Arrest of the Magomedov brothers in the context of theft during the construction of the stadium in Kaliningrad indicates serious claims by law enforcement against the builders of sports facilities for the World Cup. According to Novaya Gazeta, a large-scale audit of the expenditure of funds allocated for the long-term construction of the Zenit Arena (aka Gazprom Arena, aka St. Petersburg Arena) is now being prepared. Both the company and Metrostroy, supervised by the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Igor Albin ( former Slyunyaev). The official himself understands this very well, trying in every possible way to ward off a possible blow.
At the zenith of vanity
Right now the Metrostroy company is in large debts. According to preliminary data, the St. Petersburg tax office is going to charge the company additional arrears of income tax, VAT, as well as penalties and fines totaling 1.3 billion rubles. As one of the measures to save the company, the possibility of transferring it into the ownership of Smolny is being considered - that is, removing the Alexandrovs from the game, which is what Albin probably sought.
Passengers may not be allowed into the Novokrestovskaya and Begovaya metro stations on the opening day, April 29, since, most likely, only work traffic will begin, and the facilities will be fully loaded later. Elena Mikhina, press secretary of the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Igor Albin, told St. Petersburg.ru about this. Apparently, Albin is again trying to “hang noodles on our ears.” They are again talking about the lag behind the previously announced work schedule, but, obviously, it is already a shame to talk about another lag, so Mikhina took on this thankless job, not Albin.
A man of remarkable talents
Albin’s efforts to distance himself as much as possible from the story with Metrostroy and the inspections of the St. Petersburg Arena can probably be explained by his ambitions. According to Novaya, Albin is seriously thinking about competing for the post of governor of the Moscow region in September this year. Andrey Vorobyov’s positions after "dump riots" do not look reinforced concrete, and Albin, who sincerely considers the Zenit Arena his achievement, wants to bring his idea of governorship to the presidential administration. True, Vladimir Putin himself publicly reproached Slyunyaev-Albin for his affairs at least twice - but this is also why the vice-governor of St. Petersburg does not need additional stains on his reputation now.
The only problem is that Albin’s name was mentioned not only in scandals related to the stadium or Metrostroy, but also in other high-profile events. The most recent and high-profile story is the one with LLC "Intex", which in 2015 received more than 2.3 billion rubles for the construction of an alluvial site for the construction of a parking lot and the lobby of the Novokrestovskaya metro station. When the work was completed, another contractor stated that Intex had not supplied enough sand and installed insufficient piles, and that anything built with back-breaking labor might simply slide into the bay. All this became known during the publication of documents in the case of the Magomedov brothers, who manage the Summa group. The investigation believes that Intex falsified the executive documentation on the volume of work performed, turning almost 670 million rubles in its favor. As the agency reported "Ruspres", along with the owners of Summa, the head of the Intex company, Artur Maksidov, was arrested.
The nuance is that all the work from Intex was accepted by Igor Albin and his subordinate Sergei Miloslavsky - and they “did not see any violations.” Later, they attracted the Leokam company to continue construction (the same one that was accused by Deripaska’s structures of “attempting a raider takeover” of the stadium construction), and the amount of the project for the alluvial part grew even more. It was Leokam that ultimately reported alleged violations by Intex.
It is curious that the name of Sergei Miloslavsky, one of Albin’s subordinates, was mentioned in a criminal case about embezzlement in "United Grain Company"- in the early 1990s, the fact of concluding a number of fictitious contracts for the supply of grain totaling $180 million was revealed. It is interesting that the criminal case was initiated at the moment when the Summa of the Magomedov brothers gained control over the UZK. The story with Intex in St. Petersburg in this sense is similar to a “response” from one of Albin’s main deputies.
It must be said that Albin’s subordinates and those whom he lobbied for various positions in Smolny are now under great pressure. At the beginning of the year, the Governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko ordered a “personnel cleansing” in the Construction Committee due to the fact that the department worked the worst in 2017 with the expenditure side of the budget (only 57.8% - 11 billion out of 21.5 were spent billion rubles). At the same time, Albin himself did not come under attack from the governor, although it was his subordinates who did not fulfill their plans.
