Resignations on their own are unlikely to save the customs elite from an exciting journey to the bunk. And the impossible is possible: in what state does Belyaninov leave customs? Where is Belyaninov now?
Last week, the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrei Belyaninov, who was visited by FSB officers with searches in connection with the case of alcohol smuggling, left his post. Searches were also carried out in the offices of the Arsenal insurance company and the apartment of its co-owner Sergei Lobanov, whom investigators consider to be a participant in illegal schemes for the supply of goods to Russia. Judging by the structure of his business, Mr. Lobanov preferred to act formally as a minority shareholder, but worked with serious partners - among them there were large Russian and Moldovan businessmen.
While investigators, using cameras, were studying the contents of drawers and cabinets in the country house of now ex-head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov, another group of their colleagues was seizing documents from the offices of Arsenal Insurance Company LLC. As Kommersant’s interlocutors in the Investigative Committee (IC) explained at the time, it was no coincidence that Mr. Lobanov became interested in them, since “he was the founder of at least 15 different companies, the activities of which are closely related to the Federal Customs Service of Russia.” “During the searches, objects and documents relevant to the investigation of the criminal case were seized,” said Vladimir Markin, an official representative of the Investigative Committee, on Tuesday.
We are talking about a criminal case in which Dmitry Mikhalchenko, an influential St. Petersburg businessman and owner of the Forum holding, became a defendant. He is accused of smuggling elite alcohol, and investigators are confident that the case could not have happened without customs officers. The criminal scheme, according to the Investigative Committee, involved the company Contrail Logistics North-West and its co-owner Anatoly Kindzersky, who has already made a deal with the investigation. In his testimony, he allegedly said that his company received the status of an authorized economic operator, which allows minimizing the time and cost of customs operations. According to investigators, Sergei Lobanov assisted in the implementation of the schemes. Kommersant tried to figure out how the latter’s business works and who else is among his partners.
"Seventh water on jelly"
The first point that needs to be clarified: the majority of the media made a mistake from the very beginning by calling Sergei Lobanov a former adviser to Andrei Belyaninov. In fact, since 2013, the adviser to the head of the Federal Customs Service has been Sergei Viktorovich Lobanov, who previously headed the main organizational and inspection department in the service.
The co-owner of the Arsenal insurance company is Sergei Yuryevich Lobanov. Little is known about him. A year ago, in an investigation into the inheritance of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rostek, Vedomosti sources called Mr. Lobanov the son-in-law of Andrei Belyaninov - the husband of his daughter Svetlana (Vedomosti also traced the connection in the past of some structures in which Sergei Lobanov participates with the business of Andrei Belyaninov's wife Lyudmila). Arsenal itself, however, denied this. The Omsk-Inform agency recently conducted its own investigation and is already connecting Sergei Yuryevich Lobanov with Sergei Viktorovich, claiming that both come from Omsk. Kommersant’s sources who worked with Sergei Yuryevich Lobanov note: “There were rumors that they were relatives with Belyaninov, but the seventh water is on jelly. So it never sounded like a son-in-law.”
In any case, the allegedly extensive customs-related holding of 15 companies mentioned by investigators, based on data from kartoteka.ru, looks like some exaggeration, although Sergei Lobanov found very interesting past and present partners.
Mr. Lobanov, judging by information from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, became a shareholder of Arsenal Insurance Company LLC (they declined to comment) in January 2011 through Eloko LLC, receiving 49%. His partners in the insurance business were Gennady Eliseev and Anatoly Sandimirov, the current general director of Arsenal. Since then, the structure of LLC owners has changed several times, and today Sergei Lobanov, through Arsenal-Capital LLC, owns 33.2%.
Messrs. Lobanov and Sandimirov are also partners in another insurance business - Arsenal MS LLC, where they own 70% and 30%, respectively. We are talking about the renamed Crimean Medical Insurance Company, which Anatoly Sandimirov, a native of the RESO insurance group, registered in 2014. Then, in an interview with TASS, he claimed that he was creating the first medical insurance company on the peninsula. Sergey Lobanov became the main owner of Arsenal MS LLC at the beginning of 2015, the company is still engaged in compulsory health insurance in Crimea. Until the middle of last year, Mr. Sandimirov was Mr. Lobanov’s partner in his main holding company, Arsenal-Capital LLC, but then withdrew from its capital.
Minority shareholder for relations with customs
Arsenal-Capital was created in 2014, and since 2015 the company has become the center of the assets of a businessman, who consolidated 100% of it by December. Arsenal-Capital has 11 subsidiaries, and in most cases we are talking about minority stakes. Three of them are directly and obviously related to the customs business: Premier Finance LLC, OST-Terminal LLC and Opinter LLC. The first two are operators of temporary storage warehouses (TSW) in the Moscow region. The Kiev customs post is located on the territory of Premier Finance. "OST-Terminal" - temporary storage warehouse in Krasnoznamensk. “Opinter” is a customs representative “providing a full range of services.”
In all three companies, Arsenal-Capital's partners are Yaroslav Olegovich Potanin and Sergei Leonidovich Batekhin. According to Kommersant’s sources, we are talking about the younger brother of the co-owner and president of MMC Norilsk Nickel Vladimir Potanin and the senior vice president, head of the sales, commerce and logistics unit of the same company. In Premier Finance and OST-Terminal, Yaroslav Potanin has 28.8%, Sergei Batekhin has 51.2%, Arsenal-Capital owns 20% each. In Opinter, Sergei Lobanov’s company has 50%, Messrs. Potanin and Batekhin have 18% and 32%, respectively. On the Premier Finance website, M-Logistics LLC is listed as a customs broker. Its owner is the Cypriot Nakisha Holdings, which until the end of 2015 also owned Premier Finance.
Norilsk Nickel declined to comment. A Kommersant source familiar with the situation explained that we are talking about “the remains of a large logistics project that Interros (Vladimir Potanin’s holding) planned to develop. “Kommersant”) under the leadership of Sergei Batekhin." Indeed, in 2010, Interros, together with the Kratos group and Air Bridge Cargo, announced the construction of a cargo terminal in Sheremetyevo. The head of the Federal Air Transport Agency, Sergei Neradko and Andrei Belyaninov, also signed the agreement of intent to implement the project. A similar project was planned at the Krasnoyarsk Emelyanovo airport; Norilsk was to become the third support point in Russia.
As it turned out now, the plans were even broader and included, among other things, customs and logistics terminals outside airports, and this is how Premier Finance and OST-Terminal appeared. Their main shareholder was Vladimir Potanin, and his younger brother (as a financial investor) and Sergei Batekhin (as the main ideologist and driving force of the project) received minority shares. According to Kommersant's sources, at the same time Sergei Lobanov appeared among the partners - precisely through the insurance company Arsenal, which served participants in the customs business, providing guarantees. According to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, Mr. Lobanov’s first task and contribution to the business was financial and “core customs” services (that’s why Arsenal-Capital has half of Opinter, and only minority shares in the temporary storage warehouse), although he also contributed certain funds to projects.
