They kept squeezing Bikalyuka, but they still won't give him a loan...

      A source at the regional finance ministry reported that, despite the approval of the people's representatives who gave the Kirov Government the "green light" to "get into yet another more-than-billion-ruble financial shackle," banks have not been in a hurry for three months to bestow loaned money on the regional budget. Given that there were no initial hopes for the Treasury or the Russian government, it seems that commercial banks are also not eager to be added to the list of borrowers for the regional government.

      Recall that back in May the regional government announced the urgent need to replenish the FCR's cashbox in order to settle with contractors who, in the spring and summer of last year under the guise of capital repairs, were painting building facades. This produced a rather specific effect: aesthetically — the scuffed walls of houses acquired a peeling look, and financially — with "zero work output" — a huge hole in the Fund's accounts.

      And when the deputies of the Legislative Assembly, who didn't even need to be pressured, gathered to unanimously approve the regional government's loan "scheme," Albert Bikaluk, in his usual manner, stuck like a thorn into the steady consensus of the legislative and executive branches. He rattled the sleeping legislative mind with some "unnecessary" reflections.

      For example, that a one-billion loan will not plug the Fund's three-billion financial hole. That 150 million will be enough only to service the loan for six months — at a 20 percent rate. And another hundred million intended for the work of the Commission, whose task is to determine the order of houses for major repairs, is an obvious fiction. Because with the FCR's pockets empty, the relevance of the Commission's conclusions — ready to figuratively "eat up" 230 million rubles — will, on paper, be fit only for pulping, and in electronic form — for the trash bin.

      Interestingly, as early as spring 2024 Newsler.ru drew attention to a speech by the regional head, who told the capital that several hundred capital repair projects had been contracted in the region. That is, there were already hundreds of quite real houses and buildings on the "waiting list" for which it is impossible to sign repair contracts if there is no legal address and at least an "approximate estimate of capital repair works."

      Moreover, addressing the same question to Bikaluk, Newsler.ru tried to find out where the three billion rubles collected from Kirov residents as monthly "capital repair" contributions had "gone." According to calculations by the same Ministry of Finance, the Fund's overdue debt to contractors (as of mid-August) allegedly amounts to 2.5 billion rubles. It is no less interesting to find out who will tell where the money from the FCR's accounts went if the contractors who did the "facade paintings" did not receive payment for even shakily performed work.

      As Albert Alexandrovich reported, he repeatedly filed an official request for a breakdown and details of the capital repair expenditures, but the response was "silence." And he is prepared to tell local politicians, employees of the "grey house" and ordinary Kirov residents who advise filing a report with the Investigative Committee that he never once inquired about the "disappearance of three billion" in the absence of a representative from a law enforcement agency:

      "The most, so to speak, complete answer I received in a private conversation: 'The money was used for another purpose'... I understood it to mean that, if I want to know, I can invent the answer myself. And keep it to myself. And, in your interpretation: shove it somewhere," Bikaluk noted.

      Lavrentiy swore it, but left for the special military operation

      As Deputy Bikaluk explained, although he is not a banking analyst, he said that commercial banks are probably not interested in lending to the Fund for Capital Repairs. He is not at all surprised that credit institutions do not want to take risks, likely because of the potential impossibility of a rapid return of funds:

      "Today there is a clear understanding and fear that if all contracting organizations go to court to recover the debt — and, according to my data, the amount exceeds two billion rubles — the FCR will go bankrupt. Of course, the regional budget will be obliged to repay the debts, but hardly voluntarily. And court enforcement, when the Fund itself has nothing to pay with, is a complicated and multi-year procedure. So there is no question of any profitable turnover of funds. And the situation, with a high degree of probability, leads to many years of financial stagnation, and time for any bank is an irrecoverable resource."

      By the way, as explained in the "grey house," despite the firm promise given last summer by the ex-director of the FCR, Lavrentiy Sitnikov — for whom they cannot find a replacement for the "shooting post" — that tariffs for the population would "definitely not be raised," the forthcoming increase in the price per square meter is so far the only "invented way to collect money from the people."

      "This story is like an old joke: 'You promised to marry me.' — 'I promised, but to you'... Lavrentiy left for the SMO, who now remembers what he promised there? And it's not nice to be vindictive," the interlocutor probably said mockingly.

      As the Ministry of Construction told Newsler.ru, when it was announced that the Ministry of Energy and Housing and Communal Services had begun a preliminary selection of contractors to carry out capital repair work, "we were stunned":

      "The organizations that 'made the city' for the anniversary celebrations have been begging for the money they've earned for a year now. Some have resorted to threats, others to formal complaints. Perhaps this is a marketing move by the new minister (Maxim Gornostaev), as if to say, 'we are not sinking, we are cheerfully rowing with seedlings.' Well, the journalists wrote about it: some laughed, others rolled their eyes. The main thing is, all in our way: to appear rather than to be."