from 1 to 4 people working. At the same time, profit in 2021 amounted to almost 113 million rubles, and the organization has about 2.5 billion rubles on its balance sheet. The sole founder of the legal entity is a certain Tatyana Pimenova, originally from St. Petersburg. Before that, her biography did not include profitable businesses or successful experience in real estate.

How did a woman with no experience in development achieve such success? A source in the St. Petersburg construction market explained this phenomenon to Vorstka with a short remark: “Prigozhin is behind the company.” During a months-long investigation, we tested this assumption for a long time and eventually found out that the publication’s interlocutor was not mistaken in the last name. But it turned out that the creator of the Wagner PMC and the owner of the Patriot media group were not behind the billion-dollar deal. The beneficiary of the deal was his son, the owner of several mansions in Lakhta, now allegedly participating in the war against Ukraine, Pavel Prigozhin.

“Vorstka” has at its disposal documents from the Federal Tax Service for 2020. In them, “Verstka” discovered that Prigozhin Jr. is an employee of the Biznesprof company, which bought the building of the Sinop business center in St. Petersburg . In accordance with them, Pavel received his salary in this structure. His annual income there amounted to 31.7 million rubles. The date of birth of the Biznesprof employee completely coincides with the date of birth of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s son. And his tax service indicates MIFNS No. 16, located on Vasilievsky Island, where the newly minted billionaire lives.

Currently, several offices are available for rent in the Sinop business center - at prices ranging from 357 thousand to 5.5 million rubles per month.

The Biznesprof company did not answer calls and messages from the publication. Pavel Prigozhin also did not respond to the “Vestki” message sent to the messenger.

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In January, Prigozhin announced an end to public criticism of the St. Petersburg governor. This happened almost immediately after President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the Northern capital to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad. According to Vorstka’s source in parliament, during the visit Putin could communicate not only with Beglov, but also with the head of the Wagner PMC. However, the silence of the “Kremlin chef” lasted only a few days. Already on January 28, a new derogatory post addressed to the mayor appeared in the telegram channel “Prigozhin’s Cap” (the answers from the Concord press service are published here) with the words of Prigozhin: “I knew Menshikov, I know Elizarov. Who is Beglov?

“Prigozhin acts in the logic that now no one will do anything to him at all. Well, excuse me, he is probably the only person now who is not afraid . “He, on the contrary, has been building the image of a man without borders for a long time and demonstrably,” an interlocutor close to the administration of St. Petersburg told VERSTKA, “and what’s next... It seems that Prigozhin’s forecast is that there will be further events of this format, that all this is no longer important.”

Cover photo: Dmitry Osinnikov

Ilya Davlyatchin (“We Can Explain”), Maria Ilyina (“Layout”)