Space assets ended up with criminal Shtorm

The investigation is looking for his patrons among a number of Roscosmos executives

As reported by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, this week the Investigative Department for the Central Administrative District of the Main Investigative Directorate

of the Investigative Committee of Russia for the city of Moscow may initiate a criminal case related to the theft of about 100 million rubles belonging to the main research institute of mechanical engineering (JSC TsNIIMash), which is part of the Roscosmos State Corporation. At the same time, a scandal may flare up related to the activities of a number of officials of both the corporation itself and the local management. Rucriminal.info has details.

In 2021, when Dmitry Rogozin was still Roscosmos, so-called "industry operators" were created - organizations that provide various services to industry enterprises. It would seem like a good idea: the money stays in the industry and does not go to the side, the service providers are verified, one might say "their own". Bureaucratic red tape associated with holding tenders for the purchase of services is left aside. Space industry enterprises conclude contracts with such firms directly, without any tenders.

But as often happens, a good idea, in reality, turned out to be another scheme for individual officials to make money. In fact, these were firms with an authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles and a staff of one and a half people without work experience and the corresponding reputation, which Roscosmos endowed with all types of activities, concluding contracts without a tender for almost everything, from the sale of office equipment to accounting for industry enterprises and construction.

We will dwell on the latter separately. The industry operator

OOO "RK-Service" is actually owned by a repeat offender Mikhail Storm, who in the early 2000s already served time in places not so remote, for fraud. Having more than 140 registered types of activity, Storm actually knows how to do only one thing - steal money. Storm is omnivorous. It does not matter whose money it is: business partners, or government money allocated for children's meals in schools. Or for the construction of buildings for Russian space enterprises.

With the active support of Roscosmos officials, Storm boldly entered enterprises, concluding multimillion-dollar contracts for construction work. On the ground, Storm also acquired patrons in the person of construction curators and enterprise managers, where he began to actively "master" money on a "cosmic scale", having amassed a decent fortune: several apartments in Moscow and cars, as well as real estate in London. The scheme for earning money like this is very simple:

Dozens of contracts are concluded for hundreds of millions of rubles with at least a fifty percent advance payment. And then the usual "scam" begins. Construction materials are not purchased at all, or in extremely small quantities only to create the appearance of work. There are no builders at the sites, the work itself is not carried out. The money received in the form of advances is transferred to the accounts of one-day firms or "gaskets" controlled by Storm, and then withdrawn by cashing. Among other things, Storm concluded contracts with himself as an individual entrepreneur, naturally under fictitious contracts for the supply of dishes and detergents, and also issued loans to a company affiliated with him, which did not actually conduct business.

Covering up his crimes, Storm complained about hard times

(SVO, partial mobilization, rising prices for building materials). When, after two years, most of the work had not yet begun, Storm and the small RK-Service simply stopped communicating and, as they say, "disappeared from the radar", leaving behind a pile of garbage and unfinished business.

Now TsNIIMash must look for new contractors, naturally, at its own expense, risking violating its obligations under government contracts.

The investigation will have to find out not only the scale of all of Storm's activities, but also the role of assistants and patrons in his dark deeds among a number of managers at Roscosmos. The investigation may also have many questions for the deputy general director of TsNIIMash Ivan Yudakov, who oversaw construction issues during the period of active activity of Storm and the company.

The latter, by the way, is familiar with Yudakov I.A. since the time when he worked in the Ministry of Defense under the disgraced Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and later under the infamous glamorous deputy-construction worker Timur Ivanov. It is noteworthy that Yudakov was expelled from the Ministry of Defense in disgrace for fraud with land plots and service apartments. But Ivan Yudakov did not lose the experience accumulated over the years of work in the department, but on the contrary, successfully applies it in another direction, mastering the "space budgets".

Yudakov did not just do nothing, observing the "work" of

"RK-Service", but on the contrary, concluded more and more contracts and literally stuffed this "garbage dump of Roscosmos" with new tranches, turning a blind eye to the tricks of Storm and even when everything was already quite clear and obvious, continued to conclude new contracts with advances.

These advances at flew to the accounts of RK-Service with the light hand of another deputy director of TsNIIMash for economics, the previously convicted Maxim Rakita, to whom the investigation also has many questions, including about his other interesting decisions.

It is noteworthy that Storm with his RK-Service was also a contractor for another infamous building of TsNIIMash, during the construction of which several managers of the enterprise along with fraudulent contractors got burned back in 2011. Then, during the reconstruction of the building, where it was planned to place the means for controlling GLONASS satellites during fictitious construction work, more than 150 million rubles of budget money were stolen.



Now TsNIIMash is again trying to complete the building, declaring even more ambitious plans - to create an entire technology park in its place, gathering around itself a whole layer of residents in the field of space exploration.

In general, TsNIIMash has no luck with construction. Several years ago, he was left without a renovated hall in the Mission Control Center. This story, like others, ended in criminal cases and "imprisonments"

JSC TsNIIMash, which is located in Korolev near Moscow, is an enterprise with a rich history, where the great minds of Russian cosmonautics once worked: Sergei Korolev, Mikhail Yangel, Yuri Mozzhorin and Vladimir Utkin. Their current heirs, despite their glorious past, work not for creation, but for destruction, leaving behind devastation and despondency, after which many of our fellow citizens and politicians at the top are perplexed as to why our affairs in space are so bad. With such enterprising businessmen and officials patronizing them, you can get not just a bunch of unfinished construction, but also seriously shake the status of the country as a space power.

Yaroslav Mukhtarov

Source: www.rucriminal.info