What will happen when a network of corrupt officials - the Arashukov family - is imprisoned?

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

The criminal cases against the senator from Karachay-Cherkessia Rauf Arashukov and his father, the Gazprom functionary Raul Arashukov, were a blow to another stronghold of the ethnic clan system in the North Caucasus. For many years, the Arashukov family played the card of interethnic relations in a small republic. Behind the ostentatious concern of the Arashukovs for the interests of their fellow Circassians was a huge corruption network.

For those who closely follow the events in the North Caucasus, the arrest of Rauf and Raul Arashukovs was hardly a big surprise. Rather, they were impressed by its details: the businessman's father was taken to the head office of Gazprom, and the senator's son - right at a meeting of the Federation Council. But all the signs that clouds were gathering over the Arashukovs had been there for a long time.

Arashukov Jr.'s involvement in the murders of Circassian public figures Fral Shebzukhov and Aslan Zhukov, committed back in 2010, was reported many times by various sources, citing information leaked from investigative structures. The arrest of the suspects in the murder of Shebzukhov became known in March 2012. The family insisted that Rauf Arashukov was the customer. At the end of 2017, the relatives of Fral Shebzukhov publicly appealed to the Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko and federal heads of law enforcement agencies with a complaint about the inaction of power structures in Karachay-Cherkessia (KCR). “It is outrageous that for so many years the regional prosecutor’s office, as well as the Investigative Committee, have not been willing to fulfill their direct responsibilities. Our concern is due to the fact that the high position of the customer [Rauf Arashukov] allows him to remain at large,”- said in this appeal.

It was also no secret that the senior Arashukov could be involved in large-scale gas thefts in the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District. The first - as it quickly became clear, insufficient - blow was struck at the end of 2011, when Raul Arashukov, who was then head of Gazprom Mezhregiongaz Stavropol, was demonstratively removed from this post after criticism from Igor Sechin, then Deputy Prime Minister government of the Russian Federation. Shortly before the elections to the State Duma, Sechin, in the status of the first number on the list of "United Russia" in the Stavropol Territory, ripped off Caucasian energy and gas workers for the widespread use of non-transparent payment schemes for energy resources.

But the resignation of Raul Arashukov did not give a fundamental improvement in the situation - rather, on the contrary. Very soon he was appointed an advisor to the head of the Gazprom Mezhregiongaz holding in charge of gas supply to the North Caucasus Federal District, that is, he further strengthened his long-standing reputation as the “gas king” of the Caucasus. Since that moment, the debts of the regions of the North Caucasus Federal District for gas have multiplied, approaching the mark of 100 billion rubles.

Much of this debt is believed to be fictitious. The leadership of the republics of the North Caucasus Federal District has repeatedly raised the issue that the population - the main consumer of gas in the Caucasus - regularly pays for blue fuel, but then the money dissolves somewhere on the way to Gazprom. Judging by the fact that Raul Arashukov was charged with gas theft for an astronomical amount of 30 billion rubles, these "replicas from the field" were finally heard by the federal center.

Temrezov system

Raul Arashukov established control over the gas industry in the North Caucasus back in the nineties, heading a number of regional subsidiaries of Gazprom. The main patron of the Arashukovs at the federal level was then considered their relative Nazir Hapsirokov, who from 1994 to 2000 headed the affairs department of the General Prosecutor's Office, and then worked for a long time as an assistant to the head of the presidential administration of the Russian Federation. But this odious figure died in November 2011 (a few days before Igor Sechin's memorable visit to the Caucasus), and the influence of the Arashukovs has grown significantly since then. The strengthening of this clan was inextricably linked with the system that developed in Karachay-Cherkessia under the leadership of its current head, Rashid Temrezov.

The appointment of Temrezov as the head of the KCR in early 2011 was preceded by dramatic events. The murders of Fral Shebzukhov and Aslan Zhukov the year before - the first of them served as an advisor to the head of the republic, and the second headed the Circassian youth movement “Adyge Khase” - were symptoms of yet another exacerbation of the struggle for power in the republic.

