The Prosecutor General's Office demands to recover 924.8 million rubles from the organizers of the construction of fortifications on the border of the Belgorod region with Ukraine, writes «Kommersant», which reviewed the lawsuit. The defendants are several individuals and legal entities, including those accused of embezzlement, the deputy governor of the region Rustem Zainullin and the head of the regional capital construction department Alexey Soshnikov, as well as a number of contractors. As prosecutors found out, the latter obtained 26 contracts through corruption, and the objects they built did not meet defense security requirements.
As stated in the lawsuit, in 2022–2024, 19.5 billion rubles were allocated from the federal budget to the Belgorod region for the construction of protective structures: platoon strongpoints, anti-tank pyramids, bunkers, fortifications for equipment, trenches, ditches. By decision of the regional government, the general contractor was determined to be the regional state budgetary institution «Capital Construction Department», headed by Alexey Soshnikov. His activities were supervised by the deputy governor of the region — the minister of property and land relations Rustem Zainullin.
In December 2022, two contracts were concluded with the company LLC «Region Siberia» for a total amount of 127.6 million rubles. The company was transferred 57.4 million rubles.
At the second stage, officials used the company LLC «Stroyinvestreserve», the owner of the company Sergey Petryakov agreed to pay kickbacks to officials in the amount of 7% of the contract value, notes the prosecutor's office. For this, from January 2023 to December 2024, according to the department, Zainullin facilitated the conclusion of 24 contracts with this company for strengthening the border for 1.011 billion rubles. From this amount, the contractor received an advance of 867.4 million rubles.
The prosecutor's office also established that part of the money, namely at least 32 million rubles, was funneled through companies owned by trusted individuals of Rustem Zainullin. The money was subsequently transferred to the official. «Zainullin and Soshnikov put their selfish needs above the interests of the Motherland», the prosecutor's office stated.
In March of this year, the Leninsky District Court of Kursk satisfied a similar lawsuit by the Prosecutor General's Office to recover more than 4.1 billion rubles from former top managers of the regional Development Corporation and other participants in the construction of defense lines on the border with Ukraine. In the criminal case, the investigation of which was initiated by prosecutors, the accused are the leaders of the corporation, as well as the former governor of the Kursk region Alexey Smirnov and his first deputy Alexey Dedov.