Rusakov resigned. NP "market advice"

“The fight against corruption in Russia is gaining momentum. It seems that the state has given carte blanche to cleanse even the highest levels of power. The other day, for example, the Minister of Economic Development miserably lost his position and came under investigation, suspected of extorting a large bribe. But this is a special case. But at the level below, many official and semi-official structures flourish, possessing enormous powers and enormous resources, control over which still leaves much to be desired, the Political News Agency (APN) writes about this in its journalistic investigation.

How these “bins of the Motherland” work, who is responsible for what in them, is sometimes very difficult to understand. And public money continues to flow into these gray areas.

In the same MEDT, for example, a very interesting scheme was suddenly discovered at the level of deputy director of a department connected by lobbying interests with a certain NP “Market Council” - just one of those very “gray” organizations that have serious influence within their industry, but are little known to the general public to the public. One of its leaders, Maxim Rusakov, with the support of high-ranking employees of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the Ministry of Energy, organized a powerful structure for the redistribution and withdrawal of public money, lobbying for interests and reshaping the rules of the game in the energy market.

What you protect is what you have

To reveal the pattern of interactions between individual officials and entire companies, it is necessary to tell what the non-profit partnership “Market Council” actually does. The scope of activities of this organization includes processes such as monitoring compliance with the rules and regulations of the wholesale market, maintaining a register of the issuance and redemption of certificates for the volume of electricity production based on the use of renewable energy sources, and preparing proposals for improving the rules for commercial metering of electricity in retail markets. The competence of the “Market Council” also includes sanctions against energy companies and the establishment of general rules by which the entire Russian energy market operates.

It is obvious that the capabilities of this organization can hardly be underestimated: although formally it is subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Energy, due to its special status it has great independent powers to regulate and authorize the activities of participants in the Russian electricity market. The turnover of which, by the way, reaches 2 trillion rubles. in year.

It is not surprising that in such a “quiet pool” sooner or later there will be people who want to play big. Maxim Rusakov, member of the board, head of the Competitive Pricing Department of the NP Market Council, during his career managed to establish strong connections with officials and heads of commercial companies. For negotiations, he usually used the informal setting of bars, restaurants and even baths. In the end, Rusakov managed to add to his own administrative resources due to his position the broad capabilities of senior employees of several Russian ministries. This made it possible to carry out various financial schemes unnoticed by an outside observer, but very effectively.

One of them, for example, was based on Rusakov’s ability to influence the rules and procedures established for electricity markets. In particular, he had the opportunity to adjust in one direction or another the regulations on deviations, according to which enterprises in the energy sector can be fined large sums for overconsumption or shortage of electrical energy.

To “implement” these powers, Rusakov undertook a series of targeted interventions, adjusting these regulations in favor of specific large private consumers of electricity. At the end of October 2015, such a correction was successfully lobbied by Rusakov with the active support of Evgeniy Olkhovich, Deputy Director of the Department of State Regulation of Tariffs of the Ministry of Economic Development. As a result, the united company Rusal received an additional profit of 4 billion rubles, which the energy sector, accordingly, did not receive. What Rusakov and Olkhovich received for their “good deeds” can only be guessed at.

Not for service, but for friendship

Another scheme allowed Rusakov to involve in cooperation his former head of the NP Market Council, Yegor Grinkevich, who moved to the Ministry of Energy in 2010 to the position of deputy director of the electric power industry development department. Rusakov, too, provided a “service” to a necessary and important person by fictitiously employing Grinkevich’s wife Oksana in the Market Council. At the same time, he did not bother her with work, and the lady practically did not appear in the office. However, salaries and bonuses were paid to her with enviable regularity, which, in the end, caused damage to the state in the millions of rubles (in total, according to law enforcement officers, she illegally received more than 12 million rubles).

This violation came to the attention of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, and in August 2016, following an inspection, Yegor Grinkevich was fired from the department with a scandal. Currently, the issue of initiating new criminal cases is being considered against all participants in this scheme - the Grinkeviches, Rusakovs and a number of responsible managers of the Market Council NP.

