In the Orenburg region there is the largest flood in recent times: the number of flooded houses has increased to almost 6.3 thousand, in Orsk – to 4.5 thousand. It is already known that the dam builders were suspected of inflating prices and violations. Who will be responsible for this?

Latest news about floods in the Orenburg region

The situation in the Orenburg region continues to deteriorate. After the break of the embankment dam in Orsk, the 6th microdistrict, the Old Town, Mayka, and a lot of water on Dokuchaev and Gagarin Square were flooded. The villages of Stroiteley, Nikel, Lesotorgovy and Borisoglebskaya Street are under threat of flooding. Patients of the railway hospital were evacuated to Orsk City Hospital hospitals. According to the SHOT telegram channel, the level of the Ural River in the Orenburg region has reached 11 meters.

The press service of the regional headquarters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that the evacuation of residents of three more streets of the city has been announced: Stasov, Shchorsa, Kramatorskaya. In total, as a result of the rampant disaster, over 4.5 thousand households in Orsk found themselves in water. Flood waters cut off 153 settlements in the Orenburg region.

More than 700 rescuers from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations help city residents around the clock.

On behalf of Alexandra Bastrykina In connection with the breakthrough in Orsk, the Investigative Committee opened a criminal case under two articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism): Part 1 of Art. 216 (violation of safety rules during construction work) and Part 1 of Art. 293 (negligence). Thus, both the builders of the structure and the city authorities who have been maintaining it since its commissioning came to the attention of investigators.

Back on April 3, the mayor of Orsk Vasily Kozupitsa believed that nothing bad would happen

Who built the dam and how

As Life.ru found out, the construction of the dam was not so simple. Judging by the website of the Orsk City Administration (the resource itself is currently unavailable), the structure was commissioned back in 2014.

According to the publication, the length of the dam was 13.5 kilometers; 910 million rubles allocated from the regional budget were spent on construction. The customer of the work was the state unitary enterprise Oblzhilkomkhoz, which was liquidated in 2018, and the contractor was ZAO Spetsstroy-3, registered in Novotroitsk (Orenburg region), which has since become a joint-stock company.

And here strange things immediately appear: neither on the government procurement website nor on other public resources that track government contracts concluded under 44-FZ and 94-FZ, there is any information about the tender worth almost a billion rubles.

But both legal entities were involved in a court case regarding inflated prices for the construction of a dam. It turned out that at the end of the same 2014, the now abolished Rosfinnadzor conducted its own audit of the expenditure on the construction of the dam and, as a result, issued an order to Oblzhilkomkhoz to recover from Spetsstroy-3 more than 51 million rubles, which, according to the department’s conclusion, the contractor was overpaid.

According to the inspectors, prices for materials and the construction itself were unreasonably inflated, the length of the constructed structure did not correspond to the declared length, and some of the work was not completed at all. At the same time, in the court materials it was no longer 910 million (listed on the non-functioning website of the Orsk administration), but 870 million rubles.

The absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that the initiator of the proceedings was the state unitary enterprise itself, the customer of the work. “Oblzhilkomkhoz” filed a lawsuit against Rosfinnadzor, which, it would seem, acted in the interests of both the state unitary enterprise and the region, that is, it advocated the safety of budget funds.

The trial lasted for almost two years and ended in victory for Oblzhilkomkhoz, which was able to prove that the controller’s experts did not have sufficient qualifications to correctly estimate costs. As a result, the court agreed with the assessment of the State Unitary Enterprise, according to which Spetsstroy-3 was overpaid by just over four hundred thousand rubles. This amount was collected from the contractor.

How the director of Oblzhilkomkhoz did business on the side

Oblzhilkomkhoz conducted a successful litigation with the regulatory body under the leadership of Igor Stadnichenko. A native of the city of Novotroitsk (where Spetsstroy-3 is also registered) took over the post of general director of the State Unitary Enterprise just before the start of the dam construction project – in April 2013. Stadnichenko came to it from Orenburgvodokanal, where he worked his way up from the head of the production department to the deputy director of production.

He headed “Oblzhilkomkhoz” until its liquidation in February 2018 and after that he left for the position of deputy head of the State Unitary Enterprise “Stroyzakazchik”, where since then he has been participating in commissions for the selection of capital construction projects and overhaul of municipal infrastructure facilities of regional municipalities.

At the same time, Stadnichenko also developed his own business: he sold drinks and industrial equipment, printed books and advertising booklets in his own printing house, was engaged in construction and provided cleaning services.

He was engaged in the latter under the roof of the Bureau of Environmental Technologies (BET) in parallel with the position of general director of Oblzhilkomkhoz, and in 2021 he became a defendant in one interesting lawsuit.

The essence of the matter was as follows. In 2016, the Department of Housing, Communal Services and Capital Construction of the Gaya City Administration held a tender for the overhaul of the main heating main worth 3.3 million rubles.

The winner of the government procurement was the private company Stroystandart, which took on Stadnichenko’s company as a subcontractor for 2 million. And she already hired her own contractor – the local Municipal Unitary Enterprise for Housing and Communal Services – for only 900 thousand rubles. As a result, the municipal unitary enterprise filed a lawsuit against BET, because out of the agreed amount Stadnichenko paid the utility workers only 400 thousand, and “forgot” about the rest of the money.

Such schemes in Russia (*aggressor country) are usually called “saw-cut”

Despite the fact that the Arbitration Court of the Orenburg Region fully recognized the correctness of the Municipal Unitary Enterprise for Housing and Communal Services and decided to collect the debt and penalty from BET LLC, the utility workers never saw the money: Stadnichenko’s company closed in 2018, and the bailiffs, who began collecting in 2021, still could not establish the location of the debtor and his property. For this reason the case was closed.

How Stadnichenko and his family live now

In January of this year, a local Orenburg publication published an article dedicated to residents of the Buzuluk district of the region who were freezing without heating. Residents of apartment buildings, desperate because of the inaction of utility services, wrote a complaint to Vladimir Putin (*international criminal), which the Presidential Administration sent to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin.

A criminal case initiated over the improper provision of public services prompted the regional Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services to send a whole delegation of officials to the residents of the area. Among them was the namesake of Igor Stadnichenko, who promised angry people

“ organize a collegial commission with representatives of all services of self-government bodies and management companies in order to identify the real causes of problems“.

It is clear from the text that Igor Stadnichenko continues to work in the region, but for some reason the FSSP cannot find him

The Stadnichenko family – wife and son – moved to permanent residence in the Moscow region in 2021. His wife Larisa now has an apartment in a new building in Podolsk, a car and a good position in one of the largest Russian metallurgical holdings.