However, Igor Albin’s communication does not go well not only with businessmen and subordinates, who for some reason always remain extreme. It’s hard for the vice-governor and ordinary residents. At the end of April, the Betancourt Bridge to Serny Island is scheduled to open in St. Petersburg. During the construction of the bridge, which was also supervised by Albin, it turned out that in one place it practically touches residential building No. 5 on Remeslennaya Street (the distance between the bridge and the wall of the house is officially 65 centimeters). Residents of the house went through all the authorities and eventually hung up a banner with the inscription “Putin, help!” on the facade of the house. After this, the officials began to move and even promised to resettle the house, but then Albin himself said that this would definitely not happen in the next year. At the same time, it seems that the bridge is also not being completed on time, which is why residents of the house hear the noise of work even at night.
In addition, St. Petersburg city defenders are also dissatisfied with the work of the vice-governor (they accuse him of “sabotaging” presidential orders for the protection of monuments), and Albin is also considered one of the initiators of the transfer of St. Isaac’s Cathedral to the Russian Orthodox Church - the project is now frozen. With such a background, it seems that it will be difficult for Albin to count on any other positions. I would like to stay at the current one - at least until the check after the World Cup. And I can’t believe at all that the president can promote a person to whom he previously said to his face “Are you crazy, or what?”, and in April he also left without the promised grant almost 2 billion rubles.
On Tuesday afternoon, an Audi A8, driven by the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, rammed a Fiat Ducato van at high speed on Voznesensky Avenue. According to "Fontanka", at the time of the accident the official himself was not in the car, but his assistant, who was in the car, was injured in the collision.
According to the publication, the Audi was equipped with license plates of the government series A003AA98, which belong to the Smolny car depot and are at Albin’s disposal. It is reported that it was in a car with these license plates that the vice-governor repeatedly came to the construction site of the Zenit Arena stadium.
spb_today/vk.com
It is noteworthy that, according to eyewitnesses of the accident on social networks, after the collision, the driver and passenger of the government car allegedly rushed to remove the license plates from the Audi.
Witnesses of the accident claim that license plates A003AA98 were removed from the foreign car, which, according to documents, were allegedly installed on another car of the Smolny automobile enterprise, and the sign H005BB178 was hung up instead. At the same time, the employees who arrived at the scene, as eyewitnesses assure, registered the accident specifically on the second number.
The traffic police in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region told Gazeta.Ru that an administrative case had been opened against the Audi driver.
“On May 30, 2017, at about 12.30, an accident occurred near one of the houses on Voznesensky Avenue. The driver, driving an Audi, entered the lane intended for oncoming traffic, where he collided with a Fiat Ducato. As a result of the accident, a female passenger from the Audi was injured and was hospitalized. Currently, an administrative protocol has been drawn up against the Audi driver under Part 1 of Article 12.24 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (violation of the Traffic Rules or vehicle operating rules, resulting in minor harm to the health of the victim). The traffic police is conducting an investigation during which all the circumstances of this incident will be established,” the department’s propaganda department reported.
The details of the accident were not disclosed.
Press secretary Albina Elena, in an interview with Gazeta.Ru, said that she did not see anything strange or reprehensible in the removal of license plates after the accident.
“That’s what everyone does. As far as I know, mere mortals do this too, so that no one takes pictures of their license plates. Any driver does not want to shine on social networks, whether he is great or ordinary. This is normal practice in our country,” she said.
At the time of the accident, Albin himself was at the Zenit Arena stadium at a meeting on the readiness of the facility for the Confederations Cup.
“I don’t know what his driver was doing and where he was going,” Mikhina concluded.
At the same time, as Dmitry Galinovich, coordinator of the site o001oo.ru, told Gazeta.Ru, the driver of the state car changed the license plate due to the fact that now the official state sign of the AAA series cannot be installed on the vehicles of senior St. Petersburg officials.
