Clan purge

Over the past two years, every tenth mayor and dozens of officials have been arrested in the Moscow region. What's happening and why

“Thirteen officials from the governor’s team have been arrested, criminal cases have been opened, in this situation Vorobyov needs to resign,” a resident of Korolev responded on a social network to the plan pushed by the governor of the Moscow region to build a highway through the Losiny Ostrov national park. Accusations of widespread corruption of the team are increasingly heard against Andrei Vorobyov. Some have already counted 13 people arrested, others - 19. However, how many of them actually are is not known for certain.

Since the beginning of 2022, dozens of officials at various levels have been arrested in the region on corruption charges. Heads of local governments, members of the regional government, heads of Moscow region departments of federal departments. In the past two years, the heads of six of the city's 57 districts have been charged under these articles. Every tenth!

The arrests of the heads of districts in the Moscow region are not surprising: in 2019 alone, five were closed at once. But it’s hard to remember when, in the same year, two first deputy chairmen of the regional government, a department director, a minister, and several deputies were sent to jail at once.

There is much in common in the arrests of officials: almost all of them were detained with the participation of the FSB, the deputy was arrested first, then the first person was arrested, and in most cases they were charged with Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (taking a bribe).

“The Vorobievskys are being purged after Shoigu’s resignation,” explain those observing Moscow region politics. However, this version does not include arrests until May 2024, when Sergei Shoigu, considered the patron of Governor Andrei Vorobyov, was removed from the post of Minister of Defense. What is happening in the region - the fight against corruption or purges?

Bastrykin's pride

“The total amount of bribes amounted to more than 170 million rubles, and Strigunkova kept 70% for herself,” the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, told RIA Novosti in an interview dedicated to World Anti-Corruption Day. In it, he spoke about the most resonant cases of his department, including two persons involved from the Moscow region: former first deputy chairmen of the regional government Svetlana Strigunkova and Ilya Bronstein.

When in January 2024, the FSB detained the deputy head of the regional Ministry of Health, Alexander Zakharov, on charges of receiving bribes on an especially large scale (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), almost no attention was paid to the news. At the ministry, Zakharov was responsible for major repairs and maintenance of health care institutions. When, at the end of March, the first deputy chairman of the government, Svetlana Strigunkova, resigned of her own free will, people became wary. It was she who oversaw the health care unit, and before that, from January 2020 to February 2022, she headed the regional Ministry of Health. A month later, Strigunkova was detained for bribes (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ). According to the investigation, in 2021–2023, the official regularly received kickbacks from the owners of construction companies in the amount of 5–10% of the amount of government contracts for the repair of medical institutions. The mediator was Deputy Minister Alexander Zakharov, who previously worked at the Capital Repair Fund of the Moscow Region and knew all the contractors well. Later, security forces will also come to this department.

“Large sums of cash, many luxury items and valuables,” the Investigative Committee circulated a media report about the findings in Strigunkova’s house during the search. Citing sources, telegram channels near Moscow wrote that security forces have “a number of questions” for at least several regional government ministers.

They didn’t say who exactly, but the same week ex-Minister of Energy Alexander Samarin was arrested. Governor Vorobyov dismissed him from the ministers and appointed him as his adviser even before the end of the communal collapse in freezing Podolsk. He was given full responsibility for the January housing and communal services problems in the Moscow region. The ex-minister was charged with abuse of power (Part 3 of Article 285 of the Criminal Code). By the way, Roman Ryazantsev, the deputy head of the district for housing and communal services, who signed the act of checking the district’s readiness for the heating season, was also arrested for the collapse of heating in Podolsk.

In September 2024, security officials came with questions to the first deputy chairman of the Moscow region government, Ilya Bronstein, who was responsible for the spheres of education, culture, physical culture and sports, as well as landscaping. He was accused of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). As Alexander Bastrykin reported, Bronstein, through the rector of the Corporate University for Educational Development Andrei Lubsky, received 25 million rubles from the general director of the Prosveshchenie-Region trading house, Irina Savenkova. She paid the bribe to obtain a $742 million contract to purchase interactive panels for educational institutions and for general patronage. At the end of November, state agencies reported that Ilya Bronstein fully admitted guilt in the bribery case.