Kommersant's interlocutors doubt that Sergei Lobanov was needed by the partners as a serious lobbyist, noting that Norilsk Nickel itself is a major subject of foreign economic activity and its managers and owners already have serious connections with customs. Sergey Lobanov acted as a “convenient and reliable industry partner.” His participation in business management was, Kommersant’s sources clarify, small, and the partners met infrequently. The scale of activity itself also turned out to be small: the turnover of each terminal is 250–300 million rubles. per year, although with a fairly high (about 50%) margin. Moreover, Interros failed to implement the large-scale logistics project as a result. The terminal at Sheremetyevo, key to the entire chain, had to be sold in 2013 to TPS Avia Holding of Arkady Rotenberg and Alexander Ponomarenko, who began a campaign to consolidate assets at the airport. After this, Vladimir Potanin began to exit all core assets. The terminal in Yemelyanovo was received by Kratos in 2015, and shares in small logistics assets were re-registered to Sergei Batekhin for sale. Changes in their shareholder structure in 2015, clarifies one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, are essentially deoffshorization; they occurred in connection with the adoption of the law on controlled foreign companies.
These assets no longer have anything to do with Norilsk Nickel and Vladimir Potanin. Negotiations with potential buyers, according to Kommersant’s sources, are ongoing, investigative actions have not yet been carried out at the enterprises, and the “customs case” has not affected their work.
Apparently, minority participation is one of Sergei Lobanov’s key tactics in business, including customs. Thus, among the subsidiaries of Arsenal-Capital is Alfa Trans LLC (29%), registered in the Smolensk region, which in 2013 provided services to customs for 84 thousand rubles, in 2015 - for 78.5 thousand rubles . The holding company also owns 40% in the customs broker Sintech (another 60% belongs to Nikolai Zhuravlev).
And already very small shares in Sergei Lobanov in a number of companies providing dry cleaning and cleaning services. According to kartoteka.ru, Arsenal-Capital owns 5% each in Rivest-Service LLC (established in 2003), Zheldor-Service LLC (in 2005) and Neva-Project LLC (also established in 2005). All companies actively work as government contractors, serving departmental sanatoriums, large hospitals and clinics. For example, Zheldor-Service earned 1.89 million rubles from government contracts in 2010, and by 2016 it had concluded contracts worth 5.76 million rubles. Neva-Project works with the state less successfully: if in 2010 contracts were concluded for more than 160 million rubles, then five years later - for only 212 thousand rubles. Rivest Service, which also serves institutions such as sanatoriums of the Federal Penitentiary Service, received contracts worth more than 4 million rubles in 2010, and at the beginning of 2016 alone - for 616 million rubles. These dry cleaners served, in particular, the Central Clinical Hospital of the Federal Customs Service.
Moldovan trace
Sergei Lobanov’s connection with Moldova was discovered in 2015. Formally, we are talking about business, but based on a number of indirect signs, it can be established that Mr. Lobanov is connected with an influential local oligarch, deputy chairman of the ruling Democratic Party, Vladimir Plahotniuc, who is considered the real leader of the country, although he has never held positions in the state structures of the republic.
The name of Mr. Lobanov first appeared in Moldova on October 23, 2015. Then the Cypriot Insidown LTD, which owns 39.2% of the bank’s shares, nominated four Russian citizens to the administrative council of one of the largest Moldovan banks - Victoriabank. The bank is still considered to be controlled by Vladimir Plahotniuc, who from April 2005 to May 2006 was deputy chairman of its administrative council, and from May 2006 to January 2011 - chairman of the bank's board. Candidates from Insidown then became Advisor to the President for Finance of the Russian insurance company Arsenal Alisa Aladinskaya, Chief of Staff of the President of Arsenal and General Director of Arsenal-Capital Maria Vanchikova, Advisor to the President of Arsenal and General Director of Pravda-Capital LLC (at 100 % belongs to Sergei Lobanov) Stepan Zhuravlev, as well as Deputy General Director for Legal Affairs of SVTS Group and head of the legal department of the management company LAMA (Sergei Lobanov has an LLC with the same name) Natalya Lobanova.
All, except the last one, were elected to the administrative council of the bank, but never submitted documents to the Moldovan National Bank for approval in their positions. As a result, on July 8, Victoriabank held an extraordinary meeting of shareholders. At this meeting, Sergei Lobanov himself was elected to the administrative council from Insidown, as well as the ex-head of the Tax Service of Moldova, Ion Prisecaru, and the head of the administrative council of the Hendrix-Bail trading house, Andrei Cojocaru. They have not yet submitted documents to the National Bank for approval as members of the council.
Before being elected to the bank’s administrative council, Sergei Lobanov spoke very vaguely about his relationship with Insidown. “Back in the summer, I submitted an application to the National Bank to obtain permission to purchase Insidown’s share (in Victoriabank). But so far I have not received an answer,” he said in the fall of 2015 in a comment to the Moldovan resource NewsMaker. When asked how one could then explain the nomination of people working at Arsenal to the administrative council of Victoriabank, he then replied: “They probably liked them.”
Now it turns out that it is Mr. Lobanov who is behind Insidown. The question is whether this is actually true. Inside is a company with an extremely complicated history. Formed on December 6, 2010. The founders are two other residents of Cyprus: Belserve Consultants Limited and Vaspaco Properties Limited, registered in 2006 and 1988, respectively, to individuals Marsa Kallesi, Maria Papapavlou, Irina Hanna. Victoriabank Insidown acquired shares on November 13, 2014 in small blocks of up to 5%. The permit was issued by the National Bank of Moldova. According to documents submitted to the National Bank at the time, the ultimate owner of Insidown was German citizen dentist Peter Paul Fischer (Fischer Geb. Tabsch Peter Paul).
Kommersant's interlocutors close to Victoriabank, long before the nomination of Sergei Lobanov's people to the bank's administrative council, said that they did not believe that the dentist was the ultimate beneficiary of the company, and claimed that the owner of Arsenal was behind Insidown. According to them, the intermediary in the deal to purchase bank shares offshore was a Moldovan businessman, the husband of the Russian singer Jasmine, Ilan Shor, who has very extensive connections in Russian government circles.
A good idea of the level of contacts of Mr. Shor is given by his wife’s Instagram - there you can find pictures of the Shor couple at various celebrations with the participation of the former manager of the President of the Russian Federation, and now assistant to the head of state Vladimir Kozhin, and the honorary president of the Russian Olympic Committee Leonid Tyagachev. According to Kommersant, Mr. Shor maintained relations with the now former chief customs officer of Russia. The latter, being on good terms with the leadership of Kyrgyzstan, allegedly assisted the Moldovan entrepreneur when he decided to open duty-free shops at the airports of Bishkek and Osh. Shops are open and working.
Now Ilan Shor is in a pre-trial detention center in Chisinau on charges of involvement in the “theft of the century” - the withdrawal in 2014 of an amount equivalent to $1 billion from Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Sociala controlled by him. Last fall - before being arrested - Ilan Shor testified against former Moldovan Prime Minister Vladimir Filat, who was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for corruption. Most of all, his long-time and main enemy, Vladimir Plahotniuc, was interested in the imprisonment of Mr. Filat. By the way, last year Mr. Shor was banned from entering Russia. Kommersant’s interlocutor in the Russian government claims that the ban is due to the fact that the businessman “corrupts everyone he sees” and poses a threat to national security.