“Several series of government numbers have changed in St. Petersburg. Once upon a time there were “LLC”, then “AAA”, then they introduced the “NVB” series.
Officially, the “AAA” plates were supposed to be confiscated by the traffic police, but in fact they fell into the hands of some officials. They changed the number because officially a car cannot now drive with the number “AAA”; it is absolutely illegal. According to the documents, this car, of course, has the number “NVB,” he said.
According to Galinovich, there is a clear hierarchy in the license plates of state cars. He claims that the fourth deputy governor of St. Petersburg drives a car with license plate N005ВВ.
spb_today/vk.com
In addition, he explained that Albina’s Audi, which was involved in an accident, is somewhat different from other cars that St. Petersburg officials drive.
“If you compare photographs of cars with “NVV” numbers from one to ten, they will almost all be the same. Except this one.
This car has a special communications radio with an antenna on the roof, which, by the way, was also removed after the accident.
And also a special chrome frame around the number. The fashion for such frames was introduced by the Special Purpose Garage (GON). But there it is necessary due to duty, so to speak - according to the instructions, in the morning all cars receive new license plates. And in this case, it’s just a kind of “obscurity,” Galinovich concluded.
Currently, a protocol has been drawn up against the driver of the Audi A8 under Part 1 of Art. 12.24 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (violation of traffic rules or operating rules of a vehicle, resulting in minor harm to the health of the victim), the punishment for which is a fine in the amount of 2.5 thousand to 5 thousand rubles. or deprivation of rights for a period of one to one and a half years.
The traffic police are conducting an investigation into the accident and establishing all the circumstances of the incident.
During the ceremony of presenting the “Influence Rating” award at the General Headquarters of the State Hermitage, Vice-Governor Igor Albin admitted that he invented the sensational story about the cormorant, which with its powerful beak was hollowing out the roof of the stadium on Krestovsky Island, on purpose.
“Kibitov (the governor’s press secretary - Fontanka’s note) called me that the city agenda needs to be switched, Zenit fans are preparing chants that are unpleasant for Smolny, and even Hyde Park has moved from the Champ de Mars to an unknown direction,” said Igor Albin. – Just at this time, my press secretary Elena Mikhina was preparing an interview “Sport day by day.” And we wanted to develop the idea about the stadium that this is the best stadium in the country. I began to think. Toucan, seagull... oh, cormorant! And the problem was real. In fact, the cormorant destroys the film with its powerful beak, and the previous contractor did not provide protection against it. It was a made up story. But I really liked her. And I’m not ready to part with my cormorant,” said Igor Albin.
Let us remember that Igor Albin’s quote about a cormorant destroying the roof of the stadium instantly became federal news and then a meme. The photo of a sad-looking black bird made the rounds in the media - as it turned out, before the statement of the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, many confused the cormorant with the herring gull. This happened almost immediately after a video appeared in which the then governor of St. Petersburg, Georgy Poltavchenko, shouts “Akhmat-Sila” during a visit to Grozny.
Since 2008, the magazine "City 812" and the online newspaper "Fontanka" have been compiling influence ratings based on an expert survey of more than a hundred respondents. In 2018, the award ceremony for the winners takes place on December 13 at the General Headquarters of the State Hermitage. You can watch the live broadcast
In former times, he bore the surname Slyunyaev, and when he was governor of the Kostroma region, he was named by local journalists as TKNN - He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Now he is called Igor Albin - a man who behaves unceremoniously in St. Petersburg, as if he acquired the city for personal use on occasion. The current nickname of the vice-governor sounds much more offensive than the abbreviation TKNN - “Albino”. And this fully reflects the essence of an official who is different from others.
Each step of Albino is accompanied by powerful speculation in a number of media outlets, which are extremely attentive to his successes. Igor Albin “doesn’t count his bullets” in response to the positive noise around himself.
