The executive director of one of the regional autonomous non-profit organizations, former Minister of Construction, Road Management, and Transport of the Trans-Baikal Territory, Dmitry Vatagin, was detained on charges of large-scale fraud, reported the publication "Siberian Express" with reference to the regional Investigative Committee.
ANO "We Don't Abandon Our Own", which was restoring social facilities in Donbas, was headed by Vatagin in 2023. According to the investigation, ANO received a subsidy of more than 250 million rubles "for the purpose of restoring socially significant facilities in one of the regions of Russia, including the repair of schools and kindergartens". According to "Chita.ru", it is specifically about the restoration of social facilities in the DPR territory, controlled by Russian troops.
"Contracts were concluded with a commercial organization that did not complete part of the work or [completed it] with improper quality," the Investigative Committee's message states. "The accused, knowing for certain about these shortcomings, submitted forged documents to the Department of State Property of the Trans-Baikal Territory about the full completion of the work, which allowed illegally obtaining more than 30 million rubles."
In 2021, Vatagin was appointed Minister of Construction of the Trans-Baikal Territory, but already in March 2022, he was dismissed after being sentenced to 6 months of community service for negligence in his previous position—the court found that while Vatagin headed "State Expertise", he caused damage to the budget of Nerchinsk amounting to 1.6 million rubles during the failed improvement of the city's historical center. In addition, the regional prosecutor submitted a representation to Governor Osipov that Vatagin unjustifiably awarded himself bonuses totaling 16.5 million rubles.