By the way, it turned out along the way that over the past three years, the main initiatives and decisions on changes to the rules of the electricity market with the development of arguments, justifications and calculations of economic effects were made right in Grinkevich’s apartment, where other members of the group - Rusakov and Olkhovich - constantly gathered. Having discussed the details, they dispersed to their departments to lobby for “correct” and “useful” initiatives. In this way, the “triumvirate” has more than once secured the support of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Economic Development.

While planning his “business,” Rusakov apparently quickly realized that it was impossible to implement such complex projects with just the three of them. Gradually, the wives of the defendants, co-workers, colleagues, influential businessmen, and ministry employees were involved in the work of the group. Enterprising “energy workers” increasingly took control of a promising sector of the Russian economy.

While still studying at the Moscow Energy Institute, Rusakov met Alexey Pletnev, who also worked at NP ATS in the mid-2000s. Being colleagues, Rusakov and Pletnev became friends, and after purchasing apartments in Moscow they became neighbors. Currently, they continue to be friends with their families. Another useful acquaintance of Rusakov was the head of the Office of the Energy Competence Center of Optima OJSC, Andrey Ryzhkov. Having started working in this company, Rusakov met two more of his current business partners - the director and co-founder of RusInterHolding LLC and ProBusinessConsulting LLC Dmitry Zadvorochnov and the general director of KEES LLC Alexander Mogilevich. Through the latter’s wife, Olga Mogilevich, Rusakov received access to PJSC RusHydro, where she works as Deputy Director of the Department of Economics and Investment.

Over time, Dmitry Ponomarev, Director for Work with Government Authorities and Public Organizations of the En+ Group, and Vyacheslav Kravchenko, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, joined Rusakov’s circle of useful acquaintances. This significantly expanded the group's capabilities.

"Family contract"

Together with Pletnev and Zadvorochnov, Rusakov organized another cunning scheme. He created MeRKon LLC and began to actively promote it as a subcontractor to provide consulting services for competitions announced by energy companies. This company can safely be called a “women’s club”: the director and co-founder was Pletnev’s wife, Irina Ryakhina (Pletneva), and the second co-founder was the wife of Rusakov himself, Elena.

Pletnev attracted customers and monitored the execution of contracts, Rusakov negotiated with the heads of energy companies to attract them to cooperation. At the same time, Zadvorochnov’s company “ProBusinessConsulting” was listed as the main contractor under contracts with energy companies, the services of which Rusakov strenuously offered to energy companies dependent on him.

Then, receiving money for supposedly consulting services, ProBusinessConsulting redirected up to half of the proceeds to the accounts of MeRKon and other “shelter companies.”

If this is not a classic scheme for withdrawing public money through the provision of “consulting services” and the use of a lobbying resource, then what?! Under the leadership of Rusakov, businessmen have been approaching serious customers for several years. The damage caused to the state should now be calculated by law enforcement agencies, who will certainly understand the situation and eradicate the corruption component that has taken root in this inconspicuous, but very important area of the Russian economy.

“It’s no secret that our level of corruption is the highest, it permeates both the upper and lower echelons of government and business. Corruption ties exist everywhere, says Georgy Fedorov, member of the RF OP, director of the Civil Control Association. - If you don’t start cleaning from above, then nothing will happen from below, simply because these are the rules of the game in our state. Middle and lower level officials must understand that the rules of the game have changed. To show them this, action is needed against senior officials. But in parallel, law enforcement agencies, of course, must deal with lower levels of corruption,” APN concludes its publication.

The fight against corruption in Russia is gaining momentum. It seems that the state has given carte blanche to cleanse even the highest levels of power. The other day, for example, the Minister of Economic Development miserably lost his position and came under investigation for being suspected of extortion of a large bribe. But this is a special case. But at the lower level, many official and semi-official structures flourish, possessing enormous powers and enormous resources, control over which still leaves much to be desired.

How these “bins of the Motherland” work, who is responsible for what in them, is sometimes very difficult to understand. And public money continues to flow into these gray areas.