Just a few examples. The ex-Minister of Regional Development of Russia Slyunyaev tried to make a loud PR for himself in Kolomyaga, a historical district in the north of St. Petersburg, by ordering two asphalt concrete plants, allegedly poisoning the local air, to go away, but it turned out that the source of the stench was not them, but a fuel oil point - a strategic facility , not subject to relocation. In addition, none of the 60 sites for relocating the ill-fated factories were suitable, and the budget did not have two billion rubles for a PR adventure...
Then a loud scandal befell the thermal power engineers, towards whom Albin seemed to look favorably - they emptied the city treasury of hundreds of millions of rubles. And when the cost of building the Zenit Arena increased by 4.3 billion rubles, the vice-governor suddenly rushed to take over manual control of such a tasty morsel, expelling the Transstroy company, which had already built the stadium by eighty percent. The official instructed Metrostroy to successfully complete the construction.
Who is furthest on the roof...
Another loud statement from the vice-governor was made the other day on the air of a St. Petersburg radio station: “FIFA specialists and Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko have no doubts about the delivery of the stadium on Krestovsky Island by the end of this year.” Did Mutko himself say this? Who knows... After all, the minister’s words were voiced by Igor Albin, for whom it is important to reassure the St. Petersburg public in connection with the change of the general contractor.
This statement is more like information garbage that clogs the heads of ignorant people. What about the previously torn off roof lining at the Zenit Arena? It is difficult to blame the former contractor Transstroy for the inopportunely raging disaster - the incident occurred after Metrostroy entered the site, which allows us to doubt the quality of the work it carried out in conditions of probable chaos. At least, the Konkretno.ru correspondent was unable to determine how much in monetary terms the new general contractor has already produced in the last two months out of a contract worth 7.8 billion rubles, and how much is still left to be “mastered.”
In order to accept the work, the customer, it seems, is waiting for the conclusion of the Glavgosexpertiza - after all, this document may increase their cost. And contractors are unlikely to rush to report their production results, which can be calculated at Transstroy’s previous prices. Most likely, the construction of the Zenit Arena is now being carried out using funds raised from outside - loans and borrowings. If this is so, then interest on the use of other people's money will understandably lead to a general increase in the value of the object.
In addition, as the media have already reported, Glavgosexpertiza will issue its conclusion on the multibillion-dollar construction documentation shortly before the New Year, and the contractor will be forced to “master” the gigantic amount in a matter of days. And even if Albin dresses up like Santa Claus, the magic won’t happen...
Of course, you can move on without Glavgosexpertiza. So to speak, at your own peril and risk. And, it is possible that in violation of building codes. Here it’s time to ask whether employees of the supervisory agencies - Rostekhnadzor and the prosecutor’s office - will agree with Albino’s optimistic forecast? At least, “Konkretno.ru” did not find in open sources that, as of August 2016, the same Rostekhnadzor made any claims against the Inzhtransstroy-SPb company.
It is doubtful that the responsible official will stamp his foot and the auditors will run to the corners. After all, it used to be, in the Kostroma province, he was TKNN. But in St. Petersburg, such tricks may not work. Especially when it comes to the stadium. Although, accustomed to using “manual control,” Albin, who, bearing the surname Slyunyaev, managed to screw up the federal ministry, is trying to transfer these leadership methods here too.
By the way, recently the supervision of the construction of the century seems to have moved from the specialized Construction Committee to the State Public Institution “Capital Construction and Reconstruction Fund” subordinate to St. Petersburg. And this is not even “Metrostroy” at all. You won’t be able to figure out who the general contractor is now. Hence, the construction is carried out, it seems, in accordance with the instructions: “Complete here, fake here.”
In the mornings, personnel formation takes place at the Zenit Arena. In the presence of journalists, the vice-governor explains to the workers how they should “love their homeland”; by the evening Albin’s monologues are already splashing out on the townspeople from television screens. “This has nothing to do with actual construction. But we stand in front of him for an hour, more than a hundred people, and then the workers have to go back to get the tool... He really got tired of it,” one of the engineers shared in his hearts with a correspondent of the Internet portal Life.
