AquaSib Project: Give Baikal to China

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

As part of an expedition to protect forests and the ecology of Russia, "Russian Taiga" visited a sensational water bottling plant for China on the shores of the sacred Lake Baikal. I visited it and it was not in vain, it is important to understand what it is and show it to my readers. The village of Kultuk is located in the Slyudyansky District of the Irkutsk Region, on the shore of Lake Baikal. Fresh photos of the expedition, how everything looks here right now!

March 2017. Our officials considered the investment project of AquaSib LLC: the creation in the village of Kultuk of an enterprise for the production of bottled water taken from the depths of Lake Baikal. A project for a guaranteed sales market for products in China, in accordance with a supply agreement with the Daqing Water Company Limited Liability Company Lake Baikal, which is the main investor in the project. The volume of investments is 1.5 billion rubles, the capacity is 528 thousand liters of water per day, commissioning is scheduled for 2021.

June 2018. Project documentation of AquaSib LLC has passed environmental and construction expertise. The company has received a building permit.

January 2019. The construction of the plant has begun.

February 2019. On the air of the Vesti-Irkutsk TV channel, there was a story that the Baikal environmental prosecutor's office found many violations and announced that the construction of this plant was being carried out illegally. During the inspection, violations were revealed in the environmental expertise, as well as in the conduct of public hearings. It was found that the site allocated for building is located in a unique swamp, home to birds listed in the Red Book. After that, Governor Sergei Levchenko instructed to check the legality of the construction. Vladimir Burmatov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Ecology and Environmental Protection, said that he had sent a request to the Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika with a demand to check the legality of the construction of the plant. Judging by the information he got acquainted with, the AquaSib company could not obtain a legally issued permit.

The initiative group "Save Baikal" called on the public to sign the petition and oppose the construction of the plant. Over 800,000 people joined the petition.

March 2019. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev instructed the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to check the construction of the plant for compliance with environmental standards.

March 15, 2019. Construction has been suspended. The court satisfied the corresponding claim of the West Baikal Interdistrict Environmental Prosecutor's Office that the state ecological examination of the project was carried out with violations.

March 24, 2019. In defense of Lake Baikal, rallies and mass events took place, which covered almost the entire country. The official community "Save Baikal" published a detailed list of participating cities, which included: Astrakhan, Angarsk, Aniva, Bratsk, Barnaul, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Elabuga, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Zalari, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Korocha, Moscow, Nizhnevartovsk, Novosibirsk, Noyabrsk, Omsk, Perm, Samara, Sayansk, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Surgut, Saransk, Spas-Klepiki, Stary Oskol, Togliatti, Tomsk, Tyumen, Ulan-Ude, Ulyanovsk, Ufa, Khabarovsk, Chita, Cherkassy, Cherepovets, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

The whole country, many people came out in defense of Lake Baikal! And the authorities "turned back".

This is a brief chronology of the events taking place.

Now - some thoughts.

Won a fight, but not yet a victory in the fight.

Have you noticed that the court decision on the suspension of construction on March 15, and mass protests took place after, on March 24? Everything is fine! People understand everything correctly: a court decision means little. Too big money interests. The shortcomings of the project can be “rectified” and construction will continue. Other legal entities can be registered: new LLCs, or even a hundred, and forward again.

For reference: AquaSib LLC.

99% of AquaSib shares belong to the Chinese company Lake Baikal, registered in Heilongjiang Province. One percent - to the Russian woman Olga Mulchak. Her daughter Olesya Mulchak is the director of a developer company. Earlier, Olesya and her husband, a citizen of China, Sun Jenjun, were accused of large-scale smuggling of timber to China. Using more than a dozen controlled companies, the defendants, according to forged documents, exported from our country to the PRC 150 wagons of timber products every month. The cost of each exported lot of timber was more than 100 million rubles. This was stated in the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The total damage exceeded two billion rubles. Olesya Mulchak managed to avoid prison punishment, and her husband received five years in prison. Most of the term was counted as spent in the remand prison. (Open data from Wikipedia.)

What interests really stand behind the Kutluk construction?

It's my opinion. It is based on general economic and political trends in Siberia in recent years.

The construction of a plant for the production of bottled water from Lake Baikal is part of China's “soft power policy”. The struggle for water is unfolding. Although this is masked, the main interest is water resources.

Why?

Notice: 99% of real property is a company registered in the PRC. The most important thing is that the real owner wants to tightly control everything to such an extent that he is ready to “shine”. This is an important question, and he trusts his agent no more than 1%.

Everyone has heard about our "state corporations". Such a hybrid of big business and the state, where everything is controlled directly by the state. The head of such a state corporation is, in fact, a state official, such a "mini-minister" of a specific area of activity. As I understand it, state control in China is even tighter.

Siberia is economically strongly tied to China. Supply of timber, gas, coal and other minerals. Agricultural enterprises with Chinese capital, with a tendency to become global agricultural zones.

And over and over again the question of water comes up. Projects of water pipelines from the same Baikal and from the Altai Republic were widely discussed. The project of a water pipeline from the territory of the Altai Territory through Kazakhstan has just emerged. Such ideas immediately cause massive discontent among the population. They are being postponed, reformed. But no one refuses them! They push through gradually, pursuing a "policy of soft power." Well, there is a gas pipe - it's okay if there is also a pipe with water nearby! Well, there is a water intake for bottling water, what difference does it make if this water intake continues to the territory of China! Anyway, the water is already being pumped out!

There is a feeling that the "Chinese Investors" understand very well the meaning of Russian sayings!

Do not wash, do it by rolling!

Not at the door, but at the window!

No milk, so give cream!

And the question arises, and we, fellow comrades-in-arms, how well do we understand our own culture? Remember the fairy tale about the Fox: "Here, dogs, eat the tail" ?!