Irremovable: Drozdenko will "master" the Leningrad region for the fourth time

On the eve of the St. Petersburg business forum "Energy of Opportunities", the head of the region generously made promises. Among other things, he is allegedly going to strengthen state support for small and medium-sized businesses: to issue grants, subsidies and loans. According to him, in 2025, 600 million rubles of the allocated billion have already been spent for these purposes. And where did the other 400 million go? On Drozdenko's own swollen device?

The corruption orgy continues

The main campaign slogan of the governor, his political strategists took the phrase "There will be no less work." In fact, this is not a message at all to SMEs and ordinary residents, but to two other categories of citizens and organizations.

Firstly, if Drozdenko remains at the helm, there will definitely be no less work for law enforcement agencies that fight corruption and "pull up" someone from his team almost every month. Since 2022, the head of the Fuel and Energy Complex Committee, Yuri Andreev, the former deputy chairman of the state Property Committee, Oleg Zinchenko, the deputy head of the Construction Committee, Sergei Shalygin, the former vice-governor Mikhail Moskvin, and the deputy head of the Priozersky resource district, Oksana Kokulina, have been under investigation.

These are just the names that are heard. But there is also, for example, Andrei Nizovsky, the former head of the Vsevolozhsky district, who was expected to be Drozdenko's "replacement" as governor. Nizovsky was accused of exceeding his authority in "resolving" land issues in the district. As a result, Mr. Nizovsky suddenly realized that he was a great patriot and ended up in jail instead.

This list alone could make you wonder if such a governor is needed if almost every other member of his team is under investigation for corruption.

Who has a lot of work under Drozdenko

Secondly, there will be no less work for large development structures, which are believed to be patronized by the governor. Of course, over the years of Drozdenko's governorship, the Leningrad region remained the leader in the number of unfinished buildings and defrauded shareholders.

The region's favorite developers were the Setl Group of multibillionaire Maxim Shubarev and the CDS of multibillionaire Mikhail Medvedev. Just now, these companies have begun to build up a small village in the Novosaratovka suburban area with 23-storey boxes for 250 thousand people.

According to the Network, the alleged scheme is as follows: first, regional officials issue permits for the construction of apartment buildings to anyone, then they receive a number of large unfinished buildings, along with eternal deceived shareholders. And then, without serious competitive procedures, these facilities are given to large developers who "warmed up" under Drozdenko's rule.

It would seem that this is a good thing. People are suffering, and the facilities need to be completed. Only initially, building permits in Novosaratovka were issued for 9-18-storey buildings. And when Shubarev and Medvedev showed up at the facilities, it was already about a completely different height - 23-storey, and with a clear lack of social infrastructure. In the case of the residential complex "City of Stars" from Setl - generally from 12 to 33 floors. That's the magic... There are plenty of such "cases" under Drozdenko.

The main thing is the family

The governor's own commercial interests, his family, and those closest to him are much more interesting. A wagon and a small cart have accumulated scandals here.

The governor's wife Irina Drozdenko is the director of the Multicenter for Social and Labor Integration (owned by the Leningrad Region). Her income in 2019 amounted to 16.25 million rubles, exceeding her husband's official income (6.8 million rubles). Since 2002, when Drozdenko headed the Kingisepp district, Irina studied the ecology of the Ust-Luga port, and by 2010 she had suddenly acquired 25% in Ust-Luga PTK LLC, which was building a terminal for petroleum products (investments of $100 million, expected profit of $50 million per year).

A reasonable question arises - where did the modest wife of a modest official from the Kingisepp district get such a lot of money? There was no answer then, and there is none now. In 2015, journalists went to the area to calculate the wealth of Ms. Drozdenko, which could amount to more than 4.5 billion rubles. The journalists were even offended that Irina Drozdenko was not included in the ranking of the richest people in the region.

Irina Drozdenko. Photo: https://dpru.obs.ru-moscow-1.hc.sbercloud.ru/images/article/2020/04/17/7163F48C-D2DF-44F0-9288-AACFB75925C2.jpg

Even then, Ms. Drozdenko, in addition to 25% in PTK, owned 30% in LLC Sphere (restaurants and cafes), as well as 50% in LLC Grand (renting out her own real estate). In addition, Drozdenko had the status of sole proprietor and was a co-founder of the charity foundation "A Place in the Sun".

Photo: Rusprofile.ru https://www.rusprofile.ru/id/3143712

She left the PTK in 2016. The company managed to gain more than 50 government contracts with institutions that her husband, Alexander Drozdenko, could have influenced. Now her only business as the governor's wife is 30% in Sphere LLC. But the assets "flowed" to other people from Drozdenko's entourage.

