https://www.site/2017-09-25/nikolay_merkushkin_ushel_ostaviv_samarskuyu_oblast_bezzachitnoy_pered_cru_i_gosdepom
Anomalous Governor
Nikolai Merkushkin left, leaving the Samara region defenseless against the CIA and the State Department
Yuri Strelets / RIA Novosti
Putin accepted the resignation of Samara Region Governor Nikolai Merkushkin at his own request. Senator from the Samara region, former head of Samara Dmitry Azarov was appointed acting governor. Merkushkin will become the president’s special representative for interaction with the Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples. the site recalls the political path and decline of the career of this extraordinary governor.
Dulles Plan Whistleblower
66-year-old Merkushkin lived a long political life. In recent years, he has appeared on the pages of the media and on social networks mainly in connection with his scandalous statements and actions.
So, in August 2016, at a meeting with Avtovaz employees in Tolyatti, who asked when their salary debts would be paid off, Merkushkin accused them of working for the US State Department.
“If you talk in this tone, your debts will never be paid off! Those who are warming you up, ask them... When, among other things, the American ambassador came, he came to warm up just these people, and then they were shown to the whole world for a month!” - Merkushkin made such a statement to Avtovaz employees.
In the same August, at a pre-election meeting with residents of the Oktyabrsky district, Merkushkin announced that the US State Department had a plan to occupy the Samara region, and therefore the CIA hacked the email of the regional government. At that meeting, Merkushkin even called the late State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova “a State Department liaison.” And Merkushkin declared opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s publications about himself to be part of the “Dulles Plan” (the mythical concept of the US struggle against the USSR).
“Why is he suddenly now, almost every day, writing about Samara, writing about me. Why? Because this chaos that Dulles has, everything is confused, everything is confused in their heads, they really want to preserve this chaos. This chaos is needed, when the time comes to throw a match, this chaos will immediately start a fire,” Merkushkin said to the amazed residents of Samara (Navalny at that time released a short video about Merkushkin; it stated that the Samara governor and his entourage have houses on Rublevskoye Highway worth millions of dollars).
After the protests on March 23, 2017, in which Samara youth took part, Merkushkin met with students. The participants of the meeting were shown the film “No to Extremism”, produced by the local TV channel “Guberniya”, where opposition rallies were equated to the Maidan and the “Arab Spring”. The authors of the film called on the viewer to prevent Maidan in the Samara region by supporting Merkushkin. A blind student openly spoke out against Merkushkin, starting to talk about bad roads and social problems. The governor replied that critics were being “sent” to him, and the student was escorted out of the meeting by the police. At the same meeting, Merkushkin said that the construction of a stadium in Samara for the 2018 FIFA World Cup was being slowed down by the US State Department, that the head of the region himself was one of the main targets of the CIA, and that pensions in Samara had increased to 70 thousand rubles (the governor’s theses were circulated on social networks by students , present at the event).
Back in July, the interlocutors of the Merkushkin site were one of the main contenders for retirement in the autumn wave. And in general, the resignation of the odious governor has been talked about for several years now.
In 2016, Merkushkin came into conflict with past administrators of domestic policy, led by the then first deputy head of administration Vyacheslav Volodin, recalls an interlocutor of a website close to the presidential administration. Then the results of the United Russia primaries did not suit the governor and his entourage. The difference between the results and the approved list of candidates attracted the attention of the central executive committee of United Russia, and the governor was forced to retreat. As a result, a rather strange campaign was going on in the elections to district councils in the Samara region: self-nominated candidates ran as “the governor’s team,” and some United Russia members demonstratively distanced themselves from Merkushkin.
Merkushkin’s relationship with the administration did not work out after Volodin was replaced by Sergei Kiriyenko. The governor did not fit into the declared course of “renewal”, “rejuvenation”, “technocrats” at all, our source continues.
Mordovian autocrat
Nikolai Merkushkin began his political career in Mordovia, where he lived most of his life. In 1982, he became the first secretary of the Mordovian regional committee of the Komsomol, and in 1990 - the second secretary of the Mordovian republican committee of the Communist Party of the RSFSR. That same year, he ran for the post of Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, but lost the election to Nikolai Biryukov. In 1994, Merkushkin was elected to the State Assembly of Mordovia, in 1995 he headed it and in the fall of the same year he was elected to the post of head of Mordovia. He held this position for five consecutive terms.
Mordovia is known to experts as one of the regions of “electoral anomaly”, where the absolute majority of voters vote for power, while there is no transparent monitoring system, violations are systematically recorded and there is no reason to assume that the election results there correlate with the real ratings of the federal and regional authorities. In 2011, United Russia received 91.79% of the votes in Mordovia in the State Duma elections.
In May 2012, President Vladimir Putin appointed Merkushkin as acting head of the Samara region. Later, in 2014, Merkushkin went to early re-election and won with a “Mordovian” result of 91% of the vote. But in 2016, after the conflict between the governor and the federal United Russia, the party received only 50.75% of the votes in the State Duma elections in the Samara region.