The arrest of Bronstein and his accomplices was widely covered in the media. They talked about “significant sums and luxury items” allegedly discovered during the search, but without citing a source, and experts speculated about how the arrest of the second deputy chairman in a year would affect Andrei Vorobyov’s position. He himself did not react to the arrests.

“It’s strange why the governor doesn’t say anything, because this is his team, his people whom he appointed?” - residents of the Moscow region were surprised in comments to the news. And they drew a parallel with the Ministry of Defense, where the deputy minister stole billions, and the minister had nothing to do with it.

The governor also did not react to the detentions of the heads of municipalities, his appointees, two of whom had worked with him since 2014, and the third since 2016.

Embezzlers and patrons

“Alyosha was not taken as harshly as Furgal,” commented the Typichnaya Shatura telegram channel on video footage of the detention of the head of the city district, Alexei Artyukhin, on July 17. In the video, the UAZ “Patriot” blocked the exit of the parking lot to an SUV, which was inspected by people in bulletproof vests and balaclavas, and the head of the district stood with his hands on the roof of the car.

Alexey Artyukhin is one of six heads of municipalities arrested in the last two years. In the Moscow region, the interests of various groups, federal and regional, intersect, each trying to put its own person in the district. Three of the prisoners - Artyukhin, ex-head of the Leninsky district Alexey Spassky and ex-head of Dolgoprudny Vladislav Yudin - were not just part of Andrei Vorobyov’s team, but were his “old guard”: two had worked with him since 2014, Spassky since 2016 .

“Vorobiev was on good terms with Artyukhin. I heard that he always called him by name - Lesha,” said municipal deputy from Shatura Anatoly Galkin.

Artyukhin is accused of embezzlement of more than 220 million rubles. (Part 4 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to investigators, in April 2020 he entered into an agreement to provide grants for the construction of a water intake unit on the territory of the Osanovo-Dubovoye technology park, but 220 million rubles were allocated from the budget. Artyukhin, together with the persons under his control, squandered it. They allegedly provided loans to commercial organizations, paid for the leasing of vehicles and purchased real estate, the prosecutor's office specified . The controlled persons - deputy head of housing and communal services Mikhail Kartsev and head of the department Karasev - were also detained. A week before his arrest, Artyukhin announced his resignation on his page, admitting that the decision “was not easy.”

The public welcomed Artyukhin’s detention: “They put him in jail, it serves him right.” The arrest caused bewilderment among informed people. In conversations with Novaya, officials and deputies who worked in local authorities over the years spoke of Artyukhin as an experienced, proactive and ambitious leader. Since 2014, he headed the Roshal district, and after its merger in 2020 with neighboring Shatura, he headed a new district. According to the interlocutor who occupied the highest positions, in Roshali no one could solve the problems with heat, but Artyukhin did. In Shatura, the heat supply was also put in order. “Alexey Vladimirovich inherited a city company with a debt of more than 1 billion, today the debt is less than 500 million, and it is decreasing,” said a former colleague.

“The previous head spent 15 years writing out money for the repair of treatment facilities, but Alexey came and a year later secured the allocation of 1.5 billion for their reconstruction. And everything works!” —

recalls one of the city leaders in the past. According to his information, Artyukhin’s predecessor, Andrei Keller, received those 200 wasted millions many years ago to create the Osanovo-Dubovoye technology park. The money had been in the bank for at least 10 years. With the arrival of Artyukhin, activities began to create a technology park, but archaeological objects were discovered in that place. “Apparently, someone advised to sell the money differently. But why were the deputies silent, since every change in the budget must be approved by the Council?” - my interlocutor is perplexed.

Artyukhin’s support from the SVO did not protect him from arrest either. According to a person from his team, 17 humanitarian convoys were sent with him, each convoy consisted of four or five filled gazelles. Alexey Artyukhin did not admit his guilt.

People were still wondering who the head of Shatura had crossed, when in August, like a bolt from the blue, Dmitry Akulov, who had been appointed head of Sergiev Posad only a year before, was brought in for questioning. Akulov is called the man of Sergei Pakhomov, former head of the Sergiev Posad region, and now chairman of the State Duma Committee on Construction and Housing and Communal Services.

