The largest government contracts of 2024, worth more than 50 billion rubles, were awarded to a company that is backed by the interests of the oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, the “kings” of Russian Railways government contracts Alexei Krapivin and the fugitive Boris Usherovich - co-owners of Group 1520. 

While Boris Usherovich , who was involved in the high-profile case of “Colonel Zakharchenko,” is hiding from investigation abroad, his partner in 1520 Krapivin continues to draw from the budget trough through major government construction contracts in the common interests. 

On March 25, 2024, the most expensive government contract of this year was signed - almost 40 billion rubles - for the construction of a new transport highway with a bridge across the river. Neva in the alignment of B. Smolensky Ave. - st. Kollontai. The deadline is October 2029. For some reason, an application for such a tasty morsel came from only one company - JSC Roads and Bridges (DiM).

Photo: zakupki.gov.ru

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Also in February 2024, a contract for 2.6 billion rubles was signed with the same JSC Roads and Bridges for another part of the work on the same facility. 

Photo: zakupki.gov.ru

In February 2024, a tender was also held for the reconstruction of the lobby of the Frunzenskaya station with the complete replacement of escalators and the creation of a unified metro dispatch center of the State Unitary Enterprise "Petersburg Metro". The starting price of the lot is 9.4 billion rubles. And again the same JSC was declared the winner. 

At the same time, the “daughter” of DiM itself participated as a competitor. Government customers have a strange idea of competition, don’t you think? In our opinion, it would be a good idea for the FAS to check this tender.

Photo: zakupki.gov.ru

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Thus, in just a few months, DiM received contracts worth more than 50 billion rubles. In general, over the four years of its existence, the joint-stock company has enriched itself under government contracts by over 247 billion rubles. Who did the budget benefit?

Money to money

At the end of 2023, the main shareholder of DiM was JSC Natsproektstroy Group of Companies. 

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GC “Natsproektstroy” was positioned as of January 2023 as a joint infrastructure venture created with the participation of Arkady Rotenberg. The company’s shareholders are not disclosed, but the fact that the share of the same “subsidiary” LLC Transstroymekhanizatsiya is pledged to VEB speaks, at a minimum, of the state corporation’s interest in financing projects.  

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Moreover, even at the start of the creation of Natsproektstroy, in 2020, its future assets were estimated at 100 billion rubles.

In September 2023, RBC reported that the owner of VEB’s 48% share in Natsproektstroy would be the 1520 group, the main construction contractor of Russian Railways. 

The director and owner of the share (both personally and through the closed mutual fund managed by his company) in the group is Alexey Krapivin, the son of an old acquaintance of the ex-head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin. 

Krapivin is also a director at DiM and Natsproektstroy.

It is important to note that the fugitive Boris Usherovich still has a share in the 1520 group. 

Photo: rusprofile.ru 

Photo: rusprofile.ru

Let us recall that GK 1520, which designed and built infrastructure for Russian Railways, was called the “kings of government orders,” estimating its order portfolio in 2018 at 218 billion rubles. 

In addition to Usherovich and Krapivin, the owners of the group were Yuri Obodovsky and Valery Markelov. 

In 2018, Markelov was arrested in the case of ex-Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko, who was later sentenced to 13 years for bribery. Investigators believed that the lion’s share of the money discovered during the search was received by Zakharchenko from the largest contractor of Russian Railways. 

In 2023, Markelov died, but Usherovich was also involved in the case, who was put on the wanted list in the case of bribing a colonel for patronage of the alleged theft of more than 200 billion rubles from Russian Railways. 

As TASS reported, Usherovich left Russia for Turkey, having citizenship of Israel and Cyprus. But, judging by the fact that Usherovich still has assets in Russian legal entities, he did not throw away his money. In the Russian Federation, his interests are represented by his son, Kirill Usherovich. 

And also, probably, not the last word goes to the business partner - Krapivin. After all, no one deprived Usherovich of his shares in joint assets, and Krapivin himself came out of that story unscathed.

While Usherovich is drinking Turkish coffee, Krapivin is working hard for the common good, getting closer and closer to such a familiar and tasty budget box. 

And he does this, as we can judge, not without the help of Rotenberg with injections from the state corporation VEB (it’s not for nothing that the shares were pledged to him). 

Thus, in 2023, the former “subsidiaries” of 1520 were promptly transferred under the wing of the National Proektstroy Group of Companies with the pledge of VEB’s shares, including LLC “UK Bamstroymekhanizatsiya” (a business portfolio for government contracts worth 8 billion rubles), LLC FSK “Mostootryad-47” "(government contracts for 10.6 billion rubles, the main customer is JSC RZDstroy with 7 billion rubles of orders), LLC OSK 1520 (government contracts for 109 billion rubles, of which with JSC RZDstroy for 87 billion rubles), and also companies without collateral of shares of the state corporation: Mostootryad-55 LLC, Mostootryad-49 LLC (contracts for 4.7 billion rubles, all with JSC Rzhdstroy), Mostootryad-50 LLC (contracts for 405 million rubles, all from RZDstroy). These assets were followed by “subsidiary” assets, which essentially brought them out of the toxic group 1520, which was exposed in the scandalous case, under the wing of Natsproektstroy. But the final beneficiaries remain the same. 

Photo: rusprofile.ru  

Photo: rusprofile.ru  

By the way, we won’t be surprised if in the end the interest of the same fugitive Usherovich is hidden behind a closed mutual fund. One company for managing a closed mutual fund, Armus Capital Management Company LLC, was bought by Krapivin in December 2023, and in May 2023, a similar asset, NIT Management Company LLC, was acquired by Usherovich’s son.

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Speaking about the 1520 group, we cannot ignore the multi-billion dollar concession for the Northern Latitudinal Railway, the project of which has been the subject of fuss for several years now. It is planned to pour billions of budget rubles into the project. And then group 1520 ended up here.

In 2018, a concession agreement was signed for the construction of the Obskaya - Salekhard - Nadym railway line in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (part of the latitudinal track project). The concessionaire was SSHH LLC. Today, the owners of this LLC are JSC Russian Railways Infrastructure Projects (99.98%), the Agency for Infrastructure Development of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (entered in July 2023, share - 0.01%) and a certain LLC Management Company SSHKh with a share of 0.01 %. 

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LLC Management Company "SShKh", estimated at 1.1 billion rubles, was owned by LLC "Spetstransstroy" until November 2019. The owner of the latter from June 2016 to September 2019 was Yuri Reilyan, deputy head of the Ministry of Regional Development and the Ministry of Construction of the Russian Federation. 

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Reylyan, together with former Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Vladimir Tokarev, is a defendant in a criminal case regarding the theft of 400 million rubles under a Russian Railways project. Also in April 2023, hearings began on another episode involving Reylyan and other defendants. We are talking about the theft of 1.5 billion rubles during the execution of contracts with Russian Railways, one of the largest contractors of which was Spetstransstroy.  

Now Reilyan’s former asset will work for the no less odious group 1520. 

It turns out that Usherovich, who is wanted in Russia in a criminal case, will receive billions of rubles in the form of dividends from government contracts. After all, no one deprived him of his share in the 1520 group, which became a shareholder of Natsproektstroy, which owns DiM. 

Doesn’t it seem to the Investigator that this story smells bad, and it looks like a very cynical mockery of the investigation?