There is another detail in the Insidown story that indicates that this company is not a stranger to Vladimir Plahotniuc. NewsMaker discovered that people from the oligarch's entourage are associated with Insidown. The domain insidown.com, identical to the name of the offshore, was registered in German jurisdiction by Moldavian citizen Mihai Kukos. Mr. Cucos, according to the tax office database, represents the interests of the company Finpar Invest, which owns the land on which the Chisinau Nobil Hotel, owned by Vladimir Plahotniuc, was built. The domain insidown.com was registered to the Cyprus offshore company Insidown on February 2, 2015. The company is registered in the German domain registration and management system Key-Systems GMBH in the name of the aforementioned Peter Paul Fischer. Although Mr. Fischer is listed as the domain registrar, in the “registrar email address” column it says [email protected]. According to the MoldData.md database, the econet.md domain is registered in the name of Mihai Cucos from the email address [email protected]. Mihai Kukos himself told reporters that he did not remember whether he registered this domain.
The real role of Sergei Lobanov in Moldovan business remains unclear. According to Novaya Gazeta, we are talking about joint projects with Ilan Shor, which have some connection with the customs business, including transportation projects, supplies of Moldovan goods to Russia and the organization of duty free stores at road checkpoints across the border.
Business Department; Vladimir Solovyov, Inna Kyvirzhik, Chisinau
Undercover intrigues in the case of the country's former chief customs officer.
In July last year, operatives from the FSB's Internal Security Directorate (USB) came to search the then head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrei Belyaninov. Photos from Belyaninov’s house, in which he, in a tracksuit, was taking out shoe boxes with cash from the mezzanine, instantly spread across the Internet and became the main topic of news broadcasts on federal television.
At that time, few people doubted that the broadcast of the interior of Belyaninov’s house in the context of news about a criminal case was standard information support for a further “landing.” These are the laws of the genre: if footage of a search is shown on TV, the hero of the plot will most likely exchange his mansion for a cell in the Lefortovo detention center.
However, contrary to established practice, no charges were brought against Belyaninov - the next day he submitted his resignation, and information about the search disappeared from news reports.
Since then, television has returned to the customs topic twice. First, on December 1, 2016, during the President’s address to the Federal Assembly, when Vladimir Putin addressed the audience: “Unfortunately, it has become our practice to raise information noise around so-called high-profile cases. And representatives of investigative and law enforcement agencies often sin with this. I would like to draw your attention to this. The fight against corruption is not a show” (at that moment the camera captured the figure of Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev). Then on December 23, during the annual press conference: “There was no case against Belyaninov. And the pre-investigation actions and searches published in the media are unacceptable!”
Such a speech by the president left no doubt: the search in Andrei Belyaninov’s house, which led to his resignation, pursued a number of goals that were not brought to the attention of the public.
Six months later, we fill the gap and reveal the circumstances of the investigative actions in the house of the former head of the Federal Customs Service.
Why the search was carried out on the eve of the meeting of the head of the Federal Customs Service with the president, how it led to the resignation of influential Lubyanka generals and the actual collapse of the most powerful FSB service, and why the Investigative Committee continues to investigate a case in which people from the inner circle of the ex-head of customs may be involved.
...At the beginning of September last year, Alexey Efimov, senior investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigation Department (GID) of the Investigative Committee for Moscow, came to the Medved detention center. By that time, Lieutenant General of the Customs Service Alexey Shashaev, a close comrade of the recently retired head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov, had been in custody for a little over a month and therefore perceived the young “important” with alarm. In July, the general was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of fraud, and before leaving for a colony, which was preceded by the consideration of an appeal in the Moscow City Court, he did not count on another meeting with the investigative authorities.
However, this young investigator was very different from those who had recently sent him to prison: he politely apologized for the concern, inquired about his well-being and conditions of detention, and offered to smoke.
Gradually, the conversation between the investigator and the prisoner on abstract topics began to flow into an interrogation, from which Shashaev became clear about the reason for Efimov’s visit: the Investigative Committee resumed the investigation of the criminal case concerning the execution of a contract for the development of complex software for the needs of the Federal Customs Service. Shashaev, who signed the certificate of completion of work under this contract, should have been questioned as a witness.
Oleg Shashaev
The general did not have time to be upset by this circumstance - the very first questions on the merits of the matter returned him to working condition. Difficult-to-pronounce phrases like “integrated components,” which seemed to the investigator to be part of a tongue twister, for Shashaev were more like control words that triggered the thought process.
When the interrogated person realized that he was speaking to the investigator in different languages, he took a piece of paper and began to draw a diagram. The art lessons lasted more than three hours, during which investigator Efimov listened carefully to the general. “If I were free, I would have brought this matter to the end,” Shashaev said at the end of the interrogation and carefully expressed surprise at the sudden renewed interest of the Investigative Committee in information support for customs authorities. And the investigator, who had previously preferred not to discuss the reasons for the resumption of the investigation, this time for some reason said: “You understand, the war of the special services continues.”
Conspiracy of the Generals
On July 21, 2016, the senior command staff of the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB carefully studied photographs of a land plot taken from a quadcopter flying over the elite Konakovo district of the Tver region. There was sorely not enough time even for the prompt identification of the object of interest, as some operatives of the FSB Internal Security Service would later explain - they were given less than a week to prepare the search.
The operational task itself also looked ridiculous - to confiscate everything of high value.
True, for the service’s operators, who took part in almost all the high-profile arrests of federal and regional officials in recent years, the rich interiors of huge mansions have long turned into ordinary decorations - without the help of experts, they have already learned to distinguish expensive paintings from fakes, and unique jewelry from cheap jewelry.
The target of the upcoming “raid,” who was supposed to be the head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov, also did not evoke any emotions among the FSB officers. You never know there were such people - former governor of the Sakhalin region Alexander Khoroshavin with kilograms of gold jewelry, ex-head of the Komi Republic Yuri Gaizer with countless houses and apartments. As one of the officers explains, “everyone looks the same.”
Another thing is the powerful generals of Lubyanka, who dreamed of reaching out to their own multi-page certificates on “red forms” with a blank resolution - a signature on familiarization, without instructions on further actions. of the country's official customs officer for the last four years. Over the past few months, at least twice, they reported to the president about violations in the customs system, but in response they received
And just the day before, the head of the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB, Colonel Ivan Tkachev, was finally given an order to prepare a search of Andrei Belyaninov. The first steps of the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB were reminiscent of organizing the filming of a television reality show: both houses, apartments and Belyaninov’s office in the Federal Customs Service building on Novozavodskaya Street were equipped with means of objective control, and all contacts and movements of the “object” were reported online “ up."
The FSB seemed to have enough reasons to invade the related intelligence service - customs was rocked by high-profile corruption scandals, mainly related to the work of the North-West Customs Administration (NWCU). A smuggling channel was opened in the NWTU zone of influence, as a result of which some major business players were imprisoned.
It was the case of the illegal import of several batches of alcohol under the guise of construction sealant, which was investigated in the central office of the Investigative Committee, and should have become the basis for operational investigative actions in the Federal Customs Service. And the senior investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee, Sergei Novikov, who often investigated cases together with the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB, signed a decree to carry out urgent investigative actions in the home of Andrei Belyaninov.
“There was no time to wait for a court sanction for a search,” explains the FSB officer, referring to the short time frame of the operation.
Exactly a week later, on July 27, 2016, Andrei Belyaninov was scheduled to have a personal meeting with President Vladimir Putin, at which the head of customs planned to discuss his future.
Andrei Belyaninov had several employment options, according to a government official and an employee of the presidential administration who knew him. The most likely one is the management bodies of Vnesheconombank. “Andrei once mentioned that he could head the state bank if the president gives the go-ahead,” a federal official familiar with Belyaninov indirectly confirms this.
