Elvira Magosimyanova: expected a criminal case — got a deputy minister?

      At the end of October some lawmakers were already discussing it as something impossible, while in sober reflection they still hoped that the regional prosecutor’s office, now headed by a new prosecutor, would nevertheless give a "criminal assessment" to several episodes of giving out free tickets to philharmonic concerts and performances.

      The concert hall’s occupancy—from a third to almost half of the hall—and the best, and therefore most expensive, seats, which were free for regional and municipal officials, resulted in significant "ticket revenue shortfalls" for the cultural institution. The office of the former regional prosecutor Andrey Oborok knew this for sure, since Newsler.ru not only told the story of the free tickets to the New Year concerts of Denis Matsuev and Sergey Bezrukov, but also accompanied it with photographic evidence borrowed from the philharmonic’s official website. And the institution’s former director, Alexander Gavrilin, filed a statement with the Prosecutor’s Office alleging that his alma mater had suffered "considerable damage."

      According to sources from the "Grey House," the main driving force behind Elvira Filidorovna’s move into high politics is the deputy head of the regional government who oversees regional arts, Dmitry Kurdyumov. He, as is whispered in the regional Ministry of Culture, "probably got carried away" with the appointment of Magosimyanova (she could replace 46-year-old Sergey Kataev, who, not of his own accord, gave up the ministerial portfolio in favor of the post of director of the Regional House of Folk Art), because both women—Dvortsov’s first deputy Natalia Nevenchenkova and the "new deputy" Elvira Magosimyanova—plainly, according to sources, do not much like each other.

      "We expect free tickets to the serpentarium," the interlocutor summed up his thoughts.

      Interestingly, the regional government itself has undertaken an analysis of "Kurdyumov’s personnel policy," concluding from obvious examples that Dmitry Alexandrovich, as they say, "churns out non-law-abiding officials." And although the list of "non-law-abiding" officials is not yet large, judging by the November verdicts it is rather striking.

      Thus, at the end of July Deputy Minister of Health Dmitry Minchakov left his post "of his own accord," although they had planned to record in his employment book that it was "due to loss of trust." After all, according to data from the regional prosecutor’s office and the Investigative Committee, Minchakov, having earned just over four million rubles in a year, bought an apartment costing almost six million, paid 1.5 million for two parking spaces, and purchased a Volkswagen Touareg for 4.3 million, spending almost three times his official income—a total of 11.4 million rubles.

      In November a verdict was announced for the chairman of the Public Council at the Kirov Ministry of Health, Anton Dolgikh, although he had no relation to the Ministry’s activities. Yet Dolgikh himself wrote on "his pages" that "he will stand up for Kurdyumov as for himself."

      And two days after Dolgikh’s verdict was announced, a sentence was handed down to Dmitry Alexandrovich’s protégé—the former director of the "Center for Tourism Development," Ruslan Mamedov—although government records still list him as the acting head of the KOGAU. Mamedov’s sentence—a 500,000-ruble fine for "misappropriation or embezzlement" and three counts of "fraud"—gained popular notoriety as "having caused maximum distrust in the court."

      Answering numerous readers’ questions about the reasons for such a lenient sentence, we can only offer the quite expected version from our source, who reported a possible "expression of gratitude from Mamedov’s patron for not being forthcoming with investigators about him."