Akulov did not return from interrogation. He was accused of receiving a bribe in the amount of more than 15 million rubles. (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). According to the investigation, from January 2019 to July 2024, Akulov received money from the director of the local MFC, Yulia Kaminskaya, for “general patronage and connivance in the service.” She allegedly fictitiously employed at least five “dead souls” in various positions at the MFC and received wages for them.

According to the Moscow Region Main Directorate of the Investigative Committee, over the years they were accrued just over 15 million rubles. Kaminskaya was detained several days earlier, and she testified against Akulov. In particular, she stated that at different times he received bribes of 100 thousand rubles for various illegal actions. TASS reported this in December on the eve of the next extension of the preventive measure for Akulov, who is in a pre-trial detention center.

During the search, no money was found on Akulov, since he spent almost all of it on buying copters and equipment for a sponsored unit in the Northern Military District, the prisoner’s relatives told local reporter Andrei Trofimov about this. Dmitry Akulov did not admit his guilt.

“How could Akulov receive money for general patronage and connivance in his service since 2019, if he became head only in mid-2023,” the villagers wondered on social networks.

“Why don’t they imprison those, because of whom we are collecting everything from the world, but Akulov, who carries these thermal imagers and electronic warfare systems, is imprisoned?” —

the local Z-public was surprised.

Akulov's arrest was seen as an attack on a State Duma deputy. “This story is not only about Akulov, but about a figure of a higher order, [Sergei] Pakhomov, the unofficial owner of the district,” says local politician Sergei Kryzhov, who lives in Sergiev Posad. Like many in the Moscow region, he considers Pakhomov as a possible candidate for the governor's seat after Andrei Vorobyov leaves.

“They cannot kick out Pakhomov himself, this requires the sanction of the chairman of the Investigative Committee, so they knock out his trusted person,” explains a well-known politician who asked not to be named, explaining the logic of the repressions. “They” are the security forces, the “office.” FSB.

"He was just knocked out"

Coincidence or not, two more heads of municipalities were arrested, whose names were mentioned as potential replacements for Vorobyov. But not from competing groups, but from among his trusted representatives.

At the end of 2023, the head of the Leninsky urban district, Alexei Spassky, was arrested. A day earlier, his first deputy, Albert Gravin, who was in charge of land issues, was detained. Both were charged with receiving a bribe on an especially large scale (Part 6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The media reported about fraud with land plots.

Spassky was considered a strong and experienced manager. He headed the first municipality, Kashira, in 2016, then briefly led the capital of the Moscow region, Krasnogorsk, and in 2021 he became the head of Leninsky. Being adjacent to the capital, the municipality was regularly ranked among the top five districts with the most expensive land.

For the last few years before his arrest, Spassky chaired the Council of Municipal Entities of the Moscow Region, and in August 2022, the energetic candidate of legal sciences was included in the new composition of the Council for the Development of Local Self-Government under the President of the Russian Federation.

Many in the district knew about Kibion ​​LLC, a cadastral company, the founder of which was Elmira Gravina, the wife of the deputy head. Her office was located in the MFC building in Vidnoye. As local residents say, the company specialized in changing the category of land - transferring agricultural land to land in populated areas, etc.

“Everyone in the city knew that Gravin was engaged in the resale of land. Did Spassky know what his first deputy was doing?” — Dmitry Gornostaev, a public figure from Leninsky, answered a question with a question.

In August 2024, hearings on the bribery case began in the Vidnovsky City Court. Alexei Spassky was not in the dock; only Albert Gravin and the mediator were sitting. The trial did not attract much attention, as another arrest occurred, this time on the opposite side of the Moscow Ring Road. Security forces detained the charismatic head of Dolgoprudny, Vladislav Yudin. At the very beginning of his governorship, Andrei Vorobyov dragged the Moscow Regional Duma deputy into the executive branch, and he headed first the Taldomsky district, and then the district. In a conversation, familiar officials and deputies said that he literally transformed the dull city. Therefore, hardly anyone was surprised when Yudin went for a promotion, becoming the head of Dolgoprudny. In September 2024, he was accused of fraud and abuse of power (Part 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Part 2 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) during the period when he worked in Taldom.