Grigory Sysoev / RIA Novosti
“Merkushkin, like many governors who came to power in the 90s, had a hard time with the conflict of changing political reality,” says a former federal official. — Some of the governors overcame this conflict with dignity, like the ex-head of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev or the head of the Belgorod region Evgeny Savchenko. It was difficult for some, like ex-mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov. In the 90s, the governor was perceived as the rightful owner of the territory, almost as a sovereign. He built all the processes for himself, privatization was underway. In modern realities, a governor is a high-status official who heads a subject, no more and no less,” he says. According to him, Merkushkin’s result in the Samara region in his own gubernatorial elections of 92% is “his comprehensive description.”
It is worth noting Merkushkin’s conflict with ex-State Duma deputy from the Samara region Alexander Khinshtein. Khinshtein publicly criticized the governor’s entourage, for example, Samara city manager Oleg Fursov. Khinshtein accused him of spending 10 million rubles on celebrating his anniversary, which, according to official income, Fursov could not afford. Khinshtein also criticized the regional government for solving the problems of defrauded shareholders. In particular, he said that under the guise of solving such problems, “various corruption schemes” were being implemented; funds and land plots were illegally allocated. As a result, Khinshtein did not go to the State Duma from the region and now continues his career in the Russian Guard.
“This is the second time that Khinshtein has become a victim of his own good work. Merkushkin did not tolerate potential competitors around him, and the young active deputy who worked with the population aroused his jealousy, since he seemed to Merkushkin to be a candidate for the position of governor,” explains an interlocutor close to the presidential administration.
The conflict between Merkushkin and the current acting and then head of Samara, Dmitry Azarov, was of the same nature, according to the interlocutor. Azarov was elected to the post of head of Samara in 2010 with a result of 66.9%, but in the fall of 2014, on Merkushkin’s initiative, he went to the Federation Council. In the political establishment, a position in the Federation Council is generally considered exile and an honorable resignation, and in the case of Azarov this was exactly the case.
“Azarov was a strong political figure in the region before Merkushkin arrived there. And Merkushkin, as an authoritarian person, began to harshly clear the political space for himself. In Azarov, of course, he saw a competitor,” explains an interlocutor close to the Kremlin.
“An independent mayor and a visiting governor, a local and a Varangian. What else can I add? One had to go to Moscow for a while,” describes the essence of the conflict, the head of the “Political Expert Group” Konstantin Kalachev.
Samara blogger Dmitry Begun testified in detail about these conflicts in 2015. He and two other Samara bloggers were detained on charges of extortion. Begun told investigators that for several years, for 300 thousand rubles a month, he published compromising materials on Samara politicians and officials on the direct orders of Merkushkin, including Azarov and Khinshtein.
Year after year, the pile of problems only accumulated. The socio-economic situation of the region did not improve, conflicts with regional elites grew, all this happened against the backdrop of the governor’s scandalous statements in the media.
“When the governor is in a difficult situation, you should not attract unnecessary attention to yourself by creating an additional negative information background,” notes Gleb Kuznetsov, a member of the board of directors of the Expert Institute for Social Research.
Merkushkin's scandalous nature really did not allow us to forget about him. Over the past year, experts openly predicted his resignation in each “wave,” that is, in the fall of 2016 and spring of 2017. However, the last straw, according to an interlocutor close to the presidential administration, was Merkushkin’s conflict with the influential state corporation Rostec, which owns shares of a number of large companies in the Samara region.
Most experts agree that the moral of Nikolai Merkushkin’s story is this: if a person looked adequate as the head of one region, it is not a fact that he will be able to successfully lead any other region. And if in one region it was possible to build a super-authoritarian model, it is not a fact that the same model can be built anywhere.
“The Samara region and Mordovia are completely different regions,” says Alexander Kynev, head of regional programs at the Information Policy Development Fund. — In principle, the history of Merkushkin’s leadership of the Samara region resembled the modified history of his leadership of Mordovia. It all started with “suffocation in the arms” of local elites, when he first demonstrated his readiness to negotiate and then annihilated potential opponents. In the Samara region, when Merkushkin was appointed, he met with everyone, and even the oppositionists had some hopes, but then everyone was brought to a common denominator. This applies to opposition politicians, deputies at all levels, and the media. A huge number of destinies have been crippled. The Mordovian regime was personalistic, management was confined to one person, all the rest were technical advisers. But such regimes are limited by territorial principle. A personalized system has limits of effectiveness. What was possible to do in small Mordovia cannot be done in the complex and large Samara region. One person cannot control so many processes,” says Kynev. In his opinion, Merkushkin’s resignation is precisely the most clear signal about the “renewal” of the governor’s corps, in contrast to the resignations of governors of small and remote regions.
Yuri Strelets/RIA Novosti
Political strategist Oleg Matveychev notes that Mordovia is a predominantly rural region and Merkushkin was the main representative of the elite there.
“He managed to build an authoritarian system where everyone comes to bow to him. And in the Samara region there are regional elites, there are separate elites from Togliatti, Samara, Syzran. All the leading financial and industrial groups of the country are represented in the Samara region, which are headed by people who communicate with people of status higher than Merkushkin. That’s why his approach failed, since an entire elite coalition lined up against him,” Matveychev sums up.
The head of regional programs of the EISI, ex-deputy presidential envoy in the Ural Federal District, Andrei Kolyadin, believes that Merkushkin’s main problem was that he, having lived in the Samara region for six years, was unable to fall in love with it and become one of his own in it.