What you protect is what you have

To reveal the pattern of interactions between individual officials and entire companies, it is necessary to tell what the non-profit partnership “Market Council” actually does. The scope of activities of this organization includes such processes as monitoring compliance with the rules and regulations of the wholesale market, maintaining a register of the issuance and redemption of certificates on the volume of electricity production based on use, and preparing proposals for improving the rules for commercial metering of electricity in retail markets. The competence of the Market Council also includes sanctions against energy companies and the establishment of general rules by which the entire Russian energy market operates.

It is obvious that the capabilities of this organization can hardly be underestimated: although formally it is subordinate to Ministry of Energy of Russia, but due to its special status it has great independent powers to regulate and authorize the activities of participants in the Russian electricity market. The turnover of which, by the way, reaches 2 trillion rubles per year.

It is not surprising that in such a “quiet pool” sooner or later there will be people who want to play big. Maxim Rusakov, member of the board, head of the Competitive Pricing Department of the NP Market Council, during his career managed to establish strong connections with officials and heads of commercial companies. For negotiations, he usually used the informal setting of bars, restaurants and even baths. In the end, Rusakov managed to add to his own administrative resources, due to his position, the broad capabilities of senior employees of several Russian ministries. This made it possible to carry out various financial schemes unnoticed by an outside observer, but very effectively.

To “implement” these powers, Rusakov undertook a series of targeted interventions, adjusting these regulations in favor of specific large private consumers of electricity. At the end of October 2015, such a correction was successfully lobbied by Rusakov with the active support of Evgeniy Olkhovich, Deputy Director of the Department of State Regulation of Tariffs of the Ministry of Economic Development. As a result, the combined company "Rusal" received an additional profit of 4 billion rubles, which the energy sector, accordingly, did not receive. What Rusakov and Olkhovich received for their “good deeds” can only be guessed at.

Not for service, but for friendship

Another scheme allowed Rusakov to involve in cooperation his former head of the NP Market Council, Yegor Grinkevich, who moved to the Ministry of Energy in 2010 to the position of deputy director of the Electric Power Development Department. Rusakov, too, provided a “service” to a necessary and important person by fictitiously employing Grinkevich’s wife Oksana in the Market Council. At the same time, he did not bother her with work, and the lady practically did not appear in the office. However, salaries and bonuses were paid to her with enviable regularity, which ultimately caused damage to the state in the millions of rubles (in total, according to law enforcement officers, she illegally received more than 12 million rubles).

By the way, it turned out along the way that over the past three years, the main initiatives and decisions on changes to the rules of the electricity market with the development of arguments, justifications and calculations of economic effects were made directly at Grinkevich’s apartment, where other members of the group - Rusakov and Olkhovich - constantly gathered. Having discussed the details, they dispersed to their departments to lobby for “correct” and “useful” initiatives. In this way, the “triumvirate” has more than once secured the support of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Economic Development.

When planning his “business,” Rusakov apparently quickly realized that it was impossible to implement such complex projects with just the three of them. Gradually, the wives of the defendants, co-workers, colleagues, influential businessmen, and ministry employees were involved in the work of the group. Enterprising “energy workers” increasingly took control of a promising sector of the Russian economy.

While still studying at the Moscow Energy Institute, Rusakov met Alexey Pletnev, who also worked at NP ATS in the mid-2000s. Being colleagues, Rusakov and Pletnev became friends, and after purchasing apartments in Moscow they became neighbors. Currently, they continue to be friends with their families. Another useful acquaintance of Rusakov was the head of the Office of the Energy Competence Center of Optima OJSC, Andrey Ryzhkov. Having started working in this company, Rusakov met two more of his current business partners - the director and co-founder of RusInterHolding LLC and ProBusinessConsulting LLC Dmitry Zadvorochnov and the general director of KEES LLC Alexander Mogilevich. Through the latter’s wife, Olga Mogilevich, Rusakov received “exit” to PJSC RusHydro, where she works as Deputy Director of the Department of Economics and Investment.