The transition of high-ranking security officials to the banking business has not been surprising for a long time, but in the case of Belyaninov it even seemed logical. The head of the Federal Customs Service, who in the 80s was responsible for the material support of the Soviet station in East Germany through the First Main Directorate of the KGB, connected part of his life with the financial market: in the period 1992–1999 he headed REA Bank and Novikombank, then founded his own Nefteprombank.
However, state banks were far from the only potential place of work for Andrei Belyaninov. According to an employee of the presidential administration, for some time Belyaninov was considered for the post of head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which was preparing the resignation of Mikhail Fradkov.
“Belyaninov, scandals aside, is a biting and conflict-ridden campaigner. This set of qualities corresponded to the priority tasks of the service - monitoring meetings of Russian officials abroad, searching for their assets, etc. And the president needs people who serve and report objective information, and not huddled together and led by the nose,” says an employee of the presidential administration.
One way or another, Andrei Belyaninov did not have time to discuss his new work with Vladimir Putin: in the early morning of July 26 - the day before the scheduled meeting - three FSB task forces raided the building on Novozavodskaya Street and two country houses of the head of customs.
Andrey Belyaninov
"Button" for the President
Andrei Belyaninov, according to an FSB officer, was caught by special forces while fishing.
For several days now, the head of the Federal Customs Service has been on official leave, which he spent at his dacha in Konakovo. The FSB knew this very well, so at 5:00 they sent several Volkswagen minibuses there.
After a short argument, Belyaninov was put in one of them and taken to the New Moscow area, where his main place of residence was located. One of the operatives recalled that both mobile phones were immediately confiscated from the head of customs, and upon arrival at the main home they began to inventory the main valuables - cash (in total, more than 66 million rubles were seized in various currencies), four paintings, two icons and a rare books “The Sacred Coronation. Alexander II."
Photos of the seized money, jewelry and paintings, taken by one of the members of the task force, even before the end of the search, spread across the Internet and federal television channels: all day long, news stories talked about the luxurious life of yet another official caught in the FSB network. As midnight approached, television loosened its grip. “Apparently, the president turned on the TV for the first time at that time,” says an entrepreneur familiar with Belyaninov with irony.
“This is a rare case of disruption of the state mechanism. “The TV “button” was turned on not just without the president’s knowledge, but in spite of him,” confirms an employee of the presidential administration and recalls Vladimir Putin’s reaction to the searches during his address to the Federal Assembly: “In recent years, the President has been writing some of the texts during such events himself, by hand. I also wrote this part [about Belyaninov]. No wonder. After such stories, people go to prison, and are not transferred to the personnel reserve. That’s the way it is.”
Photo of operational shooting during a search of the house of the head of the Federal Customs Service Belyaninov
Be that as it may, for Andrei Belyaninov this was no longer of fundamental importance. The game was played in one search - so a loyal member of the president’s team turned into a person publicly rejected by the system.
The defeat of the "six"
Quite surprisingly, the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Andrei Belyaninov did take place on the appointed day. According to an FSB officer, because of this, investigator Novikov even had to postpone the interrogation of the head of the FCS for a day.
The result of an hour-long conversation with the president was the natural resignation of Belyaninov and the approval of the candidacy of the new head of customs, who became the presidential plenipotentiary in the Northwestern Federal District (NWFD) Vladimir Bulavin, a former subordinate of the Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev. In October, after the expected resignation of Mikhail Fradkov, the SVR was headed by State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, on whose initiative a Duma structure was created that studied abuses and violations in Belyaninov’s department.
“Defeat comes after victory,” Andrei Belyaninov said at his farewell press conference.
The words of the now former head of Russian customs turned out to be prophetic: within a month, eleven high-ranking officials left the law enforcement unit - from the official representative of the Investigative Committee Vladimir Markin to one of the most influential generals of Lubyanka, deputy head of the FSB Internal Security Service Oleg Feoktistov. The first became deputy head of RusHydro, the second headed the security service of Rosneft.
It was Feoktistov, according to our sources, who, as the founder and curator of the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB, was one of the organizers of the search of Andrei Belyaninov.
Having gained fame through investigations of a number of high-profile criminal cases, the victims of which included the head of the operational support department of the Federal Drug Control Service Alexander Bulbov and the head of the GUEBiPK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Denis Sugrobov, General Feoktistov was considered the main contender for filling the post of head of the FSB Internal Affairs Directorate.
The 6th Service, which he supervised, almost immediately after his departure lost its status as the most dangerous unit of the FSB: first, the “six” was deprived of the right to wiretap telephone conversations, and then of other fundamental powers in carrying out operational investigative activities.
“This service will only be concerned with ensuring the physical safety of persons subject to state protection,” the FSB officer believes, adding that after a search in the house of the head of the FCS, operational support for most high-profile criminal cases began to be carried out by the 2nd Internal Security Service of the FSB, which competed with the “six”.
For some time, the prospects of the main executor of investigative actions in the Federal Customs Service, the head of the 6th Internal Security Service of the FSB, Ivan Tkachev, also looked vague. Shortly before the fatal search, Colonel Tkachev, who received the nickname Soldier from his colleagues for his unquestioning obedience to superior orders, was considered the main contender for replacing the post of head of Directorate “K” of the FSB SEB. This unit is engaged in counterintelligence support of the credit and financial sector and is considered the most significant in the economic security system - it, in particular, oversees the banking business and customs authorities.
It was this department that, on duty, fought with the department of Andrei Belyaninov, engaging in deep operational developments of his subordinates and initiating criminal cases.
At the end of September, Tkachev’s candidacy was nevertheless agreed upon by Presidential Assistant for Personnel Evgeniy Shkolov - and the most famous special officer of the Lubyanka was retrained as the chief financial counterintelligence officer.
In his new capacity, he will investigate a criminal case, the threads of which will again lead him to the office of the head of the Federal Customs Service.
Close circle
It is unknown what the fate of the former Soviet intelligence officer Alexei Shashaev would have been if he had not met Andrei Belyaninov in the early 90s. A graduate of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics of the KGB Higher School, Shashaev, unlike most of his classmates, after the collapse of the Soviet Union did not move towards free capital, but remained loyal to the state security agencies. At Lubyanka, according to retired FSB officers who knew him, he was remembered for his service discipline and naivety, unusual for a security officer. “He always believed in formal logic. This belief still prevents him from understanding why he is imprisoned,” one of them jokes.
Shashaev, the interlocutor continues, first met his future boss Andrei Belyaninov during a hike in the Moscow region to the Rozhaika River, where once a week people from the KGB liked to while away the weekend.
Quite quickly, FSB officer Shashaev and banker Belyaninov became friends. “They are both jokers. Wherever we rested - in the forest, on the Pirogovsky or Ruzsky reservoirs - Lesha and Andrey turned on the audience. Lesha was a full-time guitarist, Andrei loved to sing,” recalls an acquaintance of Shashaev.
Andrey Belyaninov and Alexey Shashaev during one of the hikes. Moscow region. Photo from Shashaev’s personal archive.
In 2001, the friendship grew into a service relationship: Alexey Shashaev, in the status of a career FSB officer, took the position of first deputy head of the information technology department of Rosoboronexport, which had recently been headed by Andrei Belyaninov.
And in 2006, he followed his friend to the Federal Customs Service, taking the post of head of the Main Directorate of Information Technologies (GUIT), where he was responsible for the technical support of the department.
