Grimaces of the Krasnoyarsk construction market: a fighter for the rights of defrauded equity holders was jailed for defrauding equity holders

And he pretended to be…

The latest arrest of a major developer who “cheated” equity holders in Krasnoyarsk looks rather paradoxical – at one time, as a deputy of the City Council, Gennady Torgunakov headed the commission for the protection of the rights of defrauded equity holders. The heyday of his activity came during the years of governor Alexander Uss. However, Torgunakov is not the only developer of the “Uss era” who has come to the attention of law enforcement agencies.

His “colleague” Nikolai Kovalenko, who also deceived hundreds of Krasnoyarsk residents who participated in shared construction, is hiding from justice abroad. The fate of the “favorite” of the former head of the region – a construction magnate Vladimir Egorov* also unenviable: he was detained, it was worth it Ussu lose his job. Under the governor Mikhail Kotyukov Other “favorites” have appeared on the Krasnoyarsk construction market…

Krasnoyarsk construction magnate and former local city council deputy Gennady Torgunakov was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in a general regime penal colony. In addition, for 2.5 years he will not be able to engage in activities related to organizational and economic functions. This decision was made by the Soviet District Court.

Torgunakov was found guilty of abuse of power (parts 1 and 2 of Article 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)) and embezzlement (part 3 of Article 160 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)). The businessman himself did not recognize his guilt. The prosecutor’s office insisted that the entrepreneur spent the money of the shareholders for purposes unrelated to the construction of apartments, paid for work carried out at another site without paying for it with unfinished apartments, and signed documents to pay for uncompleted work on the construction of houses.

As a result, 308 equity holders were left without apartments, and the amount of damage is being evaluated in more than 600 million rubles.

It is known that during the court hearing, it took 20 minutes just to list the names of the victims.

Car instead of house

According to Seldon Bas, OOO Sibstroyinvest was established in 2010. Gennady Torgunakov was its founder until 2015, and three years later it was declared insolvent. However, in the same 2015, the entrepreneur became the founder and director of an organization with a similar name – OOO GSK Sibstroyinvest, and retained this status until 2018. According to the reporting, the company never showed a positive net profit balance at the end of the year, working either at zero or in the minus. In addition, Torgunakov owned other assets, such as OOO RIAExpress, OOO Mediator, DNT Solnechnaya Sloboda, which were not related to the construction industry.

Sibstroyinvest’s activity did not last long. The company was supposed to build two 17-story buildings on Gruntovaya Street, but work was suspended in 2016. Equity holders staged protests and even hunger strikes, but this did not bring results. However, according to the prosecutor’s office, a business center in the Vzletka microdistrict was built with the proceeds and an expensive Lexus was purchased.

The failures of Sibstroyinvest did not prevent Torgunakov from joining the management of another construction company, Imhotep, in 2018, which was building a house at 51 Metallurgov Street.

Gennady Torgunakov is not the first of the heads of these companies to be prosecuted. In May of this year, the former director of Sibstroyinvest and Imhotep was sentenced to three years in prison Andrey Semenov. He was also deprived of the right to engage in organizational and administrative functions in organizations for 2 years. And before that, another top manager of these organizations found himself in the dock Robert Bury.

The criminal case against Torgunakov was opened in 2020, and a year later it was transferred to court. However, he ended up in pretrial detention only in June of this year – the prosecutor’s office complained about the deliberate delay of the case by the defense, and the accused himself did not appear at court hearings.

Saved by Italy

The situation around Sibstroyinvest and Imhotep is not the first scandalous episode in the construction market of Krasnoyarsk. Almost simultaneously, problems arose for shareholders of OOO Restavratsiya, although in this case the damage was more extensive – 1.3 thousand people were defrauded of 2.4 billion rubles. The first difficulties here occurred in 2017, when the commissioning of the first building was delayed, then such precedents began to repeat themselves, and a year later Restavratsiya was declared bankrupt.

True, to detain the owner of the company Nikolay Kovalenko failed – he managed to leave the country with his family. It seems that this happened in a hurry: during a search of his house, 17 million rubles were found, packaged in different bags and spread out in the corners.

Soon after, Kovalenko was discovered in Italy, where he had settled into a luxury villa at a resort, worth about $2 million.

Krasnoyarsk police filed documents with Interpol for an international search for the businessman, but the European state refused to extradite him. The Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Krasnoyarsk had no choice but to arrest him in absentia.

Dark Future

The problems of these developers coincided chronologically not only with each other, but also with important political events. The heyday of the listed companies came during the governorship of Victor Tolokonskyhowever, in 2018 he was replaced by Alexander Uss, now a member of the Federation Council. Following this, the mayor of Krasnoyarsk also changed – instead of Edhama Akbulatova the city took the lead Sergey Eremincurrently a State Duma deputy. During this period of time, other companies emerged as leaders in the construction market – SM.City Alexandra Koropachinsky and “Siberian” Vladimir Egorov. The latter was arrested last year, less than a month after Alexander Uss resigned.

According to the unified register of developers, today the leaders in commissioning housing in the region are the above-mentioned SM.City and Monolithholding Razima AbasovaWill they be able to retain their positions, or at least their freedom, when the term of the current governor, Mikhail Kotyukov, expires?

*Vladimir Vladimirovich Yegorov has been included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of foreign mass media outlets performing the functions of a foreign agent.