Over time, the director for work with authorities and public organizations at En+ Group joined Rusakov’s circle of useful acquaintances. Dmitry Ponomarev and Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Kravchenko. This significantly expanded the group's capabilities.

"Family contract"

Then, receiving money for supposedly consulting services, ProBusinessConsulting redirected up to half of the proceeds to the accounts of MeRKon and other “shelter companies.”

"Council" for a quarter of a billion. The sweet life of Rusakov’s “non-profit partner” November 29th, 2016

Recently about the land of the former millionaire minister Ulyukaev, but this is, so to speak, the first person who, according to investigators, independently carried millions of dollars in suitcases. But in parallel ministries everything is much more complicated - there, it seems, that certain and very mysterious structures called “non-profit partnerships” have been created specifically for suitcases. In particular, an amazing and not at all commercial company under the telling name NP “Market Council”, which is formally subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Energy, but has a special status, enshrined, among other things, in federal laws and government acts. Due to this status, the “Market Council” has the most significant powers and leverage over participants in the Russian electricity market, the turnover of which, for a moment, reaches 2 trillion. rub. in year.

Thus, colleagues recently managed to uncover an extensive corruption scheme that permeated two ministries at once - economic development and energy, as well as many large and small companies growing around this very “Council”. After clarifying some circumstances, I didn’t find anything new there, except... another underground dollar millionaire. Meet Maxim Rusakov, member of the board and head of the Competitive Pricing Department of the Market Council NP:

So, before us is a modest Russian official (I remind you that the Market Council office is a non-profit partnership under the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation) Maxim Rusakov, whose salary over the past five years, which he worked as the head of the Department for the Development of Competitive Pricing, ranged from three to seven million . rub. in year. Not so bad, right? In 2015, after his election as a member of the board of the NP Market Council, our hero’s salary increased significantly, amounting to more than 17 million. We’ll write sometime about how this “non-commercial salary” compares with the salaries of ordinary energy workers and whether the Prosecutor General’s Office should become interested in the nature of its formation (just as it did in the case of the 95 million dollar bonus of the country’s main “postman” Strashnov). next time.

In any case, Mr. Rusakov’s total legal income over the last five years does not exceed 35 million rubles. Or maybe Maxim Viktorovich, like many domestic officials, has a wife who is an outstanding businesswoman? No. Elena Aleksandrovna Rusakova also works in the energy sector as a chief specialist at Rosenergoatom Concern JSC. Over the entire last year, she earned a modest 523,583.33 rubles there. That is, the total legal income of the Rusakov family over the past five years cannot exceed 35-37 million rubles. Remember these numbers? Now let's move on to the millionth (in dollars) math.

Two years ago, in 2014, a modest 33-year-old (!) “non-profit partner” Maxim Viktorovich Rusakov registered his ownership of a modest 100-meter apartment in the most prestigious area of Moscow at Presnensky Val, 16, building 3, located in an elite building , managed by the residential complex "House on Presnensky Val". Here:

The cost of such an apartment today is 130 million rubles or two million dollars (hello, citizen Ulyukaev), and one parking space in the underground parking is estimated at 100 thousand dollars.

And this is a supporting document. Well, so that citizen Rusakov would not try to mislead anyone, saying that he has nothing and is poor, like a church rat:

However, the energy worker’s flight of fantasy did not stop there, rushing forward and upward. A year later, Maxim Rusakov buys two more (!) apartments - and also, of course, in a luxury residential complex. True, now these are “Garden Quarters” in fashionable Khamovniki. Here they are, these very “Quarters”:

One of two apartments with an area of 149.3 sq.m. Rusakov, without particularly straining, registered it for himself. There was no talk of any installment plan or, God forbid, a mortgage - the buyer paid the entire amount - 65,214,240 rubles. - in full, in a one-time transfer from your bank account. By the way, if anyone doubts, then here is Rusakov’s payment order for 65 million rubles:

Imagine, you are a simple official in an office at the Ministry of Energy and just like that, with one slight movement of your hand, with one stroke, before the New Year you pay a million dollars from your bank account for luxury real estate. Not bad? But that's not all - a second apartment with an area of 67 sq.m. and worth about 35 million rubles (half a million dollars, by the way) Rusakov registered for his mother-in-law, Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Petrova. Conspiracy is just conspiracy, so what?