“Having arrived in the Samara region, he closed himself off, surrounded himself with several people who came with him from Mordovia, and communicated only with them. For example, I lived for a year in Yekaterinburg and managed to make friends with the region and fall in love with it. After arriving in Samara, he never fell in love with the region for six years,” says Kolyadin.
Merkushkin’s new place of work is the special representative of the president for interaction with the Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples. His active federal career is probably over.
“Probably Merkushkin would like to take a different post. The most desirable post for a retired governor is the Federation Council or a seat in the executive branch. But the executive branch has set a course for rejuvenation, and Merkushkin’s age and methods cannot be called modern. State corporations also need more modern people, so, remembering Merkushkin’s Mordovian past, they chose this position for him,” says the former federal official.
Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of RANEPA Ekaterina Shulman notes that Merkushkin’s resignation from the governor’s post without a criminal case is already quite good in these times, and granting him at least some kind of honorary position in the system can be considered an indicator that there is no criminal case at the moment. But this does not mean that it will not be there tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. According to Shulman, the position of the President’s special representative for interaction with the Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples was probably simply the first thing that came to mind when looking for a potential place to move Merkushkin from the governor’s chair, and in some ways this is a manifestation of “hardware humor.”
Legacy: can't be changed?
Acting Governor of the Samara Region Dmitry Azarov is 47 years old, he is returning to the region from his “honorable exile” to the Federation Council.
Azarov comes from Samara. Before entering politics, he made a career in business - in 2001-2006 he was the general director of Srednevolzhskaya Gas Company LLC. In 2006-2008 he was the first deputy head of Samara Viktor Tarkhov. In 2010, Tarkhov, who first joined Rodina in the 2000s, then Sergei Mironov’s Party of Life, and then his A Just Russia, served a new term. Azarov ran against Tarkhov from United Russia and won the election with 66.9% of the vote. In 2014, after a protracted confrontation with Merkushkin, Azarov, as already mentioned, was “evacuated” to the Federation Council.
The former head of the internal policy department of the presidential administration, head of the Civil Society Development Fund, Konstantin Kostin, evaluates Azarov’s appointment positively.
“Azarov, in my opinion, combines two extremely important competencies that are necessary for the successful work of a governor. He has positive experience in economic management, and at the same time, in the 2010 elections for the mayor of Samara, he showed himself as a political leader, managed to conduct a brilliant campaign in a difficult city, unite the elites around him, offer citizens a program and successfully implement it. Azarov even then corresponded to the current urgent demand for renewal and the coming to power of a new generation,” Kostin believes.
Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti
Another interlocutor of the publication, close to the administration, is less friendly towards the new governor and says that the politician from Azarov is strong, he catches all signals and carries out them clearly, but whether he can cope with the economic part of his work is a big question.
Presidential elections will take place in March 2018. It is expected that the current head of state, Vladimir Putin, will take part in them. It is obvious that the result of the main candidate and the course of the campaign in the Samara region will be the first test for the acting governor Dmitry Azarov, who will be elected to his post on a single voting day in the fall of 2018.
As mentioned above, Merkushkin received 91% of the votes in the elections in the Samara region in 2014, which is certainly an anomalous result, more typical for national republics. Now the new government faces a dilemma: should it pursue Merkushkin’s percentage or organize the electoral process more democratically?
“In a sense, they tried to transfer the “Mordovian electoral anomaly” to the Samara region. The region was negatively impacted, although the authorities still had to respond to scandals and resistance. It still didn’t work out to make Mordovia out of the Samara region,” notes Alexander Kynev.
The head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, Mikhail Vinogradov, has already joked on his Facebook that the new regional government is now faced with the dilemma “you can’t leave it to change.”
“Merkushkin received an extremely high result in the gubernatorial elections, which clearly did not correspond to his real popularity. Now the region is in a dual situation. On the one hand, a large number of voters live in the Samara region, and the center needs votes for power in order to quantitatively compensate for the voting results in large cities, for example, in Moscow, where votes for power are worse. Merkushkin’s “electoral machine” was a serious asset for the center, and now it is unclear whether it can function without him and, most importantly, whether it is necessary to maintain the caricature-high results in its current form or, for the purity of the elections, to demand more realistic figures for the Samara region, where there are protest sentiments in Samara or Togliatti,” concludes Vinogradov.
On December 8th last 2015, an unprecedented event occurred in Samara - at the last moment, a meeting of the State Council, most of the participants of which had already arrived in the city, was canceled. We were waiting for Russian President Vladimir Putin. But aircraft number 1 never arrived in Samara. According to official information, “due to bad weather.” Although Kurumoch airport continued to accept other flights. As a result, the State Council was moved to Moscow. And then... instead of the presidential plane, a whole plane with security forces arrived in Samara. Thus, in the Samara region, a comprehensive check by the security forces of the activities of Governor Nikolai Merkushkin began. It is still unclear what a representative team of employees of the Investigative Committee, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the FSB were able to dig up on the establishment of the Samara region, including Mr. Merkushkin himself, who has held the position of Samara governor since 2012.
