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The former Minister of Natural Resources of the Orenburg Region and former First Deputy Head of the Sverdlovsk Ministry of State Property, Aleksandr Sambursky, accused of receiving a bribe on an especially large scale, will remain in pretrial detention until October 1. The former minister faces eight to fifteen years of imprisonment, but a fine is also possible.
Alexander Sambursky was considered at the same time the man of the governor of the Svedlovsk region Evgeniya Kuyvasheva and the head of the Orenburg region Denis Paslerwho previously headed the government of the same Sverdlovsk region. A member of the governor’s teams, a man of course, is extraordinary. Sambursky was born in Yekaterinburg, graduated from school with a gold medal in 1998. Then the Ural State Technical University – UPI (now the Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) B.N. Yeltsin) in the specialty “Finance and Credit” in the Department of “Banking”. Candidate of Economic Sciences. From 2001 to 2010, he worked as a specialist, and later as a leading economist in the Department of Supervision and Development of Banking Activities of the Main Directorate of the Bank of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for the Sverdlovsk Region. For two years he served in the Department of Special Programs JSC “Corporation Ural Industrial – Ural Polar”and then finally moved into the civil service.
Until 2017, Aleksandr Sambursky worked in the government of the Sverdlovsk region, where he eventually became the first deputy minister for state property management. He arrived in Orenburg following Governor Denis Pasler from the Sverdlovsk region, and, as regional media report, he was considered the closest associate of the head of the region.
In December 2019, he was appointed Minister of Natural Resources of the Orenburg Region.
However, a month ago, Sambursky was deprived of his ministerial post, precisely on the initiative of Governor Denis Pasler, “due to the slow pace of solving the tasks set before the ministry.” According to a representative of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications in the Orenburg Region Galina SheshukovaPasler could have been aware of the upcoming criminal case against Sambursky, which is why he fired him with a not very clear wording. Most likely, Alexander Sambursky himself understood that clouds were gathering over him. Although he has considerable experience in getting out of very unpleasant situations.
Local media recall a scandal in which the now former official was involved, albeit indirectly. Thus, in 2016, when he worked as the first deputy minister for state property management in the government of the Sverdlovsk region, in relation to the then head of the Sverdlovsk Ministry of State Property Alexey Pyankov and its employees were charged with embezzlement, bribery and causing damage to the cultural heritage site of the architectural monument of the second half of the 19th century, the Krylov House. It turned out that these works were carried out by a company closely associated with Alexey Pyankov — OOO “White Lotus”Its founders were first the minister’s mother, and later his friends.
This allowed them to save significantly on the work and carry it out without state and scientific supervision. Ultimately, the lack of supervision allowed the group of defendants to build a 10-story building on the site of a two-story old mansion. Business center “Turgenev”.
It is curious that Alexander Sambursky is the only deputy who was not arrested at that time. He was only suspended from work for the duration of the internal investigation; he was listed as a witness in the criminal case. And in February 2017, the governor of the Sverdlovsk region, Yevgeny Kuyvashev, dismissed Sambursky. The dismissal was explained by the expiration of the service contract.
In the Orenburg region, Sambursky was in charge of not only natural resources and ecology, but also property relations, as well as the regional property fund, which sells various buildings and structures. And now in 2022, a scandal involving a cultural heritage site has occurred here “Mikhailovsky Barracks” – an architectural monument built in 1750. The site in the center of Orenburg was sold to the well-known of the company “Your Home” at a reduced price of 450 thousand rubles. Eight buildings that were not recognized as cultural monuments were demolished there. All this for the sake of another development. The privatization of enterprises in the Orenburg region also took place with the active participation of the Ministry of Natural Resources. And a series of scandals were also associated with privatization.
This is what happened, for example, in 2021, when the Orenburg International Airport was sold to ABS Orenburg, the founders of which are Novaport holding And UK “Airports of Regions”. The proceeds from the sale did not immediately reach the regional budget. And only at the end of 2022, the prosecutor’s office took up this issue and found violations due to delays in the transfer of funds received by the regional property fund from the sale of shares in the airport. By orders of the regional Ministry of Natural Resources, the deadlines for transferring this money to the regional budget were repeatedly and unreasonably postponed.
In the same year, the regional government included in the privatization program State Unitary Enterprise “OKES” (State Unitary Enterprise of Municipal Electric Networks of the Orenburg Region “Orenburgkommunelectroset”). And again there was a scandal. In the region, they started talking about the fact that such a privatization procedure looks inappropriate. GUP “OKES” was not unprofitable – according to the coordinator of the ONF project “Investigation Bureau” in the Orenburg Region Dmitry Boldyrevthis is one of the few state-owned enterprises that makes a profit, and the company’s social orientation is especially important for rural residents. Therefore, it is not advisable to transfer the state unitary enterprise to private hands.
As a result, the prosecutor’s office went to court with a demand to invalidate the forecast privatization plan. And in 2023, the deputies of the Legislative Assembly adopted a law restricting the transfer of the transformed JSC Orenburgkommunelektroseti into private hands. Well, and in the spring of this year, the largest and most profitable enterprise with state participation was privatized – State Unitary Enterprise “Orenburgremdorstroy”.
Alexander Sambursky stated that privatization will not entail negative economic consequences for the regional budget.
The story of the construction of a poultry farm near Orenburg also stirred up the public. The project of the Nan company was approved at a meeting of the investment council. But residents of nearby villages began to protest against the construction. They wrote an appeal to the president and to the regional authorities, in which they spoke of concerns about the environmental situation and the health of children and adults.
Ultimately, it was decided to abandon these plans. The same fate befell the project to build an oil storage facility in a village near Orenburg. It was also closed after numerous complaints from residents. Alexander Sambursky also failed to build waste processing plants. He promised to build three such plants in the Orenburg region. The first was supposed to appear by the end of 2024 near Orenburg. Last summer, Governor Denis Pasler signed a corresponding agreement with the CEO of the Russian Environmental Operator (REO) Denis Butsaev. But nothing has been heard about the plant since then. So Sambursky can hardly boast of any particular successes during his five years in the ministerial post.
In this situation, it is interesting to see how the arrest of the regional head’s associate Denis Pasler, albeit dismissed in advance, will affect the results of the upcoming gubernatorial elections, in which Pasler intends to take part. Experts believe that Sambursky’s story is unlikely to have a strong impact on the results. According to Galina Sheshukova, Pasler has the support of the Kremlin – and this is the main thing. At the same time, she does not rule out criminal cases in the healthcare sector, since “there has never been such a difficult situation in this area.” In particular, according to Sheshukova, the region has big problems with delivering patients to district hospitals, calling a local doctor, and a colossal shortage of specialists. Political consultant Alexey Shvaigert believes that “there are no forces that could promote this topic, put it on the agenda, update it and draw far-reaching conclusions.”
At the same time, Shvaigert draws attention to the fact that there are many complaints from the security forces against Pasler’s team, and the head of the region continues to have a conflict with the security forces. That is why they did not wait until the end of the elections to detain Sambursky. The former minister faces eight to fifteen years in prison, but a fine is also possible. How the situation will develop in the power structures of the Orenburg region will become clear after the elections.