In total, as we managed to find out, a modest and honest worker of the non-profit partnership “Market Council” under the Ministry of Energy, Maxim Rusakov, has acquired luxury real estate worth three and a half million US dollars in just the last couple of years.

But this is only in the Russian Federation - so to speak, in the geographical homeland. The craving of Russians working with government agencies and ministries for European real estate seems to be invincible. So our hero, Mr. Rusakov, bought a house in Bulgaria in 2014, in the resort village of Santa Marina on the Black Sea coast.

His residence on the territory of the European Union, of which Bulgaria has been a member since 2007, was Villa No. 27 worth 400,000 euros or 28 million rubles. And if again in dollars, then half a million green ones. This is the villa:

Of course, the very fact of owning foreign real estate is not a terrible crime. Moreover, Rusakov is not a State Duma deputy or a top manager of a state-owned company, for whom this is directly prohibited. But taking into account the special status of the “Market Council” under the Ministry of Energy, the story, to put it mildly, is “smelly.”

To summarize, the most modest member of the board and head of the Competitive Pricing Department of the NP Market Council under the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, Maxim Rusakov, over the past two years has become the proud owner of real estate with a total value of 260 million rubles or four million US dollars. And such happiness with a maximum income of 17 million rubles a year. Even if we imagine that the 33-year-old poor guy stopped eating from the time he came of age and started saving for his luxury real estate, the economy still doesn’t add up...

Of course, now the fight against corruption announced by the president has begun to mow down the biggest officials - Gaizer, Yurchenko, Khoroshavin, Ulyukaev. That is, the highest, top link. But the middle peasants, in all sorts of departments and incomprehensible offices, like the above-mentioned “Market Council,” simply somehow slyly ducked down and pulled their heads into their shoulders. And they are quietly buying up expensive real estate. For yourself, your loved ones. Because without this, without purchasing two or three new apartments, it seems they simply will not survive. They sit there on these elite meters and laugh at the president and less fortunate colleagues, like the ill-fated Ulyukaev.

In general, all of the above is some food for thought for the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office. And the documents are attached. But somehow it turns out strangely that the gentlemen are engaged in the fight against corruption either at the lowest levels or at the very top. But the golden mean, in the literal sense of the word, of corruption still feels quite at ease. I would like to hope that for the time being.

Well-known journalist Oleg Lurie, who studies corruption in the Russian energy sector, published the electronic correspondence of those involved in his investigation. One of the authors of the published letters, for example, practically openly asks the interlocutor to lobby for the interests of his company and is interested in the amount of payment.

Lurie names Maxim Rusakov, an official working in the field of regulation of the energy market, as the main character in this case. The journalist's attention was drawn to the fact that Rusakov is the owner of several Moscow apartments worth a total of 260 million rubles. Of course, the official salary of a power engineer would not be enough for such purchases, and the journalist began to find out the details. As a result, he came into possession of screenshots of emails that Rusakov exchanged with Dmitry Ponomarev, director of government affairs at the En+ energy company.

It seems that Ponomarev was the initiator of the discussion. In one of his letters, he asks Rusakov: “Maxim, look, here is an updated list of tasks,” among which is “approval at the level of the Ministry of Energy of the electricity market model in a version acceptable for EN+. And again, I can ask you to send your wishes regarding wages.”

Scan from Lurie's blog

He also describes how remuneration will be formed for participants in the scheme, recommends leaving “your people” in the organization in which Rusakov works, and gives other valuable advice and instructions. He also lists the results he would like to achieve in the end. His interlocutor responds by saying that “subject matter specialists” now cost 350-450 thousand each, and helps Ponomarev understand the intricacies of departmental documents.