Indeed, despite the fact that Nikolai Merkushkin managed to hold the position of head of the neighboring Mordovian Republic in the Volga Federal District for 17 years (five terms!), almost all election campaigns were accompanied by various kinds of scandals, including the “bloody” ones. For example, on February 15, 1998, Merkushkin was elected head of the Republic of Mordovia for the second time, receiving 90.78% of the votes. Such a resounding victory happened because Merkushkin’s main rival, Russian State Duma deputy Nikolai Medvedev, withdrew his candidacy a month before the elections. In early January 1998, his father, 67-year-old Pavel Medvedev, was killed. On the night of January 7, he was stabbed 17 times in the heart area. Medvedev the son considered the murder to be contracted, committed in order to put pressure on him. And he even repeatedly insisted on a thorough investigation of this murder. As part of the investigation, law enforcement agencies did not have a single question for Nikolai Merkushkin, who, as a result of this whole story, ended up winning...
In October 2003, two days before his arrest, Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky specially flew to Saransk to meet with the head of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin. According to rumors, Khodorkovsky brought almost 2 billion rubles in cash - YUKOS's investment obligations to the republic over the past three years. The head of YUKOS, sensing something was wrong, apparently decided to close the financial debt? They say that part of this money was used to complete the construction of the Start stadium in Saransk, so that Merkushkin would have something to report to the federal authorities for his cooperation with oil workers. But this was just a pitiful sop to the region through which YUKOS, with the help of a chain of its companies, had been selling millions of tons of oil for a long time, evading taxes worth billions of dollars.
After the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, it turned out that as many as six such Yukos companies were registered in Mordovia (Ratmir, Alta-Trade, YUKOS-M, YUKOS-Mordovia, Fargoil and Mars XXII). Through these so-called internal offshore companies (in Mordovia at that time there was a preferential tax regime for YUKOS), oil was purchased from the producing companies Yuganskneftegaz, Samaraneftegaz, Tomskneft at a price below the market price, and then sold on the foreign market with the help of Cypriot and other offshore companies already at completely different exchange prices.
For example, during an inspection, the head of Mars XXII, Tatyana Subbotina, informed the Ministry of Taxes and Duties that there was only one company on staff, and “in fact, financial and economic activities were carried out by NK YUKOS.” Executive Director of YUKOS-Mordovia Elena Gavrilina said that she did not know where the products sold by her company were located and how they were transported. Despite all the signs of shell companies, all Mordovian companies of YUKOS in 2001–2003 had billions in turnover.
The Fargoil company alone sold $3 million worth of “Mordovian oil” every day - every day! Fargoil “sent” half of all reported oil supplied in 2001–2003 (an average of 25–35 million tons annually) for export at a price of $145–150 per ton. The other half went for processing at YUKOS plants. Some of the petroleum products listed on Fargoil’s balance sheet (about 10–15 million tons) were sold through YUKOS-M on the domestic market.
In the period from January to December 2001, in the accounts of Fargoil, under the guise of profit from its own activities, net profit of more than 118 billion rubles was accumulated; in 2002, the amount amounted to about 126 billion rubles, by the end of 2003 - 236 billion rubles.
According to estimates by the Prosecutor General's Office, as a result of this scheme, the interests of mining companies were infringed, and they lost at least $11 billion. The lion's share of the excess profits received by offshore companies was paid as dividends to the founders of these offshore companies - top managers and major shareholders of YUKOS (Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin, Shakhnovsky, Brudno, Lebedev, Elfimov, Malakhovsky, Valdez, Pereverzin, etc.). The Prosecutor General's Office qualified their actions as laundering proceeds from crime.
The tax services then assessed an additional 130.24 billion rubles ($4.43 billion) in taxes to Fargoil alone for 2001–2003 - the largest amount among all YUKOS trading firms. In total, the territory of Mordovia accounted for about 78% of the claims related to the revision of taxes paid by YUKOS in 2000–2004.
And all this turned out to be possible thanks to the head of the Republic of Mordovia, Nikolai Merkushkin, since he had the keys to the “tax paradise” for YUKOS.
And the main mystery of all the numerous criminal cases against the top management of YUKOS is why law enforcement agencies did not have any questions for the head of Mordovia, Nikolai Merkushkin?
Former Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin said: “The companies (YUKOS - Ed.) diverted funds from several regional budgets, and the federal one had to compensate for the emerging gaps in regional incomes and transfer additional assistance to the subjects. It’s a shame that companies that call themselves transparent and socially oriented kept silent about the fact that they received these revenues from the so-called tax optimization not even due to high oil prices, but simply through agreements with individual governors.
The most interesting thing about this scheme is that in Mordovia this money left the region forever. For example, without spending any effort, the Fargoil company, according to the Accounts Chamber, received 36 billion rubles in benefits in Mordovia over two and a half years. At the same time, it pledged to invest only 1.2 billion rubles in the region...
Testifying in court, Mikhail Khodorkovsky himself argued that YUKOS could receive tax breaks in 70 Russian regions, but for some reason concentrated its offshore activities in Mordovia. So, did YUKOS management feel most comfortable working with Nikolai Merkushkin? He turned out to be the most unassuming, “gullible” of all the leaders of 70 regions of the Russian Federation?
According to the most conservative estimates, the government of Mordovia, by providing Fargoil LLC, Yu-Mordovia, Ratmir and other YUKOS “offices” registered in Saransk with a preferential tax regime in 2001–2003, deprived the residents of the republic of additional budget revenues amounting to more than 80 billion rubles.
Considering that the population of the Republic of Mordovia does not even reach a million people, with these funds it was possible to solve all the problems here for many years to come: roads, housing and communal services, apartments, education and much more. And Mr. Merkushkin built only one stadium?!
