The domestic defense-industrial complex found itself in the epicenter of a serious scandal. The reason for this is the litigation around the South Ural OJSC "Elektromashina", the former general director of which is now a defendant in the criminal case. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the ex-head of Electromashina is now also a member of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Government of the Russian Federation, and the enterprise itself is part of the state holding Russian Technologies.
The history of the current trial began back in 2003, when Oleg Bochkarev was the head of Electromashina OJSC. Then 14 promissory notes of the enterprise for a total amount of 2.2 million rubles were acquired by OOO Spetstechnologiya, which, having presented a demand for their payment, was unexpectedly refused. For several years, the holder of the bill, as well as the only founder and director of Spetstechnologia LLC, Sergei Mogilevtsev, through the courts tried to obtain the funds owed to him.
Corruption has reached the military-industrial complex
However, despite the positive decisions of the courts, there was clearly no rush to pay the promissory notes at Elektromashin. Moreover, in 2006, Aleksey Kocheshkov, the head of the security service of Electromashina, appeared in the management of Spetstechnology in a “magical” way. Later, according to forged documents, amendments were made to the constituent documents of the company. "I did not give up the shares in Spetstechnologia LLC to anyone, I did not transfer the powers of the head to anyone, therefore, the shares belonging to me were transferred illegally, on the basis of illegal documents amendments were made to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities", - indicates in his statement sent in 2006 to the Internal Affairs Directorate Northwestern District of Moscow, the true owner of the company is Sergey Mogilevtsev. However, the clumsiness of the domestic judicial system, unfortunately, played into the hands of the fraudsters. While at the head of Spetstechnology, Aleksey Kocheshkov signed an agreement with the general director of Elektromashina Oleg Bochkarev on the execution of a judicial act on payment of promissory notes and accepted 15 Sberbank promissory notes from Bochkarev in the amount of 20 million rubles. Kocheshkov did not have bills of exchange for "Electromashina", because of which the conflict initially occurred. The actions of the intruders have already become the subject of criminal proceedings, and Sergei Mogilevtsev in the courts finally managed to restore his rights to the enterprise illegally taken from him. The problem, however, is that the owner of Spetstekhnologiya has not found money either for the bills of Sberbank or for the bills of Electromashina in the company's accounts.
This story might not have received a wide public response - today in Russia you will not surprise anyone with raider seizures of enterprises. Moreover, in this case, although it took a long time for the courts and criminal proceedings, the fraudsters were still stopped. This trial has exposed a much more serious problem - corruption in the entire domestic military-industrial complex. Let us emphasize that Oleg Bochkarev, the general director of Elektromashina, actually headed the enterprise, 49% of which belongs to the state. And today he is a member of the government's Military-Industrial Commission. Meanwhile, as we believe, Oleg Bochkarev's rich experience in the defense industry today should rather have become a subject of study by law enforcement agencies, and not a reason for such a significant increase in "service".
"Competent director" was in no hurry to develop the enterprise
The career rise of the young manager Oleg Bochkarev took place in 1998 when he was elected to the post of general director of Electromashina OJSC. The employees of the enterprise pinned great hopes on the arrival of the new director - and indeed, in those years, the marketing department, in which Bochkarev had previously worked, was a truly advanced structure of the enterprise. “The efforts of the marketing department were aimed at expanding the market both within the country and abroad. The funds received for previously shipped products made it possible to equalize the situation with wage arrears, taxes, etc. The workers of the plant had a hope that the young, competent and proactive Oleg Bochkarev would be able to unite the team, direct efforts to develop production and stabilize the economic situation”- this is how they described employees of OJSC "Electromashina" have their expectations from the arrival of the new management.
However, in our opinion, the “young, competent and proactive” director was in no hurry to develop the enterprise entrusted to him, focusing on concentrating as much of the assets as possible in his personal property. It was arranged on a large scale: the newly-baked head announced that a large defense-industrial holding would be created on the basis of Electromashina OJSC. In fact, this process, in fact, turned into the withdrawal of assets from the enterprise.
So, from 2002 to 2004, the general director Oleg Bochkarev, with the approval of the board of directors, made a decision to create four subsidiary business entities: OOO Resurs-S, SBO-ZEM, ElTrans and Optech-Ural. It is interesting to note that, for example, SBO-ZEM LLC, originally created as a 100% subsidiary of Elektromashina, eventually turned out to be an independent structure - as of 2007, Elektromashina owns only 5% of this company. And this despite the fact that SBO-ZEM, by the decision of the General Director, transferred all the accounting affairs of Electromashina, that is, in fact, we are talking about the fact that the defense enterprise has given all its financial activities to outsourcing to a third party. The role of the newly-made ElTrans turned out to be very strange as well, to which all the design and technological documentation was transferred under the agreement between Electromachines and Russian Railways. Thus, ElTrans has actually turned into an unnecessary intermediary between Elektromashina and Russian Railways.