Scan from Lurie's blog

“Now it becomes much clearer where Mr. Rusakov got his elite Moscow apartments and the millions to buy them. And the rest is a matter for the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office, to whom I will kindly provide the documents and facts I have,” sums up Oleg Lurie.

Let us recall that earlier in the media information appeared about three apartments owned by Maxim Rusakov - one, with an area of 100 square meters, in an elite building on Krasnaya Presnya, and two more - in the Garden Quarters residential complex in Khamovniki. These apartments cost about two million dollars, 65 and 35 million rubles, respectively.

It is also clarified that Maxim Rusakov works as the head of the competitive pricing development department of the NP Market Council and is on the board of this non-profit partnership. The official annual income of the still fairly young official reaches 17 million rubles a year.

From the editors of RIA “New Day”: On December 7, a hacker attack was carried out on Lurie’s blog, as a result of which the investigation into correspondence with the Ministry of Energy “disappeared.” As the journalist himself said on Vesti FM, partthe material is restored, some of it is restored. “They don’t like my LiveJournal page, they’re breaking it a lot - they don’t like it! One material, bang, disappeared,” he said.

Today, December 8, the blogosphere supported the famous journalist: the results of Lurie’s investigation were again published on the social network of political scientist Oleg Matveychev.

“Judging by the fact that there are no new posts on (Lurie’s) blog, he has lost access to the magazine. Several posts also disappeared, including high-profile material about corruption. Oleg! Nothing on the Internet disappears without a trace. Google remembers everything,” Matvechev noted.

Moscow, Ekaterina Popova

Moscow. Other news 06.12.16

How to get rich from Russian energy?

On December 1, in his annual address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin emphasized the importance of the fight against corruption, calling on people not to pay attention to the high connections and past merits of the perpetrators. Such concern about this problem is understandable: from small branches of various departments, corruption has already reached federal ministries.

One of these cases was reported by the famous journalist Oleg Lurie, who recently devoted an entire investigation to a certain Maxim Rusakov, an employee of a non-profit partnership, until recently little known to anyone outside the energy industry.

"Advice" and love for money

The official position of Maxim Rusakov is a member of the board and head of the Department for the Development of Competitive Pricing of the NP Market Council. It is this organization that issues the appropriate certificates to energy companies, maintains their register, and monitors compliance with the rules and regulations of the wholesale energy market. In general, he acts in this area as such an independent arbiter. More precisely, it should perform. As it turns out, independence is an easy sell these days. At least, some officials and businessmen.

Oleg Lurie had at his disposal email correspondence between Rusakov and his former boss Dmitry Ponomarev, who headed the same “Market Council” for 11 years, and in 2013 moved to the industrial group En+, taking up the post of director for work with authorities and public organizations.

So, in July 2013, Dmitry Ponomarev, judging by the printouts of emails, turned to Rusakov with an offer to help the Rusal company. In particular, he asked his ex-subordinate to help change electricity supply contracts (and generally cancel some existing requirements) so that it would be as comfortable as possible for the same Rusal and En+. Another result of such cooperation was to be the adoption of a package of documents allowing Rusal to rent and operate the equipment of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant.

In his letters, Ponomarev openly asked Rusakov to send “his wishes regarding the basic and bonus parts of remuneration, I will try to discuss them in advance.” “To carry out these tasks, how many people we need - please give us proposals, including the distribution of competence and budget,” he wrote.

Of course, not everything was discussed in the letters, but as a result of the actions of Rusakov and officials associated with him, Rusal received an additional profit of 4 billion rubles, which was missed by other market participants.

It is difficult to imagine that one person, even a high-ranking official of a regulatory agency, would have such capabilities. A whole team did their best here.

Circle of “Rusakov’s friends”

The media have already written that Rusakov, apparently, was only the organizer of a whole group of officials whose joint efforts were aimed at lobbying. Among the participants in this group are, for example, Deputy Director of the Department of State Regulation of Tariffs of the Ministry of Economic Development Evgeniy Olkhovich and Deputy. Head of the Electric Power Industry Development Department of the Ministry of Energy Egor Grinkevich.