Its then head Boris Ebzeev, who previously served as a judge of the Constitutional Court, did not hide the fact that he intended to eliminate the principle of ethnic quotas when appointing to key positions - one of the main pillars of the ethnic clan system in the Caucasus. In Karachay-Cherkessia, this system works like this: the post of the head of the republic is informally assigned to the ethnic majority - the Karachais, the Russian speaker becomes the speaker of the parliament, and the representative of the Circassians, the third largest national group in the region, becomes the head of government.

However, Boris Ebzeev abandoned the established tradition and appointed the head of the government of the ethnic Greek Vladimir Kaishev, which immediately aroused the outrage of Circassian activists, who once again raised the issue of dividing Karachay-Cherkessia into two republics. Alexander Khloponin, the presidential envoy to the newly formed North Caucasus Federal District, intervened in the conflict on the side of the Circassians, and Boris Ebzeev was forced to yield.

The main candidate for the post of the new prime minister of the KChR was Fral Shebzukhov, formerly the head of the department for investigating organized criminal activity and banditry of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the KChR, who was highly respected among the Circassians. But after his assassination, the power in the republic was practically paralyzed.

The stronghold of Ebzeev's opponents was the regional parliament, where many nominees of the previous head of Karachay-Cherkessia, Mustafa Batdyev, sat, during which a high-profile murder of several businessmen, organized by Batdyev's son-in-law Ali Kaitov, took place in the republic. The circle of Batdyev and Kaitov included the deputy of parliament Rashid Temrezov, who became the new leader of the KCR. According to one of the versions, not only influential Karachais applied for his appointment, but also the main Circassian families - Arashukovs and Derevs (the latter own a number of the largest enterprises of the KCR in trade, industry and agro-industrial complex). “These bastards defeated me,” Ebzeev allegedly said when he learned that the decision on his early resignation had been made.

The first few years of Rashid Temrezov's rule, the impression was that Karachay-Cherkessia was finally able to get out of the conflicts that were constantly tearing it apart. As if by wave of the hand, the high-profile contract killings of businessmen, deputies and public figures stopped. Circassian activists, who are always dissatisfied with the incorrect, in their opinion, distribution of posts, stopped taking to the streets. The implementation of a number of large-scale investment projects began, the most important of which - a new ski resort in Arkhyz - was quickly put into operation and today, perhaps, is the most "advanced" in the North Caucasus Federal District.

It seemed that with the appointment of Temrezov - a man, of course, with a faulty past, but at the same time with a reputation as a "young technocrat" - a certain balance was found between the tasks of developing the region and the inherent clan. But this balance has predictably proved to be extremely fragile.

The crush at the trough

The economic crisis became a new stimulus for the aggravation of the inter-clan struggle. Despite the fact that at the beginning of 2016 Alexander Khloponin (who had already left the post of plenipotentiary, but retained the post of Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Caucasus) recklessly stated that he did not see signs of a crisis in the Caucasus, it was Karachay-Cherkessia that turned out to be one of the most the regions of Russia affected by it. According to research by RIA "Rating", in 2017, the KCR was in 78th place in the country in terms of socio-economic development, in quality of life - in 83rd, in terms of the debt burden of the budget - in 72nd, etc. …

The investment projects launched in the region did not lead to an improvement in the social well-being of its population - due to the lack of jobs, the KChR has long been on the list of regions-"anti-leaders" in terms of the migration outflow of the population, and in general, over the seven years of Temrezov's rule, the number of residents of the republic has decreased by 12 thousand people (more than 3%).

Worse, in the last two or three years, promising investment projects began to fall apart one by one. At the end of 2016, the construction in Cherkessk of a new enterprise of the Novosibirsk holding Obuv Rossii was curtailed, which until recently was presented almost as a panacea for unemployment. Alexander Khloponin personally took part in promoting this project, the company was provided with state guarantees, but the result was zero.

He filed for bankruptcy due to large debts on loans and another project that received state support - the wool processing factory "Quest-A", behind which was the ex-senator from the KCR, Murat Suyunchev. Large private companies that stood firm on their feet and without any help from the budget also began to go bankrupt, for example, the producer of the Arkhyz mineral water, Visma LLC. The "pearl" of the business empire of the Derevykh family, the Derways automobile plant, which first faced a drop in production and at the end of last year received major tax claims, faced serious problems.