According to experts, after the completion of construction of the Zenit Arena, it will take almost a year to purchase equipment, install it, carry out commissioning work and receive a certificate of commissioning of the facility from inspectors. We would venture to suggest that Albino perfectly understands how industrial construction works. And that’s why the term “construction readiness” has been put into the heads of football fans.
At the beginning of this week, Vice-Governor Albin, probably without thinking, blurted out to a correspondent of the Vedomosti newspaper that although “the construction of the stadium will officially end in December” and “the construction deadlines are being met,” “but all the work will not be completed by this time.”
And how is this fundamentally different from the phrase of the English Marquis Curzon: “If rape is inevitable, relax and try to enjoy it”?
And who is not in the share
St. Petersburg builders, unlike Zenit fans, are much more critical of the situation around the Zenit Arena. Several subcontractors have already stepped aside. Among them is JSC Pilon, which refused to work on a retractable roof. However, this refusenik is not threatened with further excommunication from budget orders - the president of Pylon is Vladimir Dedyukhin, a former deputy of ex-minister Slyunyaev.
At the end of the summer, the “daughter” of Metrostroy, SMU No. 13, became interested in the stadium on Krestovsky Island, taking over the laying of electrical networks and general construction work. This relative, apparently, does not want to repeat the unenviable fate of its subsidiaries - LLC Management Company Metrostroy, JSC Polyclinic of St. Petersburg Metrostroy, JSC Metrostroyevsky Mechanical Plant, JSC SMU-15 Metrostroy, JSC SMU-17 "Metrostroy", JSC "Production and commercial company SMU-19 Metrostroy". As colleagues from other media write, they were declared bankrupt, and the accounts payable of Metrostroy itself amounted to 10.6 billion rubles as of mid-2016.
Perhaps the subcontractors do not want the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region to suddenly become interested in them. After all, security officers recently conducted searches like in Metrostroy and carefully examined the personal property of the Alexandrov family, the main owners of the company.
Igor Albin needs to hurry. At the beginning of September, instead of the previous 2,200 workers, about 3,500 people were working at the construction site. For some reason, the migration service also stopped visiting the facility. But there are big doubts that the Zenit Arena is being built at an accelerated pace by labor-hungry St. Petersburg residents. And you can bet that a thorough check of the documents of the personnel involved in construction today will reveal that among the dark-skinned builders there are many who come from sunnier places. They say that today you can move around the territory of the unfinished stadium only in high rubber boots. It seems that the new general contractor has no time to maintain engineering systems.
But Albino traditionally leads in the media ratings. There is talk in the Northern capital that if Governor Georgy Poltavchenko is taken to the top, then the city is supposedly ready to be headed by his “ambitious” deputy. That is why there are convenient journalists nearby who are diligently creating the latest biography of Igor Albin.
Yvette, Elena, Asfira and Fima the psychopath
The editors of colleagues from “Our Version” turned out to have an interesting document entitled “Plan for information support of the activities of the vice-governor against the backdrop of a consistently negative background from the Stadium facility.” Presumably, its author is blogger Nikolai Kamnev, known as “Phima the Psychopath.” He began to take care of Albin at the beginning of 2015. A personal press service helps build the correct image of the vice-governor as an “effective” manager.
Here, there is no doubt that everything is going according to plan. Among the main points proposed by his PR escort, “we know in practice how Albin works and what results he achieves... The city government can handle it... it controls the situation.” It is recommended to make materials original, and to attract popular names as speakers, including Mikhail Piotrovsky, Nikolai Valuev, Valery Gergiev, Alexander Sokurov, Mikhail Boyarsky and, perhaps even the owner of AJUR-media Andrei Konstantinov. The task of the journalists who joined them seems to be to prepare revealing materials regarding the former general contractor of the Zenit Arena, forgetting that “people from the underground” have been working at the stadium for more than two months.