At the same time, in 2002, the process of joining the Federal State Unitary Enterprise SKB "Rotor" to OJSC "Electromashina" was unfolding. The thing is that, in violation of the legislation on combining positions in a state and a commercial enterprise, in October 2000, Oleg Bochkarev becomes the acting director of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise. Almost his first order in his new position was the signing of an order according to which the design service of Electromashina OJSC was transferred to SKB Rotor together with all the developments, documentation and equipment. The question of on what basis the intellectual property of the joint-stock company was transferred to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise without any formal legal registration remains open. In our opinion, Bochkarev himself did not seem to care much about the observance of "unnecessary" legal formalities. Here is just one example: in December 2000, Rotor receives budget funds for research and development. But they never saw this money in Rotor: the received 1.322 million rubles were transferred to Elektromashina, which had to pay off the debt to the tax inspection and the bank.
The evidence disappeared right from under the noses of the investigators
In March 2003, Oleg Bochkarev's professional activities became interested in the Prosecutor General's Office, having brought up the idea of the inadmissibility of combining the positions of the head of a federal state unitary enterprise and a commercial enterprise. The sad irony is that Oleg Bochkarev used the representation of the prosecutor's office to complete the creation of his holding: FSUE SKB Rotor was reorganized into JSC NPO Elektromashina. The result of such "manipulations" was the fact that the state was actually removed from the direct management of its own defense assets. If earlier Electromashina OJSC was managed directly by the Agency for Conventional Arms jointly with the Federal Property Management Agency, then after the creation of the holding the chain looked like this: Agency for Conventional Arms - NPO Elektromashina - Electromashina OJSC - subsidiaries. We believe that Oleg Bochkarev could be the beneficiary of such "metamorphoses", who in the period from 2004 to 2007 managed to increase his share in the authorized capital of Electromashina from 5.9 to 17.58%, of which 5.9% belong to his wife. Note that the share of the other owners remained unchanged - that is, in fact, it was diluted in favor of Bochkarev.
In our opinion, such schemes could never have been implemented if Bochkarev had not had the support of other shareholders of the company, as well as the board of directors. Therefore, from 2001 to 2004, the employees of JSC "Electromashina" were actively buying up shares in favor of the general director of the enterprise. Moreover, it can be called “buying” rather conditionally - in order to get additional shares, different methods were used.
In October 2001, the maintenance of the register of shareholders of Electromashina was transferred to the head office of Panorama in Moscow. In our opinion, the Chelyabinsk office of Panorama did not suit the main shareholder, since then any owner could easily carry out one or another operation with his shares. The calculation was correct: it was hardly possible to expect that ordinary employees of the plant or its veterans would travel to the capital to complete any deals on shares. For this purpose, a transfer agent was chosen from people close to him at the enterprise, so there was no need to talk about keeping the secrecy of transactions.
Methods of psychological and even physical pressure were applied to particularly intractable shareholders. For example, as Andrei Popov wrote in his statement to the prosecutor's office, Oleg Bochkarev, a shareholder and a former employee of the enterprise, together with his "partner" Viktor Lyapustin, better known as a crime boss nicknamed Lyapa, were threatened with physical violence if he did not sell the stake, moment belonging to his next of kin. Andrei Popov found out that the "businessmen" were not joking a few months later, when officers of the patrol service detained a car with three young men, in which a firearm and a photograph of Popov were found. A criminal case was opened on this fact. But here's the bad luck: the material evidence in the case somehow disappeared right from under the noses of the investigators. “On March 1, 2005, two unfamiliar men knocked on the door of my apartment. One of them said that they represented the interests of Muscovites and demanded that I sell them a 10% stake in Electromashina. In response to my request to name the people in whose interests they are making such an offer to me, threats were made to me, as well as to my family members, if I did not sell the shares. The second took a revolver out of his jacket pocket, poked them in the chest and said that the threat was so real that I couldn’t even guess,”- an excerpt from a statement to the prosecutor’s office of another shareholder of the company, Oleg Mayorov.
