Oh, sport — hold on: Who is to blame for the destruction of the Samara Arena?

One of the six stadiums opened for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Samara Arena, has fallen into disrepair, Izvestia found out after visiting it on the eve of the next match of the Russian Premier League. The stadium has many defects: the roof fasteners are covered with rust, the metal structures above the stands are damaged. The construction of the facility, worth 22 billion rubles, was carried out by business structures associated with the former governor of the Samara region, Nikolai Merkushkin. Who is behind the destruction of this and other iconic objects in the region — in the Izvestia article.

Who built the Samara Arena and how

Rust—covered roof fasteners, damaged metal structures above the stands — this is what one of the largest sports facilities in the Samara region, Samara Arena, looks like. In addition, metal beams are collapsing at the facility — one of them is literally torn from its support, the Izvestia correspondent, who visited the stadium, was convinced. Next Sunday, April 13, the Russian Premier League match will be held here.

Samara Arena is one of the six stadiums opened for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Its cost is 22 billion rubles. Even during the construction, Rostechnadzor identified more than eight hundred defects, according to the official response of the agency to a request from Izvestia.

"From September 2014 to November 2019, 157 control and supervisory measures were carried out. 89 orders have been issued to eliminate violations during construction (...) The total number of violations identified is 861," the document says.

The supervisory authorities found about four hundred defects after the stadium was put into operation, follows from the decision of the Moscow Arbitration Court, which considered the claim of the Samara Arena management company against the general contractor of the construction, the Kazan Production and Construction Association. The developer had to eliminate them, but he never fully fulfilled his obligations. Recently, PSO Kazan became bankrupt, and numerous defects will probably have to be fixed at the expense of the regional budget.

According to the SPARK database, MordovCement was a major supplier of cement for the construction of the stadium. Its leaders Alexander Merkushkin and Sergey Merkushkin are the brother and nephew of Nikolai Merkushkin, at that time the governor of the Samara region.

In 2024, the revenue from the sale of the company amounted to 18.6 billion rubles.

Who built the "Heart Clinic" in Samara and how

The MordovCement company, which is closely associated with the former head of the Samara region, could presumably be involved in another serious regional project— the Heart Clinic. It was also built in Merkushkin's time.

A new cardiology center worth 3 billion rubles was supposed to open in 2016. But there is still a concrete fence and barbed wire near the entrance, and the medical facility itself has remained a concrete box, Izvestia was convinced.

The construction within the framework of a public-private partnership was carried out on the one hand by the government of the Samara region, on the other by the SMT company of businessman Sergey Shatilo.

"I came to him with a project, we wanted to build five thousand square meters," he told Izvestia. — No, he says, we don't need five, we want to close the whole problem right away.

The memorandum on the start of the project is signed by Nikolai Merkushkin and Sergey Shatilo, and at the construction stage they inspected the facility together.

Thanks to the construction of the clinic, the region received the opportunity to provide high—tech medical care to residents, and a private investor received a guaranteed flow of patients within the framework of compulsory medical insurance. Unlike standard public-private partnership agreements, when an object becomes public after 10-15 years, a different scheme was assumed here. The region assumed obligations to cover losses, if any, provide tax incentives, guarantee repayment of loans to Sergey Shatilo to banks and leave the clinic in the ownership of the businessman.

In the summer of 2016, criminal cases were initiated against Sergei Shatilo, former Deputy Minister of Health of the region Albert Navasardyan and other defendants on charges of cartel conspiracy during an auction for maintenance and repair of medical equipment in 23 Samara hospitals totaling 768 million rubles.

"We found ourselves in an interesting situation: in 2014, we invested one and a half billion rubles of our money in the Heart Clinic," said the businessman. — In the end, the way it all ended was that two criminal cases were opened against me. One was acquitted, one was sentenced to a real term, then changed to a suspended sentence.

According to him, the entrepreneur felt betrayed by his business partners in the person of the region's leadership.

"They deceived me," he told Izvestia. — And who exactly cheated? At that time, the government of the Samara region.

In July 2019, the Samara District Court sentenced Sergei Shatilo to three and a half years in a general regime penal colony, and the socially significant project "Heart Clinic" was frozen.

A difficult legacy

All the work related to the medical center, and partly to the stadium, was supervised by the Ministry of Construction of the Samara region, headed by Alexei Grishin. He came to the region after Nikolai Merkushkin, who was previously the head of Mordovia.

In Mordovia, Alexey Grishin (then he was a businessman) was also responsible for the construction of the stadium for the World Cup. We are talking about the Yubileyny Stadium in Saransk.

Together with Alexey Merkushin, the son of Nikolai Merkushkin, Alexey Grishin managed the Invest-Alliance company. According to the SPARK database, the company received investments of 4.5 billion rubles from the regional budget through its controlled structures. But the facility was never completed — in July 2015, the state contract for the construction of the Jubilee was terminated. Another company was already completing the construction.

In December 2022, Alexey Grishin was sentenced to four years in a penal colony for fraud with state property. A court in Mordovia found him guilty of embezzlement of 271 million rubles. According to investigators, being at that time the beneficiary of Mordovpromstroybank, Grishin participated in the sale of the Mordovia Republic Development Corporation LLC, owned by the bank of the Mordovexpocenter property complex in Saransk at a deliberately inflated cost.

What to do with the stadium

The Samara Arena stadium's claim against the general contractor also indicates the destruction of concrete structures, according to the document. The discrepancy between the grades of concrete used and the requirements of the state standard leads to subsidence of the concrete structure of the facility during its operation, Stanislav Mityushin, an expert in the field of industrial and civil engineering, head of the Guild of Gas Equipment Engineers, told Izvestia.

— This, in turn, leads to an increase in the load on the metal elements of the roof, and in the future, this is the effect of breaking the beam, — said the expert.

Since there was a case of a break in one of the beams, the roof structure, it is necessary to check both the foundation supports and the elements that, among other things, used concrete to ensure the overall reliability and safety of the building, the engineer noted.

— First of all, the quality of welding work should be checked, — he stressed. — This is a fundamental point that can lead to certain conclusions and checks in the future. The most important thing is not only the appearance of a crack in a particular supporting structure, but also what we observe is the divergence of elements that further lead to deformations of other sections. Therefore, in this situation, you and I actually get the need to conduct an expert examination of all welding joints.

In addition, according to Stanislav Mityushin, computer modeling should determine which elements have been deformed, and to what extent they will further ensure the safe and long-term operation of this facility.

As part of the construction of such facilities, control samples should be made for each batch of concrete that arrives at the facility. These are cubes that are submitted to the laboratory for research on compliance with the project documentation. But it is almost always more expensive to eliminate defects than the initial compliance with the project documentation and high-quality work, the engineer concluded.