Formally, at customs, Shashaev was subordinate to Belyaninov’s KGB colleague Vladimir Malinin, but in fact he worked with an eye on the Lubyanka who sent him. A year later, Shashaev would become the first career security officer to take off the shoulder straps of an FSB colonel and move to the customs service (where he would soon rise to the rank of lieutenant general).
“It was at that time that Belyaninov fought against the tutelage of counterintelligence officers, seeking the abolition of the institution of seconded employees in relation to the Federal Customs Service. At extended boards [of the FSB], he repeatedly stated that colleagues from neighboring services were interfering with the implementation of the tasks set by the president,” recalls a former high-ranking FSB officer.
It should be noted that Andrei Belyaninov’s complaints were not without basis - FSB officers formed the backbone of the law enforcement structures of the Main Directorate for Combating Smuggling and the Anti-Corruption Directorate of the Federal Customs Service.
Having achieved the expulsion of the seconded security officers, Belyaninov brought the entire fight against smuggling to himself, in particular, depriving the FSB of the operational and technical capabilities of customs. “By the end of 2011, Lubyanka completely lost its influence on processes within customs,” states the ex-FSB officer.
At the same time, the interlocutor continues, the special service strengthened measures to identify corruption-related crimes in the customs authorities: “The first sign of the impending storm was the activation of Voronin (former head of Directorate “K” of the SEB FSB - A.S.), who was generally associated with Belyaninov friendly relations. When Belyaninov expelled the seconded employees, he did not touch Voronin’s relative, who served in the USTM FTS (Department of Special Technical Measures - A.S.).
The mobilization of the security forces even affected the State Duma, which was loyal to the Federal Customs Service, within which a coordination council was created on problems of foreign economic activity. According to a former State Duma deputy, the initiative to create the council came from Speaker Sergei Naryshkin, and the FSB was responsible for the “substantial content” of the work of parliamentarians.
In the spring of 2012, a series of inspections and arrests began of employees of the Risk and Operational Control Department of the Federal Customs Service, the Logistics Support Department, the Central Customs Administration and regional customs offices, as well as cargo carriers associated with them.
The 7th Department of Directorate “K” of the SEB FSB, which directly supervised the work of customs authorities, quickly became the department’s record holder for the number of criminal cases initiated on the basis of materials from its operational employees.
Sometimes security officers provided operational information through colleagues from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to former employees of the GUEBiPK Ministry of Internal Affairs, on the basis of FSB materials, in the summer of 2012, on suspicion of commercial bribery, they detained an adviser to the subordinate Federal Customs Service FSUE ROSTEK, Alexander Romanov, a native of the 9th Directorate of the KGB and an old friend of Andrei Belyaninov.
According to investigators, Romanov, together with the management of one of the ROSTEC branches, illegally collected money from shippers for the smooth and expedited clearance of their goods. In 2014, Romanov was sentenced to five years in prison. And although Belyaninov’s name was not mentioned at the stage of the preliminary and judicial investigation, and he himself, after Romanov’s arrest, carried out a strict internal check, it became clear: the security forces were heading towards encircling the head of the Federal Customs Service.
Shashaev case
In the fall of 2013, the 7th Department of Directorate “K” of the SEB FSB received operational information about possible violations in the execution of a government contract for the supply of Oracle software for the needs of the Federal Customs Service.
The initial price of the work was more than 322 million rubles and did not change during the auction, which served as a signal to the security officers. The formation of the cost of work and the development of technical requirements for auction participants was carried out by the GUIT FCS, headed by Alexey Shashaev. The only admitted participant was SBL-Technologies LLC, which received the status of an exclusive distributor of the software product from the Russian representative office of Oracle.
A year after the conclusion of this contract, the director of SBL-Technologies LLC, Vyacheslav Lysakov, contacted the FSB with a statement about the price collusion between the customer and his company, recognizing the damage caused to the state in the amount of more than 100 million rubles. According to Lysakov, familiar entrepreneurs Igor Beregovsky and Stanislav Sorokin approached him with an offer to take part in the auction “on favorable terms.” At the same time, as Lysakov stated, businessmen informed him of the need to transfer 15% of the contract amount as a “kickback” for FCS officials.
Shortly before this, Lysakov himself had problems with law enforcement officers - and his statement looked more like part of a deal, rather than a confession.
FSB operatives, using their applicant, organized several controlled meetings with Beregovsky and Sorokin, at which Lysakov, equipped with a set of audio and video recording equipment, became interested in the recipients of the kickback. During these meetings, the names of Shashaev, Malinin and Belyaninov were mentioned. As Lysakov would later explain, he acted on instructions from employees of the 7th Department of Directorate “K” of the FSB SEB.
However, neither the results of controlled meetings nor reports of wiretapping telephone conversations provided counterintelligence officers with comprehensive evidence of the involvement of FCS employees. Nevertheless, on December 13, the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee for Moscow opened a criminal case on the fact of fraud, within the framework of which Beregovsky and Sorokin were detained.
As the investigation established, the real cost of the work amounted to just over 180 million rubles, and part of the resulting difference was distributed by the participants in the crime under a fictitious subcontract agreement concluded with a garbage dump company.
An important detail: the calculation of the real cost of the work at the request of the FSB was carried out by the Yekaterinburg JSC ACS.
A week later, the head of the planning department of GUIT, Elena Soboleva, was detained on suspicion of abuse of power, who, according to investigators, gave two defendants information about the parameters of the future contract, which created competitive advantages for SBL-Technologies.
Almost a year later, in October 2014, Alexey Shashaev was among the suspects. According to the investigation, the general prepared a budget request for financial support for the activities of the GUIT FCS, “deliberately inflating the costs of supplying and supporting information products.” The only evidence of the guilt of the head of GUIT was the testimony of Vyacheslav Lysakov, who, ironically, turned from an applicant into a suspect, and businessman Stanislav Sorokin, who entered into a pre-trial agreement.
The announcement of the verdict of all defendants in the case, scheduled by the Tverskoy District Court for July 28, 2016, was postponed for an hour. When the judge began to read out the terms, Dmitry Medvedev’s order to terminate the powers of Andrei Belyaninov had already been signed.
6th lot
In November 2015, when Alexey Shashaev was already under investigation, another search took place in the Main Inspectorate of the Federal Customs Service.
More than two dozen employees of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Investigative Committee seized documents and electronic media related to a contract for the development and implementation of a complex software product that automates customs work processes.
Within the walls of the Federal Customs Service, this contract received the succinct name “6th lot”. A criminal case on the grounds of the same fraud was initiated against unidentified officials of the Federal Customs Service and managers of the system developer, I-Teco CJSC. The applicant was the same ACS CJSC, whose calculations a year earlier allowed the FSB to convict General Shashaev of GUIT in price fixing.
The investigative authorities did not make this case public, the investigation of which was suspended until the resignation of Andrei Belyaninov, and resumed a month later. “After Belyaninov’s ugly dismissal, it was decided to investigate the case quietly,” admits an FSB officer.
The essence of this criminal case is as follows.
In 2009, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), as part of the Russian customs development program, allocated 14 million euros to the Federal Customs Service to create a software product that made it possible to automate the main customs work processes.
An employee of the Federal Customs Service who participated in the development of technical requirements for the program describes this product figuratively: “Imagine a building - a foundation, four walls, a ceiling. This was the technical support of customs more than ten years ago. With the development of technology, “extensions” began to appear - software tools that simplify the activities of customs. Automation of all processes in the department, which brought more than half of the funds into the budget revenues, was inevitable. But as a result, the “development” led to chaos - the FCS had about 80 software tools... Then it was decided to reduce the number of programs to the ten most significant and link them to a single integration “bus”.