Widespread repression of trade unionists
Unfortunately, by no means for all the employees of Electromashina, who became objectionable to the main owner, the story of the creation of a new "holding" ended well. In 2001, an independent trade union was created: although the organization received support from the collective, only 29 people decided to join it. This is not surprising: the administration of the enterprise resorted to truly repressive measures against employees who openly expressed their disagreement with the policy of the new management. The workers' salaries were cut without explanation, and illegal wiretapping of office phones was carried out. And quite often the employees of the enterprise were even assigned security officers, who literally controlled their every step. As a result, in 2001 more than 60 people were forced to leave the enterprise. The second wave of layoffs occurred in 2002-2003, when employees who worked in the aggregate production were fired en masse.
In April 2002, the director of Elektromashina on general issues Sergei Chembelev submitted an application to the prosecutor's office of the Chelyabinsk region with a request to bring Oleg Bochkarev to justice for violating his constitutional rights expressed in wiretapping telephone conversations and business meetings. During the investigation, the facts indicated in Chembelev's statement were confirmed: the investigators established that the acquisition and installation of special listening equipment at the enterprise was carried out on the instructions of the General Director Oleg Bochkarev. True, subsequently, the prosecutor's office repeatedly tried to close the case for lack of corpus delicti, but in 2003 the Prosecutor General's Office ruled that the criminal case was closed without reason. But even this circumstance did not prevent Bochkarev from once again getting out of the water: after additional investigation, the Chelyabinsk prosecutors thought that there was clearly insufficient evidence of the involvement of the general director of Electromashina in the case, and the investigation was terminated. It seems that the question of how Oleg Bochkarev, who always hung by a thread from criminal prosecution, managed to avoid responsibility turns out to be rhetorical. Especially considering that the chairman of the board of directors of "Electromashina" for many years was the vice-governor of the Chelyabinsk region Valentin Buravlev.
But Sergei Chembelev's wiretapping case cost his life. In 2002, he was attacked at the entrance of his own house. As a result, Sergei Chembelev received a serious head injury, and died a few months later. Needless to say, no investigation was carried out into this fact.
Why would a CEO destroy the business of his own enterprise
But what about the business of Electromashina OJSC itself - an enterprise working for the domestic defense industry? For what, in fact, did they turn out dubious schemes to organize a "holding", ruin the team, not really caring even about the observance of the Criminal Code? In 2001, Elektromashina was supposed to conclude a contract with the United Arab Emirates for the supply of the Kalgan automated weapons control system, which it developed in 1999-2001. This system was to be installed on the Scorpion infantry fighting vehicles, which the UAE bought from the UK. But the contract was never signed. The thing is that information about the imminent signing of the contract has spread through the local media and on the Internet. At the same time, it was mentioned that the UAE possesses 10 thousand Scorpion combat vehicles, the modernization of which will be carried out by Electromashina OJSC. The disclosure of confidential information could not fail to attract the attention of British intelligence, as a result of which the British authorities were able to find leverage on the UAE, convincing them not to sign a contract with the Russians. Indeed, how can an enterprise be considered a reliable partner, whose representative not only disclosed information constituting a trade secret, but also did not hesitate to significantly exaggerate his own "merits": could be, in principle, since by that time the UK had produced only 2,600 of these machines. The key question, however, is why did Oleg Bochkarev need to destroy the business of his own enterprise? The one he was trying so hard to gain control of. According to unofficial information, the Kalgan system nevertheless reached the customers - only the supplier was not Electromashina OJSC, but a certain Dutch company. The emergence of such information could be attributed to the machinations of angry competitors, if a similar fate had not befell another development of Electromashina OJSC - an air conditioner for BMP-3. The design documentation for this device was seized by customs officers at Koltsovo airport from Bochkarev's close partner, an employee of the UAE Ministry of Defense, Sergei Kharin. On this fact, the FSB department for the Chelyabinsk region opened a criminal case, which even - lo and behold! - came to court. But "the most humane in the world" Mr. Kharin was acquitted.
However, Oleg Bochkarev did not limit himself to the developments of OJSC "Electromashina". In February 2002, FSB officers in the Chelyabinsk Region found two brand new GTD-1000T tank engines at the enterprise's warehouse. The management of “Electromashina” could not provide documents for this “find” - these engines are not produced or repaired by the enterprise. During the investigation, it was established that the owner of the engines is the Main Armored Directorate - a division of the Ministry of Defense. It is paradoxical, but true: upon learning about the find, the employees of the said department did not react to it in any way. On the other hand, a mysterious scheme was found in the warehouse of Electromashina. It describes in detail the procedure for settlements with all participants in the "deal" for the sale of tank engines. However, for some reason, Oleg Bochkarev was never charged. The official version is due to the absence of the injured party.