It is worth noting that Governor Merkushkin provided his friends from Yukos not only with tax benefits, but also with political support. Thus, for quite a long time, one of the main leaders of YUKOS, Leonid Nevzlin, sat in the Federation Council as a senator from Mordovia. Another major shareholder of YUKOS, Vladimir Dubov, tried to enter the State Duma from Mordovia on the United Russia party list. The press wrote that Vladimir Dubov allegedly even gave Nikolai Merkushkin and his colleagues Audi and BMW cars for political support.
Leonid Nevzlin, in my opinion, cynically, then commented on his appointment to the Federation Council as follows: “I regard the approval of my candidacy as high trust on the part of the republic. Thanks to interaction, we will be able to resolve important issues regarding the development of Mordovia.”
After Khodorkovsky's arrest, both of these figures went on the run. Dubov's charges of multimillion-dollar embezzlement have not yet been dropped. And Nevzlin is still on the international wanted list by Interpol on charges of organizing the murders of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov and other people disliked by YUKOS.
As the information portal TLTgorod.ru wrote, one day four deputies of the State Assembly of Mordovia signed a request to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia demanding to check the legality of providing tax benefits to subsidiaries of the oil company YUKOS. The request noted that the law of the Republic of Mordovia “On the conditions for the effective use of the socio-economic potential of the Republic of Mordovia,” on the basis of which cooperation with YUKOS was built, was not submitted for discussion by deputies. Local legislators also had no idea how the money the republic received from YUKOS was spent.
Merkushkin's reaction followed immediately. Criminal cases were opened against three of the four signatories. Anatoly Sardaev suffered the most for his “curiosity.” He not only lost his position as head of the Mordovian branch of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Russian Post, but, in the end, found himself behind bars.
For his friends from YUKOS, Merkushkin was ready to tear his opponents to shreds. It is a pity that the irreplaceable head of Mordovia did not show the same zeal in improving the life of the population of the republic entrusted to him.
The results of the “fruitful” work of Merkushkin’s team as the head of the republic are eloquently evidenced by the following fact: in the ranking of Russian regions in terms of family welfare, which is compiled annually by RIA Novosti, Mordovia constantly occupies “honorable” places at the end of the list. For example, in 2012, just when Merkushkin left the republic, Mordovia ended up in last place in this ranking out of 83 regions. At the same time, it is surprising that the Mordvins skip ahead such problematic regions as Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Considering that several fairly large enterprises are located on the territory of Mordovia, this figure is very low.
In 2013, Mordovia became an anti-leader in terms of debt burden with a burden of 171%. In 2014, this region took second place in the same debt rating of all regions of the Russian Federation - from the bottom. Merkushkin left an excellent legacy to his successors.
Apparently, a debt trap awaits the Samara region, which has been ruled by Merkushkin for the fourth year. At the end of 2013, the regional budget deficit increased by 5.8 billion rubles and amounted to 14.34 billion rubles. In 2014, the budget deficit was already 8.5 billion rubles, but revenues from the federal center amounted to 11.48 billion rubles. As a result, the actual deficit is 20 billion rubles!
The volume of public debt of the Samara region as of November 1, 2015 was 60.3 billion rubles, or 46.6% of its own budget revenues. According to the explanatory note to the regional budget for 2016–2018, the volume of public debt of the Samara region as of January 1, 2017 will amount to 68.5 billion rubles.
Governor Merkushkin explains the growing debt of the Samara region by the fact that a stadium and accompanying infrastructure are being built to host the 2018 World Cup in Samara. At one time, Mordovia, as a result of cooperation with YUKOS, also remained with the stadium.
Speaking to various audiences with his messages, Merkushkin from year to year stigmatizes his Samara predecessors and blames them for the collapse of the region’s economy. Of course, he is silent about his Mordovian experience.
Nikolai Merkushkin: “When I first started my job, I decided to take a walk. I met girls in the city center who run 100 meters to a pump for water. I ask: “Where are you going with the buckets?”, and they answer: “Our mother does the laundry.” In the historical center, the windows of some houses are boarded up; on one such building I saw an inscription: “People live here.” This is a reproach to the authorities. There are two barracks across the road on Uritsky Street, people go to the toilet in the open air, and 30 meters away is the new government building. This happened in Latin America, but has already been overcome.”
After repeatedly comparing Mordovia with the Samara region, not in favor of the latter, a logical question arose in the ranks of those gathered, which someone shouted: “Don’t you regret that you went to serve here?” In response, Nikolai Ivanovich only sighed heavily.
However, the head of Mordovia himself, whom the people affectionately nicknamed Mordvabashi, is not in poverty. In particular, there are rumors in open sources that large enterprises of the Republic of Mordovia are still under the control of Nikolai Merkushkin’s relatives. Although he has been in charge of another region for a long time. And in the Samara region, Nikolai Merkushkin has also already accumulated initiatives that can be called “strange.” Apparently, YUKOS taught him to think broadly and outside the box. For example, recently the Samara governor has been haunted by the 660 billion rubles of savings of Samara residents in various banks in the region or simply under the mattress. “That’s six regional budgets!” - Nikolai Ivanovich exclaims dreamily.