I wonder who is the author of such a letter: “...set the task for Kolya to find an assessment of Transstroy by V.I. Matvienko, D.A. Medvedev, A.V. Neradko, S.S. Sobyanin and others. At my request, they raise projects of the times Rosavtodor and the Ministry of Regional Development. It will turn out to be good material, like a chronicle of military glory”? Perhaps the difficult question will be answered by Ivetta Andreeva, who in the old days headed the Department of Information Policy under the Kostroma Governor Slyunyaev.
By the way, her rival Elena Mikhina, the official press secretary of Vice-Governor Albin, and previously the chief information officer of the head of the Stavropol Territory, is trying to compete with her. This lady’s area of responsibility is to make the official a friendly official - press approaches, press releases and all sorts of other press...
But it seems that a certain Asfira Pushkarskaya is engaged in posting “correct” materials on the Zenit Arena in the media. However, the three court ladies and Fima the psychopath are the iceberg of an information campaign that exalts Albin. In the shadows, as Moscow colleagues report, Igor Panarin, editor-in-chief of the capital's EcoGrad magazine, is diligently hiding - in all likelihood, he is regaling Internet users with a hodgepodge of laudatory materials about the independent vice-governor who is not afraid of responsibility.
Meanwhile, independent journalists who do not have much faith in the good intentions of Albino have to piece together the real picture of what is happening now at the Zenit Arena. For example, that for some reason all the claims against Transstroy were accepted by arbitration judge Dmitry Khokhlov.
It is highly doubtful that the launch of the stadium will coincide with the striking of the New Year's chimes.
And the question hangs in the air: what is St. Petersburg left with? Is it with a nose?
Pavel Luspekayev, “Konkretno.ru”, photo from www.utronews.ru
versia.ru - 08/23/2016 17:39
Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Igor Albin is a personality who is very noticeable in the region today. Of course, two PR teams are working to create his positive image. About this - in the material posted on the website of the online publication "Version".
Why does the vice-governor of the Northern capital maintain a huge staff of public relations specialists? Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Igor Albin seems to have become the main newsmaker of the Northern capital. His name appears in the headlines of the St. Petersburg media: “Albin took daily control of the construction of a kindergarten in the Nevsky district,” “According to Igor Albin’s plan, 16 thousand defrauded shareholders should receive housing in the coming years,” “You and I are building the most beautiful city in Russia,” he says Albin on Builder's Day."
If he had participated in the election of the city governor, he would probably have surpassed all his competitors in the abundance of victorious reports addressed to him.
Those around Albin say that two teams of PR specialists are working to create the chief’s image. He brought them from his previous places of work - from Moscow and Kostroma. Albinsk “PR Varangians,” if this information is to be believed, work for considerable salaries, trying to make their boss into a model official in the media.
Wash white
It’s not easy to imagine Albin as Peter’s protector and just a good person. As the authors of one of the characteristics of the vice-governor that appeared on the Internet say, the official is “focused more on external events and his own PR.” Albin is “powerful”, but he “lacks diplomacy in relationships”, he “loves signs of attention from people, can be self-confident, complacent, tough”...
Who is advising the vice-governor, trying to dress Igor Slyunyaev-Albin in the white clothes of reputation? Albin’s PR, according to Internet sources, is carried out by two teams of rival friends. At the head of one, “St. Petersburg,” is press secretary Elena Mikhina, who is assigned white officialdom - press releases, events, trips, approaches to the press, etc. The second group is like “skeletons of the past.” This is a team of information specialists under the command of Ivetta Andreeva, who headed the governor’s press service back in Kostroma.
There are rumors that Andreeva and Mikhina do not get along with each other. The first allegedly tries to subordinate the second, every now and then complaining to the boss, with whom she is on first name terms, about the unprofessionalism of her colleague. This is partly true, as colleagues note, Mikhina, who at one time worked as the press secretary of the head of Stavropol, is “not a fighter.” She can be called a purely parquet employee. But the official has to keep both of them with him - each carries out its own front of work.