Against this gloomy background, a complete scandal sounded information about billions of dollars in government contracts that are being developed by firms close to Rashid Temrezov's entourage.

For example, in the field of road construction, the Kubanskoye investment and construction company, which belongs to the family of Senator Akhmat Salpagarov, one of the people closest to the head of the KCR, has become a de facto monopoly. The family of another close associate of Rashid Temrezov, the mayor of Cherkessk Ruslan Tambiev, did not remain offended. His wife is a co-owner of the Agrostroykompleks company, which also regularly won major tenders.

The glaring gap between the standard of living of the bulk of the population of the republic and its "elite" has become a breeding ground for new protests and demarches, habitually dressed in ethnic attire. Raul Arashukov was the first to try to play on this field, who in March 2015 demonstratively resigned as the head of his "patrimony" - his native Adyge-Khabl region of the KChR - and said that the leadership of the republic "shows complete disrespect for the Circassians." This statement was interpreted by many as an open challenge to Rashid Temrezov, before the expiration of his powers there was only a year left.

Temrezov found a way out of the escalating situation in the classical formula “divide and rule”. After his reappointment for a new term, which took place in September 2016, Arashukov was appointed the representative of the executive body of the KCR in the Federation Council, at the same time becoming the youngest member of the chamber in its current composition. But at the same time, another Circassian clan remained dissatisfied, since businessman Vyacheslav Derev had to free the road to Arashukov, who received the senatorial seat back in 2011 - presumably in gratitude for the support of Rashid Temrezov in the struggle for the post of head of the KCR.

The further fate of this family turned out to be unenviable: in March 2018, Vyacheslav Derev was detained on suspicion of embezzling budget funds through illegal VAT refunds and is now in custody, and his relatives are experiencing more and more problems with protecting their business assets in Karachay-Cherkessia. For a while, the Arashukovs felt like the main Circassian clan, but this triumph, as it turned out, was very short.

In the meantime, the reappointment of Rashid Temrezov did not lead to a decrease in the level of conflicts in Karachay-Cherkessia. In March 2017, the Council of Elders of the Circassian people, making new claims to the personnel policy of the head of the KChR (the reason for this "by coincidence" was the dismissal of the Circassian from the post of head of one of the gas companies), announced its readiness to hold a 5,000-strong rally in the center of Cherkessk - a huge figure for a provincial town. At the same time, the Congress of the Congress of the Karachai People demanded direct elections for the head of the KCR, which were last held in 2003. The Abazins, a small people living in the Karachay-Cherkess Republic, akin to the Circassians, also contributed to the next interethnic exacerbation. After Rashid Temrezov in a rude form publicly reprimanded the head of the local tax department, Khazret Nirov, this became another reason for the Abaza public to discontent with the ethnic clan system. It is obvious that there can be only one way out of this “bad infinity” - a complete dismantling of the structure of power, which until recently seemed to be a guarantee against escalation of conflicts.

The current configuration of power in Karachay-Cherkessia took shape after a stalemate arose in the direct elections of the head of the republic in 1999. Then the region was on the verge of a split between the supporters of the two main candidates - Karachai Vladimir Semyonov and Circassian Stanislav Derevy, who was supported by a significant part of Russians. The solution was precisely the principle of ethnic quotas, but it did not work effectively for long. And under Rashid Temrezov, he finally outlived himself, becoming an instrument of playing on contradictions not between the peoples inhabiting the republic, but between the clans that have assumed the authority to speak on behalf of these peoples.

As a result, the redistribution of posts took place between a narrow group of "elitists" - the very "greasy deck of cards" that Boris Ebzeev so wanted to get rid of. The forceful neutralization of the Arashukov clan is clearly not the last word in the surgical cutting off of clans from power in the KCR. The resignation of Rashid Temrezov, most likely, is a decided matter for the near future, and the main intrigue is only in the form in which this will happen.