“For many countries in the world, population accumulation has become a driver of economic development,” Nikolai Merkushkin recently said from a high rostrum to an listening audience. “A year and a half ago, the second stage of the Suez Canal was built in Egypt with money raised from the population.” And he proposed using a similar mechanism in the Samara region.
Merkushkin has already instructed to develop a mechanism for issuing bonds for the population by February 1, 2016, without going into details of how exactly the regional authorities intend to secure this loan. It is already clear to many that the driver for the development of whose well-being will be the relatively fair deprivation of their savings from the population of the Samara region.
Leonid Nevzlin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The beginning of a thorny path. 1994
The Accounts Chamber of the Samara Region conducted 350 inspections and identified violations worth 16.5 billion rubles in 2014 alone. It turned out that corruption and misuse of public funds are rampant in almost all areas of the Samara civil service.
“The most interesting “thefts” took place in the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Samara region. Damage was caused to the regional budget totaling 1.5 million rubles. JV specialists found out that this amount was used to pay for round tables and seminars in hotels that were not actually held!
During an audit of the activities of Technopark OJSC, violations were revealed totaling over 100 million rubles. The auditors recognized the work of the OJSC management as ineffective, since “during its existence the company turned out to be unable to fulfill the tasks assigned to it,” namely, the technology park itself was never created in Samara.
Auditors discovered multimillion-dollar violations in the State Unitary Enterprise Samara Regional Property Treasury, which actually duplicates the functions of the local Federal Property Management Agency. But, as we see, these “revelations” were not followed by any reaction from the Merkushkin administration. Maybe there are some special reasons why Nikolai Merkushkin is in no hurry to fight the “gray zone” of the Samara economy?
Since Merkushkin came to power in the Samara region, the head of the region’s Investigative Committee has been the well-known Vitaly Gorstkin, who became famous for the fact that in 2011 he “earned” 2.5 times more than the chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin (18 million rubles). Vitaly Gorstkin, as inspectors from Moscow found out, was such a loyal person that in the end he completely ruined the work in the department. For which he was personally removed from office by Vladimir Putin.
Since 2014, the SKU in the region has been headed by Valery Samodaikin, with whom it is not so easy to come to an agreement, if at all possible. And in November last year, the Investigative Committee of the Samara Region unexpectedly opened up cases that had once been closed due to the lack of corpus delicti. These are cases of inappropriate spending of multimillion-dollar sums spent on the construction of the Zhigulevskaya Valley technology park. The suspect against whom a case of fraud on an especially large scale has been opened is the ex-director of the State Public Institution “Capital Construction Administration” Vladimir Rylkin. However, experts have no doubt that the circle of accused will become wider in the near future.
And now a Moscow brigade of security officials has come with a comprehensive check. As you know, at the end of last year, the Kremlin’s website published an order from the President of the Russian Federation to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Tax Service and the Accounts Chamber, by April 1 of next year, to organize checks of where the budget money allocated for the construction of technology parks in the Russian Federation went.
Will the unsinkable Nikolai Merkushkin really manage to sit in the governor’s chair again in this catastrophic situation?
New airport and future stadium
Dmitry Medvedev And Nikolay Merkushkin The new terminal of Kurumoch Airport was officially opened.
The opening of the terminal will provide great opportunities not only for Samara, but also for the Orenburg region and Ulyanovsk,” said the head of the region.
Dmitry Medvedev praised the European-class terminal, which will be able to accommodate more than 3.5 million people a year.
The construction of a new terminal in the Samara region is a good example of infrastructure renewal, the Prime Minister noted.
The head of the region presented Dmitry Medvedev a model of a stadium with a glass dome, which will be built in Samara for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, projects for the planning territory of the Gagarin Center technology park, a universal sports complex with artificial ice, an indoor cycling track and a television tower. The head of the Russian Government expressed his readiness to provide additional support at the federal level.
Russia needs its own planes
Dmitry Medvedev held a retreat in Samara on the development of Russian air transportation. He noted that, despite the crisis in the economy, in 2014 they showed an increase of 18%.
The Russian government is taking a set of measures to support air travel and reduce ticket prices; they are also included in the anti-crisis plan. There are various federal programs, including subsidies for regional transportation. 9 billion rubles were allocated for these purposes last year,” the prime minister noted.
Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation Maxim Sokolov stated that the anti-crisis plan envisages fixing the VAT rate for airlines at 10%. This will lead to an increase in shortfall in federal budget revenues by 20 billion rubles.
Nikolay Merkushkin emphasized that the Samara region is an active participant in the regional transportation development program.
During the program, 66 thousand passengers took advantage of this opportunity. The region’s budget includes funds for further co-financing of these programs, noted the head of the region.
Volga Federal District Plenipotentiary Mikhail Babich believes that the next step in supporting regional aviation should be the production of domestic aircraft with a capacity of 20 - 30 and 50 - 70 people.
Several years ago, the Progress RKPC created an 18-seater Rysachok aircraft. To complete the tests and put it into operation, approximately another 250 - 300 million rubles are required, noted Nikolai Merkushkin. And he emphasized that in the province, Aviakor has all the capabilities to produce the Il-114 aircraft, and the same enterprise has experience in creating the An-140, similar in size.
Experts believe that in three years it is possible to receive this aircraft in a modernized form, and after 4 - 4.5 years - in digitized form. We are ready to implement the project in the form of a public-private partnership and invest budget funds in organizing assembly production,” concluded Nikolai Merkushkin.