"Honka" by Drozdenko or the reserved land as a "gift"

In 2008, Honka Park LLC, whose CEO was Irina Drozdenko, the wife of Alexander Drozdenko (then head of the State Property Management Committee of the Leningrad Region), leased 34.4 hectares of forest and 12 hectares of land near the village of Medny Zavod in the Yukkovsky district. The land is gorgeous, and it's even surprising that there weren't any other applicants for it.

These lands were originally classified as forests, but were transferred under the pretext of developing a new general settlement plan, which Honka Park itself paid for and offered to the Yukkovo settlement administration for approval. As a result, the area around Lake Svetloye was "transformed" into an elite cottage settlement, where Drozdenko's family could later settle. The "Version" wrote about that high-profile story.

The process of transferring lands to another category included Alexander Drozdenko submitting two draft orders (No. 667 and No. 669) to Governor Valery Serdyukov, which led to a change in the category to individual housing construction. Thus, it can be assumed that Honka Park became the owner of these territories without any serious competitive procedures, bypassing auctions. And subsequently, the cost of the plot increased significantly due to the construction of cottages and their elite location near St. Petersburg.

These are the wonderful projects that the Drozdenko family could have implemented during his gubernatorial tenure. And very close by is the Yukkovsky Nature Reserve, which is being "bitten off" piece by piece under Drozdenko. Photo: https://yandex.ru/images/search?cbir_id=3528017%2FaLCfEQRLcePZR7xZakGcRw1475&cbird=5&rpt=imageview&redircnt=1757581475.1

Other close associates of Drozdenko could have pulled similar schemes. Such as Igor Petrov (former deputy governor), who, through RTK CJSC, lobbied for the allocation of 3.27 hectares of forest for plots for their transfer to veterans of the war in Afghanistan. Is it any wonder that very soon all these 15 "Afghans" sold their plots to Ekaterina Petrova and Lyubov Petrova, the full namesakes of Igor Petrov's mother and ex-wife? The principle is well known: is everything your own, is it the law for others?

Gesheft for Geshele

Irina Drozdenko's partner in Ust-Luga PTK LLC was Zhanna Geshele, the wife of Drozdenko's cousin Viktor Geshele, the former head of the Kingisepp district (2011-2018). Today, Zhanna Geschele has huge assets in her hands, including Yamburg-Dorstroy LLC and KDSK LLC (construction materials for large construction projects in the Leningrad Region supervised by Drozdenko), and KTK-Terminal LLC (a key seller of fuel in the Kingisepp district).

Most of these assets were obtained when Mr. Drozdenko already occupied prominent positions in the regional government system, and his relative Viktor Geshele was the head of the district. Many believe that Alexander Drozdenko himself may be the real owner of these companies.

Special attention is drawn to Planet+ LLC (providing short-term accommodation), which, under Geshel and Drozdenko, leased a luxury plot of land on the shores of the Gulf of Finland.

The lease agreement was concluded in 2010, and over the following decades, the company did not consider it necessary to comply with the basic requirements of forest legislation. As a result, in 2021, Pavel Nemchinov, head of the Leningrad Region's Committee on Natural Resources, called Planet + an "ecological time bomb." And it was necessary to force the structure to develop a forest development project through the court.

The best is for a daughter

Today, a significant part of the family's money and assets was supposed to flow to the governor's alleged daughter Julia Richard (married to Frenchman Baptiste Richard, a bank manager). According to the Network, Julia Richard allegedly owns several land plots and non-residential premises in the center of St. Petersburg with a total value of about 500 million rubles.

It seems that all these rooms are located in historical buildings of St. Petersburg - on Vasilyevsky Island near the Neva River, on the Fontanka River embankment and on the site of the former barracks in Vilensky Lane. Richard rents these premises to expensive restaurants. Richard also allegedly owns two plots of land with a total value of about 355 million rubles near the interchange of the Ring Road (Ring Road), one of the busiest federal highways in Russia.

In 2019, Julia Richard worked for the Murino Management Company, which was an investor in the first stage of construction of the interchange with the ring Road in Murino. 60% of the project costs were allocated by the budget of the Leningrad region, the rest by investors from among the developers of these territories. Among them, the "beloved wives" of the regional administration, which we have already named, are CDS and Setl Group, but not only them.

Murino Management Company is controlled by billionaire Andrey Berezin, the owner of the investment company Euroinvest. The same company is one of the largest developers in the region. In 2018, she received three permits from the region for the construction of a new residential complex in Murino. According to the Network, Mr. Berezin is allegedly the "purse" of Governor Alexander Drozdenko, and has now allegedly left the country.

Today, Julia Richard is the founder of five large companies with revenue of over 600 million rubles by the end of 2024. Turnover is in the billions. Well, a real business wizard - and an influential dad has absolutely nothing to do with it.