The winner of the open auction held by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development was one of the leaders in the integration products market, I-Teco CJSC. In 2013, the product delivered by the developers was accepted on the balance sheet of the Federal Customs Service - the signature on the certificate of completion of work was put by Alexey Shashaev, and the chairman of the program’s supervisory board, Vladimir Malinin, approved the acceptance.
However, customs officers did not introduce the product into the FCS system, which was immediately noticed by the Accounts Chamber and the FSB.
“This is the problem of most control authorities - they study the investigation, but do not want to see the reasons,” complains an employee of the Federal Customs Service and explains the essence of the disagreements with law enforcement officers using another example: “At one time, a checkpoint was built in the Orenburg region, on the border with Kazakhstan - a complex of administrative buildings with a vehicle inspection area. We had to spend up to half a billion rubles on construction. Shortly before the facility was put into operation, the Customs Union came into being: the collection of customs duties for the turnover of goods between Russia and Kazakhstan was abolished - the checkpoint was no longer needed. When we were accused of misuse of the budget, we shrugged: who knew that Putin, Nazarbayev and Lukashenko would come up with the EAEU and abolish the border? The situation is the same here, except that the object is not physical, but virtual. Over the course of four years, the rules for structuring data have changed dramatically, and the developer created the product taking into account old technical requirements. We contacted the IBRD with a request to adjust the terms of reference taking into account the new standards, but the bank’s management did not cooperate.”
When Russia faced a loan burden of 14 million euros, the government ordered the Federal Customs Service to modernize the resulting software product.
The competition for the modernization of one of the ten components - customs revenue management - was held only in 2015, its winner was the same ACS CJSC. However, when the contract was about to expire, ACS management turned to the FSB. The essence of the statement was as follows: the Federal Customs Service handed over “empty disks” to the contractor for modernization, which means that the money allocated for development was simply stolen. The Federal Customs Service assures that the program is working, as evidenced by trial runs carried out in the presence of FSB officers.
According to the Investigative Committee, the software is currently undergoing a computer and technical examination at the Ministry of Justice, the results of which determine the fate of the criminal case. However, according to the FSB officer, the position of the investigation remains unchanged - there is a crime, which means that suspects must appear in the criminal case. The main “signatories” under attack are Alexey Shashaev and Vladimir Malinin.
Harbinger of the Storm
Over the past six months, the new head of the Federal Customs Service, Vladimir Bulavin, has greatly changed the attitude towards customs on the part of law enforcement agencies. Having canceled several minor orders of Andrei Belyaninov, Bulavin revived the activities of the public advisory council, sent an unscheduled inspection to the NWTU that had been at fault, and most importantly, returned the seconded FSB officers to customs. Moreover, he was the first to be sent on a mission - Bulavin headed the customs office in the status of an acting FSB general. The second was his deputy for the plenipotentiary mission in the Northwestern Federal District, Sergei Seryshev, who replaced Vladimir Malinin.
However, during the process of personnel rotation, the new head of customs did not get rid of some of Belyaninov’s former subordinates, as his colleagues from the FSB insisted on. Moreover, in October last year, Vladimir Bulavin sent a proposal to the presidential administration to award Vladimir Malinin with the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, IV degree.
According to an FSB officer, this “shocked” the Lubyanka generals: “The head of Directorate K, Tkachev, personally tried to convince Bulavin not to do this, but was not heard.”
The latest controversial decision of the new head of customs was the cancellation of Andrei Belyaninov’s order banning customs clearance of certain goods at electronic declaration centers (EDC).
It should be recalled that the introduction of CED at one time allowed the FCS to distribute physical inspection of goods and its electronic declaration to different regions. Thus, goods, for example, were imported through checkpoints in Vladivostok, and declared at the Shchelkovsky Central Economic Export Center in the Moscow Region.
This led to disorganization of the work of customs authorities: checkpoint employees did not see the declaration, and CED inspectors did not see the actual imported goods.
In a fairly short period of time, the FCS itself began to note an increase in cases of false declaration of goods. Smuggling poured through the country's port regions - Vladivostok, St. Petersburg and Novorossiysk: expensive electronics, clothing and jewelry were transported on an industrial scale under the guise of building materials and household supplies.
The budget began to lose billions of customs duties.
The FSB, in turn, reported to the country’s leadership that it was unable to stop this: the lack of a full-fledged exchange of information between checkpoints and the CED, coupled with the difference in time zones between regions, deprived law enforcement officers of the chance to document the fact of smuggling and, as a result, initiate a criminal case.
Therefore, in 2015, Andrei Belyaninov sent a teletype message to the heads of the Central Economic Market with a ban on declaring the most popular types of goods. The instructions of this teletype program were canceled by the directive of Vladimir Bulavin on February 10 of this year, at 23.20 Moscow time.
Several FSB operatives, who became familiar with the directive thanks to journalists, were surprised by the decision of the head of the FCS. “This will inevitably lead to a surge in smuggling in the country’s ports in the very near future,” says one of them. “There will be a new aggravation in relations with customs,” predicts another operative.
Thus ended this round of struggle for the positions of the head of customs and the head of foreign intelligence. However, not all cards have been played yet.
However - and this is admitted by the officers themselves - this time the war of the special services will unfold more likely inside the Lubyanka, some of the clans of which were delegated to the customs by Vladimir Bulavin. But viewers of federal television channels will not know who they are. There will be fewer shows on TV screens.
A company associated with the former head of the Federal Customs Service “won” a contract worth 7.5 billion rubles without a tender.
The Arsenal insurance company and the Ministry of Internal Affairs signed a contract for state compulsory life and health insurance of military personnel and employees of the Federal Service of National Guard Troops, as well as private and commanding personnel of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation.
Now, in accordance with the terms of the closed competition won, Arsenal assumes obligations for insured events that occurred throughout the Russian Federation from January 1 to December 31, 2016 inclusive.
According to the president of the insurance company, Sergei Lobanov, the signed contract is one of the largest in the Russian insurance market, not only in terms of the volume of insurance premiums, exceeding 7 billion rubles, but also in terms of the number of insured persons and the total liability limit.
Of course, in August of this year it turned out that the Arsenal insurance company was supposed to insure the lives of the police. She was the only participant in the competition. Other companies were unable to submit bids.
The Arsenal insurance company is 33% owned by Sergei Lobanov, Svetlana Belyaninova’s partner in her Moscow company Impulse-3000. In it they owned 5 and 47.5%, respectively. Svetlana is the daughter of the former head of the Federal Customs Service Andrei Belyaninov, who was fired after a corruption scandal!!!
Lobanov is Belyaninov’s former assistant, whose home was searched in July of this year in connection with a smuggling case. According to the Investigative Committee, Lobanov established at least 15 companies whose activities are related to the Federal Customs Service!
"Execution Place"
Lyudmila Belyaninova was the owner of 40% of the company "Garantstroynedvizhimost" - the customer of the cottage village "Ruzskie Dachi", located on 144 hectares near the village of Brazhnikovo on the banks of the Ruza, 100 km from the Moscow Ring Road. The cost of one hundred square meters of land in the village is estimated at 45,000 rubles.