BY THE WAY
At a personal meeting with the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Merkushkin spoke about significant projects that are being implemented in the Samara region: modernization at AvtoVAZ and the Novokuibyshevsky Oil Refinery, space projects of OJSC Kuznetsov.
Speaking about the socio-economic life of the region, Nikolai Merkushkin noted that the unemployment rate has not increased. And the implementation of projects in the agricultural sector will provide jobs for those who have been laid off. The situation with rising prices in the region remains problematic. This is due to the fact that most products are imported to us from other regions. Nevertheless, a special commission is monitoring prices, and thanks to its activities the situation is stabilizing.
The governor also noted that in January, revenues to the regional budget decreased by 13%, although in February everything returned to its previous level.
“I see that the situation in the region is under control,” summed up Dmitry Medvedev. The head of government gave a positive assessment of the socio-economic state of the province.
Yesterday, late in the evening, the governor of the Samara region was summoned for an interview with the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev.
According to unofficial information from Zasekin’s source, Dmitry Medvedev warned Nikolai Merkushkin about the need for high-quality and timely commissioning of facilities being built for the World Cup and that are still problematic, including the Samara Arena. In addition, Medvedev expressed concern about the socio-economic situation in the region and the ongoing protest activity.
In turn, Merkushkin’s press service touchingly reports that during the working meeting, the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation supported the request of the Samara governor to allocate funds from the federal budget to complete the construction of a children’s clinic in Tolyatti for 500 visits per shift, and also instructed Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Minister of Education and Science Olga Vasilyeva to support the implementation of the project of the Gagarin Center scientific, educational and technological innovation complex on the principles of public-private partnership. Another important topic of discussion, according to the governor’s press service, was the construction of key road infrastructure facilities in the region, including the Frunzensky Bridge.
However, the transcript of Medvedev’s conversation with Merkushkin, published on the Russian government website, included probably the most harmless fragment of yesterday’s meeting.
Dmitry Medvedev: Nikolai Ivanovich, before we discuss current affairs, tell us a few words about what the situation is in the region? I mean both the economy and, of course, the fulfillment of social obligations, including those programs that we consider as fundamental for the development of the social sphere - the construction of schools, the completion of the kindergarten program and housing programs.
Nikolay Merkushkin: In general, the situation is normal. Active work is underway related to the implementation of presidential decrees, work on those programs that you mentioned are key. We immediately became actively involved in the school program. We received a significant amount - one of the largest in the country. Three schools have already passed.
Dmitry Medvedev: What is the overall need for construction? How much will it take in the coming years? I mean the number of places and schools.
Nikolay Merkushkin: Approximately 80–85 schools throughout the region require major repairs.
Dmitry Medvedev: So it doesn't have to be a new building?
Nikolay Merkushkin: Approximately 28 schools are new buildings, the rest are major renovations and require serious investments.
This year we will introduce three more schools as part of this program. One for 1,500 places - an experimental school. Both ministers of education, both former and current, were there and looked at this school. On September 1, children will come to it. And it will be ready by August 1st.
Dmitry Medvedev: Large schools are, in a number of cases, a way to create special conditions for education. Previously, we were always afraid of large schools, but in fact, large schools can solve a whole range of educational problems very well. I saw a similar school not long ago in the Penza region. You have one and a half thousand students. And it’s about the same there. One and a half thousand students. This may be a trend. This does not need to be done everywhere, but in large areas, residential areas where many people live, this is normal.
Nikolay Merkushkin: This is a new microdistrict where a lot of housing is now being built, so we are running a school program. We have now presented six more schools there – for this year and for next year. We prepare design and estimate documentation.
As for kindergartens, we completed almost everything by the deadline of 2014. That is, there was practically no queue - children from three to seven years old were provided for. But our birth rate was growing, and there was a difference of about 1.5–2 thousand in those who went to school and those who arrived at the age of three. And we still have to introduce about 10 kindergartens a year now, so as not to accumulate a waiting list. This year we will introduce 9 kindergartens, next year we plan to introduce about as many more, and we will have to add another year, and then, apparently, this base will already correspond to the demographic situation that is developing in the region.
As for housing construction, we have significantly increased the volume of housing construction, and reduced the price in six to seven years. It even started before me. Since 2010, housing prices have decreased by 6%. And construction volumes have doubled over the years. And we are building the largest volume, share, under the “Housing for the Russian Family” program, which the government approved, in new buildings. We received the largest amount that stimulates such new developments under the Housing for Russian Family program. The price per square meter of housing that we sell in accordance with the program is 35-37 thousand rubles. Now 132% in four months - the growth of the housing market compared to last year.
Dmitry Medvedev: This is precisely the growth of so-called economic housing. Or is this design now becoming a thing of the past - we are changing the legislation, this is called “standard housing”.
Nikolay Merkushkin: Standard housing. In accordance with the program “Housing for Russian families . We must already present finished housing, without additional finishing and so on, and the price is 35-37 thousand per square meter. It is clear that it can be difficult with a developer there, but we provide incentives, including from the federal budget. And we will co-finance the infrastructure - kindergartens there, schools are being built there, sports facilities, roads, the territories of these new buildings, large areas are being improved. We fit into these price parameters, and the process is quite active.