According to investigators, in 2015, Yudin transferred the city boiler houses free of charge to his affiliated commercial company, Vector LLC. As a result, the district budget did not receive about 4 million rubles from unpaid rent, reports the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for the Moscow Region. And when the company accumulated about 40 million debts for the supply of energy resources, the head ordered its transfer to a municipal enterprise. As a result, the company's debts were covered from the budget.

People who know the system were perplexed by the accusation. “How is it that they were silent for nine years, did not see the fraud, and suddenly they saw it?” - the former head of one of the Moscow region municipalities sneers. According to him, each head and his deputies are usually checked by the Main Control Directorate of the Moscow Region - “they shake and shake for every budget ruble spent.” There are fines for misuse of budget funds. He himself was fined almost every year as head.

He suggests that Yudin had a “roof” in the person of Governor Vorobyov for nine years, and in 2024 it “leaked.”

A source well acquainted with Yudin said:

that the security forces came to the head of Dolgoprudny “with economic interest” and were promised that he would solve everything. The “decision” was fraught with the risk of being put behind bars for 15 years. Yudin refused, and then a case arose.

“This was one of the heads closest to Vorobyov, he was simply knocked out,” said a politician who had known him for many years.

On the eve of his arrest, Yudin wrote a letter of resignation, the Typical Dolgoprudny telegram channel reported . Other heads of state, as well as deputy prime ministers of the government - persons encumbered with powers and having the status of special subjects - did the same before the arrest. Apparently, only the governor could have asked them to do this after a visit from the security forces with materials from the folder.

Repairs on a particularly large scale

On the eve of the direct line with Vladimir Putin, several residents of Belozerskoye, a town more than 20 kilometers from Voskresensk near Moscow, recorded an unusual video message. In it, they asked the head of state to change the measure of restraint for the director of the Moscow Region Capital Repair Fund, Valery Nikolov, from a pre-trial detention center to house arrest. For some reason, they did not remember about another prisoner - the former head of their district, Artur Bolotnikov, who has been in a pre-trial detention center since April 2023.

Nikolov was detained on November 10, 2024, at the capital’s Sheremetyevo airport, from where he was planning to fly abroad. The head of the regional operator was charged with receiving bribes in the amount of 23 million rubles. From the general director of LLC "Multisystem" Dmitry Challya in the period from mid -2020 to December 2022. In the summer, under the same article 290 of the Criminal Code, the deputy director of the overhaul Fund Mstislav Dymnich was arrested, who soon pleaded guilty. By the way, the deputy minister Alexander Zakharov, who previously worked as the first deputy director of the FKR, used to be arrested in this case for rollbacks in the regional Ministry of Health.

The Moscow Office of the Overhaul - the subject of the special pride of Governor Vorobyov.

The regional program of overhaul of housing is the largest in the country, it does not tire of reminding it in his speeches. However, to the implementation of this program and the quality of repair, questions arose not only among residents.

The New Gazeta wrote about theft in the FKR by overestimation of the volumes of work performed in 2021. Then the entrepreneur and contractor of the Fund Ivan Molodtsov with documents in his hands spoke about the schemes for the theft of funds through “his” contractors, among whom he called the very Dmitry Chally and the associated companies - LLC “Multisystem” and LLC Fibrub concrete.

According to Molodtsov, he discovered multimillion -dollar posts at objects in Mytishchi and Khimki and for each episode filed applications to the police. During the audit, employees of the department for combating economic crimes revealed high work, falsification of signatures on acts of acceptance of work, receiving money on fictitious documents. Nevertheless, they did not find the grounds for initiating a criminal case.

Now it does not seem strange that for the “multisystem”, which overestimated the volume of work only at a house in Khimki for 25 million rubles, then the first deputy director of the overhaul foundation Alexander Zakharov himself and the director Valery Nikolov himself. The latter explained the overestimation of the work with a “technical error”.

After Nikolov’s arrest, information appeared that questions arose to the ex-director in connection with the expenditure of funds to restore Mariupol and Donbass. He did not admit his guilt. In January, he was extended by the term of detention.

Entrepreneur Dmitry Chaly remained free.