PR manager Asfira Pushkarnaya is responsible for placement in the media, say those around the official. It was she who conducted the materials on the Zenit Arena. Anna Zhernovnikova helps her. Social networks have not been ignored either. Here, as they say, blogger Nikolai Kamnev frolics. The personality is interesting and quite well known in St. Petersburg. After graduating from the navigation department of the VVMUPP named after Lenin Komsomol and having spent three years as a submariner, in 1998 Kamnev went into retail. Then the development director of Pyaterochka and Karusel, the Finnish chain K-Rauta, apparently realized that you can earn more in the field of public relations, especially if you don’t burden yourself too much with ethical principles, and since 2010 he – Albin’s personal PR adviser on social networks.
The Kostroma team is also not homogeneous. Ivetta Andreeva once headed the information policy department of the regional administration. And her relationship with Igor Slyunyaev was allegedly tense, which, however, did not stop her from going to St. Petersburg for the boss. In Kostroma, Andreeva still has her own “candle factory” - the Zolotoy Zhuk luxury gift and jewelry store.
Andreeva’s closest assistants are Nikolai Sery and Yuri Opelyants. According to the same information, Gray’s functionality includes PR for Albin on social networks and YouTube. He travels with the official to events, shoots videos and then posts them on a popular hosting site. Gray visited the vice-governor more than once and visited the Zenit Arena stadium. Allegedly, it was he who posted on July 23 the video “Igor Albin is a nightmare” for Transstroy, apparently intended to demonstrate the toughness of the official.
Albin’s team is allegedly being helped free of charge by the deputy director of the St. Petersburg TV channel, Andrey Burtsev. Most likely, it was thanks to him that a real series about Albin-Slyunyaev and his world-historical role in the development of the city was filmed and shown on St. Petersburg screens this spring. By the way, not only one of the vice-governors, but not even a single governor of St. Petersburg had ever received such an honor before.
Why does Albin invest so much effort and money into PR? Igor Nikolaevich wants, apparently, to become the governor of the Northern capital.
But that's not all. Albin's entourage is often seen as press secretary of the St. Petersburg Committee on Energy and Engineering Support Alexander Antipenko, freelance journalist Andrei Zakharov and others. All of them receive good fees from the main “newsmaker” of St. Petersburg, read – from the city budget.
Are you OK? Then we go to you!
But the media activity of Albin and his PR commandos covered not only St. Petersburg with their blanket of information. Judging by the Internet correspondence that has leaked online, they do not forget about the current governor of the Kostroma region, Sergei Sitnikov. He is still raking up the economic “legacy” of Slyunyaev-Albin. If you believe the above information leak, the task of digging up incriminating evidence and issuing a series of discrediting publications on Sitnikov and on all the facilities of Transstroy, the general contractor for the construction of the Zenit Arena, was assigned to Andreeva in mid-July 2016. Here, for example, is a quote from a letter written, it seems, by Albin to Andreeva on July 16: “Assign the task to Kolya to find an assessment of V.I. Transstroy. Matvienko, D.A. Medvedev, A.V. Neradko and others. At my request, they are raising projects from the times of Rosavtodor and the Ministry of Regional Development. It will turn out to be good material, like a chronicle of military glory.” As they say, no comments.
“Knight's Move” by Igor Albin
Why was the former contractor unprofitable for the official? Why did it need to be changed when the work was already nearing completion? “Can you imagine what a huge amount of documentation and other things need to be understood and mastered in order for all this to actively continue? – says the president of the Football Market group of companies, Yuri Belous. – Not to mention the fact that this stadium is unique in itself and represents a complex engineering structure, with electronics, technology, and so on. This is all, of course, upsetting.”
According to the football specialist, additional funding before the commissioning of the facility was required due to FIFA requirements. According to the new security conditions, stadiums must be equipped with all kinds of technical security equipment: alarms, video cameras, special lighting systems, access control and management systems, stationary metal detectors, radiation monitoring, explosive device localizers, radio-controlled explosive device blockers, X-ray television installation, etc. All this had to be done, otherwise FIFA might refuse to use the stadium for international games.
