Chelyabinsk spends 552 million to repair houses that have already been renovated

Even more doubts were caused by the selected contractor.

Alexander Dybin

The Chelyabinsk headquarters of the ONF drew attention to the purchase of the regional capital repair fund. So the contract for 552 million rubles provides for the repair of several buildings in the city center. All skyscrapers are lined with facade concrete slabs, which are supposed to be removed and the thermal insulation updated. Among the houses to be overhauled is a group of skyscrapers on Lenin Avenue, built according to the project of the architect Vulykh. It was these buildings that attracted attention, as they were already being renovated as part of the city’s preparations for the SCO and BRICS summits in 2018-2019, and then facade lighting was installed here. The experts doubted that it was realistic to perform the declared work qualitatively. The contract includes 14 high-rise buildings, whose facade tiles must be replaced before December, which means that part of the work will have to be carried out in the cold.

“In six houses from this list, lighting was installed, which now, obviously, will be dismantled as part of the next overhaul. In our opinion, there is a complete lack of professionalism in matters of managing budget funds, or the reason is in someone's selfish interests, - says the head of the "Popular Front" in the Chelyabinsk region Denis Ryzhiy. - This story requires a comprehensive check: the legality and validity of the purchase for the re-repair of the facades of houses, with a total value of more than 500 million rubles, the admissibility of the participation of a contractor who does not have sufficient competencies in this kind of procurement, the possible interest of the customer and persons responsible for making decisions on renovation of historic facades.

According to the public procurement portal, the winner of the auction was the Imekso company from the neighboring region - Bashkortostan. At the same time, according to the Spark service, the company has only one employee, in recent years it has not had government contracts, in addition, it generates losses and, apparently, practically does not operate at all.

“It is not clear how she could even be admitted to such a serious auction, especially since one of the requirements is the presence of real experience. To obtain admission to the SRO from the Ministry of Construction, Imexo had to provide information on similar work already completed under at least three contracts in the amount of 7 percent of the requested admission to volumes. And this is more than 200 million. The real turnover and revenue of the company, according to the Federal Tax Service, is zero for all three years, - says Denis Ryzhiy, - all the more strange in this story is the fact that, in fact, the “zero” company in 2022 suddenly activated and received immediately two documents that expand its capabilities to the level of “out of competition”: permission from the Ministry of Construction of the region to perform work in the amount of 3 billion rubles and a license from the Ministry of Culture to work with cultural heritage sites. It happened right before the competition”.

The press service of the regional capital repair fund of the Chelyabinsk region told Novye Izvestia that they would be ready to comment on the situation next week, when the head returned from vacation.

This has already happened

Repeated repairs are not new for Chelyabinsk. So, this summer, the authorities made another attempt to repair the building of the regional public library on Lenin Avenue. They wanted to put the historical object in order for the same SCO and BRICS summits, but the contractor failed the work. In 2019, 18 million rubles were spent, but the contract was terminated due to the barbaric attitude of the builders towards the facility. Since then, the public library has stood with a bare facade for several years and only in 2022 did they find a new contractor to complete the renovation. According to the public procurement portal, the company Univest-Stroy has now received a new contract for 22 million rubles.

Recall that in 2018-2019 Chelyabinsk was actively preparing to host the SCO and BRICS summits in 2020. But a year before the events, the city was deprived of the right to host the forum, as the authorities did not have time to prepare for it. The summits were moved to St. Petersburg, and then completely canceled due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.