It is possible that Rusakov managed to attract the latter to his side through family connections - in the fall of this year, during investigative actions carried out by FSB officers, it turned out that Yegor Grinkevich’s wife Oksana was listed as an employee of the NP Market Council, but her activities there were purely fictitious. . But thanks to this fiction, Oksana Grinkevich received about 12 million rubles.

In the created lobbying group, Yegor Grinkevich was assigned the role of conductor of necessary initiatives through the Ministry of Energy. There is reason to believe that it was he who participated in agreeing on the cost of consulting services for Mercados Energy Markets International, S.A.

Besides him, Rusakov’s “friends” included deputy. Minister of Energy Vyacheslav Kravchenko, founder of the companies "RusInterHolding" and "ProBusinessConsulting" Dmitry Zadvorochnov and general director of the company "KEES" Alexander Mogilevich. Through Mogilevich's wife, Rusakov was associated with PJSC RusHydro, where Olga Mogilevich works as deputy director of the department for economics and investment.

In their secret activities, Maxim Rusakov and Co. imposed their consulting services on those energy companies that could theoretically be subject to pressure from the regulator. The consultant was usually Dmitry Zadvorochnov’s ProBusinessConsulting, but it is known that up to half of the funds received in her accounts then went to MeRKon LLC, co-founded by Rusakov’s wife Elena.

Apartments in luxury buildings

According to sources, the headquarters of the lobbying group, where its members met to discuss plans and coordinate actions, was considered to be Grinkevich’s apartment. But they could also gather in the apartments of Rusakov himself, of which Oleg Lurie counted three in Moscow alone, and all in elite houses. The total value of real estate owned by Maxim Rusakov is estimated at about a quarter of a billion rubles.

There is an opinion that Maxim Rusakov had every chance to use the insider information he received to play on the stock exchange - after all, even the incomplete circle of his acquaintances listed here provides wide scope for the timely sale or purchase of shares with a well-predicted result.

Another source of insider information for Rusakov could be another good friend of his, Alexander Vikhansky. In any case, the position of deputy. Director of the Legal Department of the Russian Ministry of Energy gave Vikhansky a very broad knowledge of the inner workings of the energy industry. At the same time, Maxim Rusakov and Alexander Vikhansky can still quite openly meet at meetings of the strategy committee of the board of directors of PJSC FGC UES, in which they both sit. By the way, one of the functions of this council is precisely control over the implementation of investment projects for the development of electrical networks.

"On a particularly large scale"

As law enforcement officers found out, in 2011–2013, the management of Oboronenergosbyt OJSC “repeatedly unlawfully inflated the cost of supplied electricity” to the structures of the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, within the framework of these contracts with the Ministry of Defense, the leaders of Oboronenergosbyt committed “theft on an especially large scale”, using fictitious agreements with subcontractors about the allegedly completed work on maintaining electrical networks.

Participants in the investigation are confident that the stolen funds were transferred to the accounts of shell companies, from which they were then cashed out and appropriated by the participants in the thefts. The total damage to the Ministry of Defense from the actions of the former leaders of Oboronenergosbyt, according to estimates of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, amounted to 448 million rubles. The case brought against the ex-general director of Oboronenergosbyt Alexander Zmikhnovsky forced him to hastily leave the country and take refuge in Turkey, and the court ordered his arrest in absentia.

It is noteworthy that just in 2011, one of the contractors of Oboronenergosbyt was the company RusInterHolding, whose general director was Dmitry Zadvorochnov. As follows from the information published on the official website of RusInterHolding, by order of Oboronenergosbyt, the company optimized the energy supply to the military-industrial complex.

When a corruption component is revealed in the work of governors and ministers, they are immediately deprived of their posts - this is logical. So why then do mid-level officials enjoy strange “immunity” when committing such actions? If, thanks to their official powers, they arrange a comfortable life for themselves at public expense, then they should still be held accountable for lobbying and corruption on general terms.