And when the construction reached the finish line, Igor Albin unexpectedly decided to take it into his own hands and change the general contractor. Albin urgently hires a construction company that seems to have never worked on stadiums before and does not know the history of the construction of Zenit. Moreover, on essentially the same financial terms that the previous contractor asked for.
“It is quite obvious that a new contractor can be selected not through a competitive procedure, but behind the scenes, “by agreement,” noted the famous lawyer Lyubov Sobol. “It is impossible to cope with a large construction order in such a time frame, and the new procedure is fictitious and exists only as a diversion.” The expert notes that the time frame for selecting a new general contractor is too short, and the new contract amount – 5.4 billion rubles – is unreasonable. In addition, the St. Petersburg Construction Committee did not comply with the requirements of the law on public procurement and did not publish acts of acceptance of the results of work, as a result, conditions are created for theft, since previously carried out work may be discredited again. Sobol sent complaints about the identified violations to the antimonopoly service.
The change of horses at the crossing actually led to a stupor of construction, introduced confusion into the construction process, led to a further delay in the completion of the stadium, and this has been going on for almost two months. But Albin overnight became the main newsmaker of all construction projects in St. Petersburg.
At the same time, speculation is beginning to circulate in the market that Albin simply redirected financial flows in a direction more profitable for himself: he exchanged construction companies for ones closer to him. Regardless of the fact that they often may not have any experience in constructing such objects. In addition to the fact that the mayor’s office allocates money for the completion of the stadium (the previous contractor asked for less, as the Delovoy Petersburg newspaper writes), Albin, it seems, today demands that the city’s construction companies receiving government orders from the mayor’s office transfer money to help the new contractor, as well as send workforce for the facility under construction. If this is true, then it is easy to imagine how much dividends can be obtained from this confusion.
The stadium, of course, will no longer be built by December 26, 2016. But you can always shift the blame to previous contractors. He, they say, did everything he could. To paraphrase the famous poet, how can one not exclaim, admiring the official: “Oh, Albin, oh, son of a bitch!”
Kostroma trace
But if everything is more or less clear with the stadium, then why did Albina suddenly worry Kostroma? Perhaps he realized that if the results of the 2016 elections turned out to be fundamentally better than under him, then serious questions might arise in the presidential administration towards his predecessor, despite the new position.
In general, today the period of Slyunyaev-Albin’s leadership in Kostroma is remembered, if at all, then with a shudder. “Under Slyunyaev, people’s businesses were taken away, people were not allowed to work, many were intimidated, and persecuted by police surveillance and wiretapping. Slyunyaev could take over the media and bring this system to the point of absurdity.” And these words spoken at a round table with a telling title: “Slyunyaev. Results,” Kostroma bloggers attribute to Ivetta Andreeva. But today, apparently, she is very comfortable with Slyunyaev-Albin.
Based on media materials
Run to your dream
Why does Albin invest so much effort and money (or rather, invested) in PR? The answer suggests itself: Igor Nikolaevich, apparently, wants to become the governor of the Northern capital. It is extremely difficult to find practical deeds and results that would bring him people's love and support. So we have to, as they say, chatter the population, talking about projects that are not yet in the budgets. And attract “helpers” such as the head of the Free World ANO Zinaida Tropina, who must calm down the defrauded shareholders.
Carried away by the promotion of his own person in the media field and continuous selfies in front of the Zenit Arena, Igor Albin created chaos in the construction sector and clearly forgot about the real problems of the city. And it was precisely for this purpose that he was invited to St. Petersburg by Georgy Poltavchenko.
I just want to ask the St. Petersburg prosecutor’s office: is it okay that many of the works carried out by the previous contractor have already been put up for new tenders for Zenit? And the main question remains. Will a random person in city management and a very mediocre politician who accidentally finds himself in a high chair be able to continue to “march through life” or will he, like, say, the members of Khoroshavin’s team, be told to “stop”?