Among the founders of Management Company “Brazhnikovo”, which manages Belyaininova’s assets, was the investment company “Lama” of Sergei Lobanov. In 2010-2011 It was he who was the owner of 144 hectares near the village of Brazhnikovo. Lobanov is a former assistant to Belyaninov, the president of the Arsenal insurance company, who was also searched on Tuesday in a smuggling case. According to the Investigative Committee, Lobanov established at least 15 companies whose activities are related to the Federal Customs Service!
The most important thing: it was thanks to Arsenal that it became possible for security forces to conduct searches in Belyaninov’s house. A businessman was found who participated in the fraud and testified against the head of the Federal Customs Service - Anatoly Kindzersky!
“Kindzersky testified that thanks to Sergei Lobanov (president of Arsenal Insurance Company LLC), the company supplying elite alcohol ContRail Logistic North-West received a special status, which implied a more loyal customs inspection regime,” said an informed source .
By the way, the first general director of Management Company “Brazhnikovo” Alexander Ivanov now heads V100 LLC, created a year ago by Belyaninov’s daughter Svetlana in Volokolamsk, the company’s specialization is preparation for the sale of its own real estate!!!
Moreover, Lobanov was Svetlana’s business partner in Impulse-3000 LLC. Speaking of Belyaninov’s daughter, she bears the name of her husband, Denis Serdyukov, an alleged relative of Anatoly Serdyukov!
Since June last year, “Serdyukov-relative” has been the general director of the Burgas-Alexandropoulis Pipeline Consortium LLC, which is owned on a parity basis by Transneft, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft OJSC!
Prior to this, Serdyukov, as a representative of Transneft, was on the board of directors of JSC Caspian Pipeline Consortium - Kazakhstan.
When will Belyaninov be tried?
Let us remind you that before the resignation, customs documents from the ULS Global company were made publicly available, illustrating the schemes by which illegal goods are imported into the country. As it turned out, not only customs officers, but also high-ranking FSB officers are protecting smuggling.
Thus, in early July, the Kremlin replaced the head of one of the key departments, the Economic Security Service (SES). Yuri Yakovlev was sent into retirement. His place was taken by Sergei Korolev, who previously headed the Department of Internal Security. Major General Viktor Voronin, who headed the “K” department (fight against smuggling), also left his post.
By the way, the reason for Voronin’s resignation was a criminal case in which his subordinate Vadim Uvarov was involved. Along with this data, information appeared about facts of “protection protection” for transport and logistics companies in the North-West region, including smugglers.
The transport and logistics company ULS Global, with which Uvarov was allegedly associated, imported goods worth $2 billion annually. This means potential payments to the budget should have been $600-750 million!
It is worth noting here the words of Vladimir Putin, who several years ago dispersed the entire customs management, putting Andrei Belyaninov in charge. "So what? And the channels worked and are still working. There are still goods worth more than $2 billion in one of the markets. They haven’t been destroyed yet, and there are no owners,” the politician said then.
Analysts note that the volume of smuggled supplies of light industry goods to Russia alone in 2015 could amount to 0.5-1 trillion rubles. As a result, Belyaninov was fired, and the functions of the Federal Customs Service were transferred to the FSB and the Federal Tax Service.
But one more thing remains - Belyaninov is free.
"Outlaw"
In July of this year, information surfaced that Belyaninov’s declarations in 2012-2014 indicated a residential building with an area of 1,565 square meters. m, in 2015 he simply disappeared. The area of land and garden plots decreased by 2500 square meters. m up to 3200 sq. m, and his wife Lyudmila - 5840 sq. m. m up to 3610 sq. m.
Law enforcement agencies assume that money of unknown origin found on Andrei Yuryevich during the search: 400 thousand dollars, 300 thousand euros and 10 million rubles may be proceeds for assets that “disappeared” from the declaration. According to preliminary data, the official and his wife did not pay sales taxes.
Anti-corruption fighters say that Belyaninov implements kickbacks through his wife, Lyudmila. In 2006, she became the owner of the Belye Rosy company in Mytishchi.
Before this, part of the medical center belonged to the IKG Infintrust company, founded by the Association of Veterans of Foreign Intelligence and structures of Oboronprom! The assets were transferred to the Belyaninovs just during the period when Anatoly Serdyukov was at the head of the Ministry of Defense!
Briber?
Andrei Belyaninov is also associated with the activities of the liquidated Federal State Unitary Enterprise.
By the way, structures associated with the wife of the head of the Federal Customs Service, Lyudmila Belyaninova, own 14% of Rostek-Stroy CJSC, created in 2010. The co-owner of 51% of this company is the structure of FSUE Rostek.
Ms. Belyaninova also owns the Belye Rosy company, specializing in real estate transactions. In addition, she is a co-owner (40%) of the Garantstroynedvizhimost company.
The dubious businessman’s partner in the financial and legal bureau “White Whale” and director of Rostek-Dufrimol, Artem Morozov, was the general director and owner of 66.67% in the company of Belyaninov’s daughter, Svetlana, Maestro LLC, liquidated in 2011.
One of the partners of the White Whale is the insurance company (IC) Arsenal. A 33% co-owner of this company is Sergei Lobanov, Svetlana Belyaninova’s partner in her Moscow company Impulse-3000. In it they owned 5% and 47.5%, respectively.
Last year, the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS), Andrei Belyaninov, was involved in a new corruption scandal. His subordinates were able to transfer financial flows from FSUE Rostek to themselves.
This federal state unitary enterprise, through its subsidiaries, owned terminals and temporary storage warehouses (TSW) throughout the country. Rostek occupied at least 20-30% of turnover in the Russian foreign economic activity market.
In December 2013, Vladimir Putin signed a law banning the entrepreneurial activities of FSUE Rostek. What did the customs officers do? Transferred all assets to yourself or your relatives!
It seems that Mr. Belyaninov still has connections in security circles. It was not for nothing that a company affiliated with him won the Ministry of Internal Affairs tender for 7.5 billion rubles. The problem is how security officials from other departments and the Kremlin will react to this.
After all, the elections are close, and the situation with Anatoly Serdyukov, who was found guilty of fraud, but did not go to prison, is being repeated. If Andrei Yuryevich is not arrested before the elections, he will never be arrested. In this case, it will hardly be possible to talk about any real fight by the authorities against corruption.
On Tuesday, the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) announced searches in the office and place of residence of the head of the Federal Customs Service (FCS) Andrei Belyaninov in the case of smuggling of collectible cognac by the structures of St. Petersburg businessman Dmitry Mikhalchenko. According to TASS, 10 million rubles, $400,000 and 300,000 euros were found in Belyaninov’s house, and Gazeta.ru published photographs of this cash (next to a man similar to Belyaninov), ancient paintings and a country mansion with expensive interiors. These are family savings - this is how the official explained to investigators the origin of more than 65 million rubles. in different currencies, found during a search in his country house in shoe boxes, according to a REN TV source. This is confirmed by Interfax’s interlocutor, according to whom the funds were seized, their origin is now being verified, and if the words of the head of the Federal Customs Service about personal savings are confirmed, the money will be returned to him.
