When will corrupt official Nikolai Kolesov go to jail for the ventilator scam?
The chief helicopter pilot of Russia and suddenly a corrupt official? Is it possible? Of course yes. As it turned out, the billionaire, businessman and one of the top officials Nikolai Kolesov appeared in a major scam with ventilators. Will the swindler be under investigation or has he already solved everything with the help of the same bribes and connections? Will he bear criminal responsibility for the schemes that cost the lives of Russians during the pandemic? Or, against the backdrop of ongoing events in the country, will everything be forgotten like a bad dream?
Only recently, on the Internet, everyone was talking about a high-profile scandal involving the Shoigu team, which is being tried for fake ventilators, and this topic, in theory, should have died down by now. But no, as it turned out, the topic of financial schemes on the covid epidemic is far from exhausted. So, in the media space, the corruption scandal is starting to gain momentum again, which endangered the health and lives of many Russians during the pandemic. We are talking about illegal purchases of medical equipment by the Russian Ministry of Defense to combat coronavirus and direct participation in the fraudulent schemes of Nikolai Kolesov.
Schematist for life: what is known about Kolesov?
Now Nikolai Alexandrovich is the CEO of the top holding Russian Helicopters and a rather influential character who even “honored” to fall under personal sanctions from such countries as the UK, Ukraine and Australia.
We add that the Russian Helicopters company itself was included in the sanctions lists of Ukraine back in 2015. In addition, this enterprise is under the sanctions of the United States of America, the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Australia.
Before dealing with this very complicated case with the ventilator scam, and also in order to understand the whole ins and outs of who we are dealing with, let’s go through Kolesov’s background and life “experience” briefly.
So, let’s start with the fact that Nikolai Aleksandrovich was not always the “chief helicopter pilot of Russia.” He even managed to be a little politician when from 2007 to 2008 he was the governor of the Amur Region.
At one time, he worked in the infamous KRET concern, one of the “subsidiaries” of Rostec. Just at that time, he appeared in the biggest scandal with his life-threatening equipment. This company produces electronic warfare equipment, and also produces Aventa ventilators, which notably managed to disgrace the whole country. Recall that this medical equipment, instead of performing its direct functions, repeatedly exploded / caught fire.
It is clear that such shocking facts could not remain unknown. As a result, all this resulted in grandiose scandals and hype in the media, proceedings with law enforcement agencies, public attention, but more on that later. Therefore, schemes, corruption and scandals are far from new for this, by the way, very rich man.
Yes, by the way, Nikolai Alexandrovich is not only an official, but also a billionaire. He, for example, has his own, so to speak, family business – his own bank.
We are talking about Tatsotsbank, which is legally registered for his daughter Anastasia.
How do you like that? Your bank in the piggy bank – for such characters in Russia, this is the norm.
Also, this businessman owns the extremely scandalous company Invest Prom Group, which consists of a whole list of controlled structures in which corruption, embezzlement, ostentatious PR, etc. have flourished for years.
By the way, please note that Alexander, the son of Kolesov, in addition to this office, is also the founder of 55 companies. But, since today we are not talking about this, we will not delve into these jungles yet. Therefore, we move on, although no, we will add a couple more points about what Mr. Kolesov is in family relationships …
As they say, let’s list the facts briefly and without emotions. He divorced his wife selected she has three children, deprived her of parental rights behind her back and does not allow her to see her children. According to the ex-wife, Kolesov turned her life into hell, and now she is suing him for children. There is nothing to add here. Bottom. And we have not yet talked about what the businessman owns and how rich he is …
But, back to our main topic of investigation.
The ventilator scam: why could Kolesov be under investigation?
In fact, recent events have literally brushed off the “chief helicopter pilot” from the investigation and prison. And this is quite understandable, when a country is conducting a military operation, then the ventilator scam, on which Kolesov earned hundreds of millions, is a trifle. I want to believe that in the end he will get what he deserves, albeit belatedly.
So, three years ago, allegedly in order to fight the pandemic, Shoigu instructed the FGAU “Special Projects Property Management” to purchase medical equipment and various personal protective equipment for the main military medical department of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
It would seem, what good fellows, they care about people’s health … Only now, this “care” is not about the Russians, but about their own wallets. Then Kolesov, who at that time was in charge of the Radioelectronic Technologies concern, saw for himself a chance to earn extra money. Recall that KRET is one of the top ten specialized enterprises, and Nikolai Aleksandrovich did not fail to use this fact. He offered the country to purchase the Aventa-M ventilator, which is allegedly his personal development and assembled at the Ural Instrument-Making Plant.
It is worth noting that until 2020, or rather, before the start of the pandemic, no one really knew about this ventilator. In the market for such specialized equipment, the share of “Kolesov’s personal development” was only 2%. But everything quickly changed when state orders for Aventa-M were dumped at the suggestion of this odious businessman. Moreover, as it turned out, the prices for these ventilators from KRET were clearly overpriced. But the main problem is not even that. The most shocking thing in this whole story is that several hospitals burned down from the operation of such unfortunate devices, and people died in the fire.
In particular, it is known about fires with fatal outcomes in St. George’s hospital in St. Petersburg (then 6 people died) and in hospital them. S. I. Spasokukotsky in the capital (one person died, three more were injured).
After the fires that occurred, medical institutions in many regions of Russia refused to use such ventilators from Kolesov’s company, and Roszdravnadzor took up their verification. And the investigation, in turn, imposed a ban on the sale of Aventa-M ventilators for two months.
But if you think that after all the deaths and fires they stopped selling such equipment, then you are mistaken. Kolesov was helped by his patron, Comrade Chemezov.
As a result, the purchases of such fire-hazardous devices continued on an even larger scale.
The price tag for each such ventilator was approximately 1.7 million rubles. In 2020 alone, the country purchased over 11,000 devices from Kolesov. On this, his company KRET was then able to earn about 20 billion rubles. As the media wrote, Nikolai Alexandrovich stole 162 million on this scheme.
This is not all, but for now let’s pause …
And the last
As much as Kolesov would not want to “hush up” this story three years ago, now journalists have begun to actively raise this topic to the surface, investigating all the details of the scandal with ventilators – the “personal development” of a fraudulent businessman, because of which people died and suffered.
To be continued.