Cleaning or repression?

According to tradition, in December, on the International Corruption Day, the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, reports on the achievements to investigate crimes of a corruption orientation. For 11 months of 2024, 919 criminal cases were instituted. Among those sent to the court are dominated by giving and receiving a bribe, mediation in bribery. 535 people were prosecuted.

Compared to the previous year, the number of initiated cases of corruption increased by 53%, and the number of criminal liability brought to criminal liability by 14%. Over the three years, not only the number of cases of corruption has grown, but also the quality, more precisely, the status of the accused.

Some call the arrests of officials intra -elite repression, others - another campaign. Her scale contributed to her. “People have sharply aggravated by a sense of injustice and dissatisfaction is growing,” the ex-head of the municipality near Moscow shared his considerations. The accusation of corruption is fully consistent with the general conviction that all officials are stealing.

By whom the “rink” passes, depends on the layout in the vertical. With the resignation of Sergei Shoigu, the head of the chain of the chain began to clean up at all levels of his group: first the deputy minister, contractors of the Ministry of Defense, then officials of the Moscow region, who, before Andrei Vorobyov, headed the same Shoigu.

“There is compromising evidence for everyone. As soon as you reach a less or less noticeable level-the head of the department or the deputy, Daddy is formed on you, and when it is getting or not getting it, this is a question, ”-

The former official told.

According to our estimates, while daddy took at least 23 levels of level officials from the deputy city district to the first deputy chairman of the regional government.

Arrested officials of the Moscow region

• Strigunkova Svetlana, First Deputy Government

• Bronstein Ilya, First Deputy Government

• Samarin Alexander, Minister of Energy

• Zakharov Alexander, Deputy Minister of Health

• Nikolov Valery, Director of the Overhaul Fund of the Moscow Region

• Dymnich Mstislav, Deputy Director of the Overhaul Fund

• Ostashkin Victor, First Deputy Minister of Stroykompleks

Local government bodies

Bronnitsy

• Baturin Mikhail, First Deputy Head

Voskresensk

• Bolotnikov Arthur, head of the district

Dmitrovsky

• Ermakov Alexander, Director of the MAU "Capital Construction Management"

• Marco Yana , Head of the Administration Affairs Department

• Sentyurin Mikhail, Head of the Department of Physical Culture and Sports

Dolgoprudny

• Yudin Vladislav, Head of the District

Leninist

• Spassky Alexei, head of the district

• Gravin Albert, First Deputy

Fryazino

• Medvedev Dmitry, deputy head

Wedge

• Vinogradova Marina, Director of MKU "Center for Trading" (Rann of the Deputy Chapter)

Mytishchi

• Glinkin Evgeny, First Deputy Head

• Dunaev Kirill, deputy head

Podolsk

• Ryazantsev Roman, Deputy Head of Housing and Public Utilities

• Olkhovsky Sergey, Deputy Head for Housing and Public Utilities

Protvino

• Poyarkov Sergey, head

Sergiev Posad

• Akulov Dmitry, head of the district

Chekhov

• Akulichev Evgeny, Deputy Head for Housing

Shatura

• Artyukhin Alexey, Head of the district

• Mikhail Kartsev, Deputy Head

Local and regional management of federal structures

• Ladoshin Alexander, Director of the Department of Technological Anding of the branch of PJSC Rosseti Moscow Region

• Talaev Vladimir, Deputy Head of the Federal Penitentiary Service for the Moscow Region

Balashikha

• Antipov Mikhail, chief physician of the Balashikha central district hospital

Lyubertsy

• Sementsov Dmitry, chief physician of the Lyubertsy regional hospital

Leninist

• Grigorenko Roman, Head of the Vodilkovsky Police Department

Serpukhov

Kirsch Alexander, IFTS chief

Lakes

• Kamyshov Anatoly, former police chief of the Ozersky district, three times the ex-Zamglava

Podolsk

• Babakhshiev Ilham, Deputy Head from the Investigative Committee of the G.O. Podolsk

• Dzotttsoev Sergey, senior assistant prosecutor

Sergiev Posad

• Kavkayev Valery, head of the department of supervisory activities of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergencies in Sergiev Posad