Husband from Transneft
The daughter of the head of the Federal Customs Service, Svetlana, bears her husband’s surname, Denis Serdyukov. Since June 2015, he has been the general director of the Burgas-Alexandropoulis Pipeline Consortium LLC, which is owned on a parity basis by Transneft, Rosneft and Gazprom Neft OJSC. Prior to this, Serdyukov, as a representative of Transneft, was on the board of directors of JSC Caspian Pipeline Consortium - Kazakhstan. In December 2015, Serdyukov, Deputy Director of the Department of Foreign Economic Affairs of Transneft, took part in a meeting of the management committee of representatives of the Russian company and the Anglo-Dutch concern Shell as a member of this committee. Serdyukov also had a personal business – in 2012–2015. he was a co-owner (50%) of AV Spetstekhnika LLC in Volokolamsk, which specialized in the rental of construction machinery and equipment.
In Belyaninov’s declarations in 2012–2014. Among other property, a residential building with an area of 1565 square meters was listed. m, in 2015 he disappeared. The area of land and garden plots decreased by 2500 square meters. m up to 3200 sq. m, and his wife Lyudmila - 5840 sq. m up to 3610 sq. m. At the same time, the income of both of them increased significantly and amounted to almost 60 million rubles. (see chart). The Federal Customs Service did not respond to a request for information about where the mansion disappeared and who owns the house in which the search was carried out.
Found 65 million rubles. may be funds received by Belyaninov and his wife from the sale of assets that disappeared in the 2015 declaration (plots and residential real estate), although the general practice of officials is to transfer large property to adult children so as not to declare, says the deputy director of the center for anti-corruption research and initiatives of Transparency International Russia Ilya Shumanov.
From intelligence to bank
There is no information in SPARK-Interfax that Belyaninov owns or previously owned any business in Russia. And from his biography it follows that he spent most of his life in civil service. After graduating in 1978 from the Moscow Institute of Economy (now Russian University of Economics) named after. Plekhanov, he began his career in the First Main Directorate of the KGB of the USSR, which was engaged in foreign intelligence. He worked abroad, including as an employee of the USSR Embassy in the GDR, where, according to some media reports, he met Vladimir Putin. After leaving the authorities, the former intelligence officer went into the banking business. In 1992–1994 was deputy chairman of the board of REA Bank, then first deputy chairman of Novikombank, which he headed in 1999. But not for long: at the end of the same year he became deputy general director of FSUE Promexport. Since November 2000, after the merger of Promexport and Rosvooruzhenie into Rosoboronexport, he became the general director of the new structure. In 2004–2006 - Director of the Federal Service for Defense Procurement. Since May 2006, he has been heading the Federal Customs Service.
Business for health
Just in 2006, his wife Lyudmila became the owner of the Belye Rosy company in Mytishchi (at the end of 2009, 100% of this LLC passed to her daughter Svetlana), which rents out its own real estate. At the end of 2014, the company showed a net profit of almost 36 million rubles. with total assets of 296.5 million rubles. (more than 20% were fixed assets).
However, the wife of the head of the Federal Customs Service is better known as the co-owner of the St. Andrew's Hospitals holding company. Since 2009, she owns 60% in the Nebolit medical center (the remaining 40% belongs to Andrei Kozhushkov, head of the Andreevsky Hospitals holding). Before this, part of the medical center belonged to the IKG Infintrust company, founded by the Association of Veterans of Foreign Intelligence and structures of Oboronprom. The medical center’s website says that among its partners is the Federal Customs Service Central Clinical Hospital.
At the address of “Belykh Ros” in Mytishchi (Olympiysky Prospekt, 29) indicated in SPARK-Interfax, there is a medical center that operates under the brand “Andreevskie Hospitals - Nebolit”. The website of the group of medical companies of the same name says that it was created in 2002, and it now includes five multidisciplinary clinics: two in Moscow (on Leninsky Prospekt and Varshavskoe Shosse) and three in the Moscow region (in addition to Mytishchi, also in Krasnogorsk and Troitsk ). At the end of 2014, the Nebolit medical center earned more than 63.1 million rubles. net profit, its revenue exceeded 429 million rubles. The medical center is a co-founder of the Autonomous Non-Profit Organization (ANO) “Research Center (SRC) for the Prevention of Aging “Andreevsky Hospitals “Nebolit”. And on July 13 of this year, Lyudmila Belyaninova and Kozhushkov established the veterinary clinic “Andreevsky Hospitals “Nebolit” (60 and 40%, respectively).
“Nebolit” was engaged not only in medicine. In 2010, the company owned 20% of Ecointech LLC. That year, Ecointech received 14% in the construction company Rostek-Stroy CJSC, which was created by structures owned by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Rostek FTS (see inset). The tasks of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise are the implementation of “a number of state tasks in the field of customs policy,” including the construction and operation of customs facilities. Ecointech still owns 14% of Rostek-Stroy, but it itself is already owned by five citizens.
Rostek's business
Created in 1992, the company, through its subsidiaries, owned terminals and temporary storage warehouses throughout the country. In May 2012, President Vladimir Putin promised to liquidate such structures or privatize them. In 2013, Rostek stopped providing services in the field of customs, its representative said. Since then, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise has only been servicing the customs infrastructure - cleaning the premises of customs posts, monitoring utility networks.
In addition, Lyudmila Belyaninova was the owner of 40% of the company "Garantstroynedvizhimost" - the customer of the cottage village "Ruzskie Dachi", located on 144 hectares near the village of Brazhnikovo on the banks of the Ruza, 100 km from the Moscow Ring Road. The website of the cottage village says that 163 plots have already been sold out of 378, the cost of one hundred square meters is up to 105,000 rubles, the operating organization and developer is Management Company Brazhnikovo, established in 2011 in Volokolamsk to manage real estate. Among the founders of Management Company “Brazhnikovo” was the investment company “Lama” of Sergei Lobanov (50%). In 2010–2011 It was he who was the owner of 144 hectares near the village of Brazhnikovo. Lobanov is Belyaninov’s former assistant, president of the Arsenal insurance company, whose house was also searched on Tuesday in connection with a smuggling case. According to the Investigative Committee, Lobanov established at least 15 companies whose activities are related to the Federal Customs Service.
The first general director of Management Company "Brazhnikovo" Alexander Ivanov now heads V100 LLC, created a year ago by Belyaninov's daughter Svetlana in Volokolamsk, the company's specialization is preparation for the sale of its own real estate. And until July 2009, Lobanov was Svetlana’s business partner in Impulse-3000 LLC (5 and 47.5%, respectively), whose main activity is fishing and fish farming, and he also headed it in 2008–2009. (from establishment to sale). And in 2010, her “White Dews” were among the founders (with a share of 37.5%) of the Moscow Atlanta LLC, along with the investment company “Lama” (5%) of Lobanov, specializing in wholesale trade. Since 2011, Svetlana has been the owner of Moscow-based Nizhnevolzhsk-invest LLC (NVI), and she is also the general director. Although in SPARK-Interfax this company is listed as a wholesale trade agent (main activity), more than 85% of its assets (or over 121 million rubles in 2014). accounts for fixed assets. At the end of 2014, the company earned a net profit of 77.7 million rubles. NVI is the owner of a two-story building with an area of 1609 square meters. m on Varshavskoye Shosse, 89, and rents a land plot of 3,679 sq. m. until mid-2030. m below it, according to the Unified State Register. In the same house there is one of the clinics “Andreevskie Hospitals - Nebolit”.
Judging by open sources, it turns out that the business of Belyaninov’s wife and daughter is not connected with the activities of the Federal Customs Service - at least for today. But “second-level relatives are employed in large state-owned companies such as Transneft, and this is much more valuable than having your own business,” says Shumanov.