Dmitry Medvedev: What tools are used to purchase housing?
Nikolay Merkushkin: Mainly mortgage. 70% of purchased housing is a mortgage.
Dmitry Medvedev: What are the mortgage numbers? Is it stable now, growing or decreasing? It's different in different regions.
Nikolay Merkushkin: It's going down. In the first two months there were fluctuations, there was some state support. In January–February, demand fell. And somewhere from the end of March, demand began to pick up. And now housing is being purchased and mortgages are being taken out. Mortgage is up to 11%.
Dmitry Medvedev: Our joint task is to work to reduce the rate. This, of course, is largely a banking issue. And we all proceed from this and count on the fact that in the context of a decrease in the key rate, mortgage financing and the mortgage loan rate will decrease in proportion to this. We must reach, we have set this task for ourselves quite a long time, a lending rate of 6–7% throughout the country. I believe that the macroeconomic conditions are generally ripe for this.
Nikolay Merkushkin: Plus, after all, we then receive taxes from the builders.
Eliminating ineffective managers will give people hope for the future
The new governor of the Samara region, Dmitry Azarov, said that his region is awaiting an audit in all areas. A lot of problems have really accumulated in the area, and a significant part of them is connected with the name of the previous chapter. “MK” found out from experts why Nikolai Merkushkin, despite all his scandalousness, did not follow the ex-head of Mari El Leonid Markelov to the pre-trial detention center after his resignation, and what now awaits the Samara region.
Azarov Dmitry
Dmitry ORLOV, head of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications:“Nikolai Merkushkin, of course, resorted to political electoral practices that were completely unacceptable for the Samara region, inadequately assessed what was happening, aggravated relations with the elites, and so on. The attitude towards Merkushkin in the federal center is very wary. Moreover, this situation persists for quite a long time. But this does not mean that his resignation should be shameful. His services to Russia are obvious - he is one of the heavyweight governors. Therefore, despite all the obvious claims, there is no need to compare him with Markelov. His resignation is voluntary and is due to a frankly insignificant but still appointment to a new post.”
Alexander KYNEV, expert at the Civil Initiatives Foundation:“The fate of each individual governor is determined by his personal characteristics and his personal connections. Undoubtedly, Merkushkin had them and this was one of the main reasons why he sat in his post for so long."
Did the Kremlin want to say something by appointing Merkushkin to the post of special presidential representative for interaction with the World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples?
BEFORE.:“He led Mordovia for a long time, one of the most important regions of Russia with a strong Finno-Ugric identity, so this decision seems quite logical. It's an honorable resignation, and I don't think there's any subtext to it. The new position, on the one hand, is connected with his previous political career, and on the other, does not imply any concentration of effort.”
A.K.:“The position to which he was appointed looks quite comical. I think that in the coming months the Samara region will be extremely grateful to the federal center. There is practically no need to conduct a presidential campaign in Samara, since its main event has already been done. Most likely, this is exactly the effect the Kremlin expected. The departure of a man who produced nothing but scandals in his post was undoubtedly a very powerful symbolic gesture. By and large, the elimination of negative news is already perceived as positive news. This is the trend for renewal. If the appointment of governors in the spring of 2012 in the protest regions looked like some kind of punishment, now it looks more like giving some hope to those regions in which the situation looked most depressing and hopeless.”
- Should we expect any changes in the Samara region?
BEFORE.:“There are serious problems there, some of which are caused by Merkushkin’s legacy. The new governor Dmitry Azarov will have to rebuild the electoral configuration, which implies more space for dialogue than under Merkushkin, a new system of relations with the elites, in particular, a number of companies focused on Merkushkin will have to lose their preferences, and they will have to re-build relationships with the automobile business from Tolyatti and so on. In addition, there is a specific project that is important for the federal center - this is the Samara Arena stadium, which must be completed for the World Cup, but the readiness of which is not at a high stage. However, Azarov is a competent local leader who is well received by regional elites and trusted in Moscow. He also has a fairly high interregional influence due to the fact that he previously headed the Interregional Coordination Council of United Russia. If we compare Azarov with Merkushkin, the new head of the region has much more influence within the region and wider opportunities for interaction with local elites.”
A.K.:“From the point of view of global events, little depends on the governor, because when you sail on the Titanic, all the cabins are on one ship. So Azarov’s appointment will not affect the situation in the automobile market. But from the point of view of the psychological situation, the region will be able to breathe. For the last few years, there has been the most severe pressure there, they were persecuted for any dissent. This shouldn't happen now."
- Can the appointment of Merkushkin to the post of governor of the Samara region be called a mistake?
BEFORE.:“The experience of Merkushkin’s management of the Samara region has shown that a completely successful and adequate leader of one region, and he led Mordovia for 17 years, can be completely alien in another region. I would not say that his appointment was a mistake; rather, it is about the incompatibility of the leader and the region.
A.K.:"Yes. The automatic transfer of experience from a small depressed region (Mordovia) to a large and complex region with a heavy elite (Smolensk region) was initially an unjustified attempt. In practice, Merkushkin’s entire experience turned out to be completely out of place and caused a completely natural reaction. It is unknown what the lobbyists for this appointment were counting on. Perhaps they hoped to turn the Samara region into Mordovia, but it didn’t work out for them.”
