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- Natural hearth: the family of the ex-head of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin was accused of poisoning rivers
Natural hearth: the family of the ex-head of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin was accused of poisoning rivers
Enterprises and their sewage treatment plants owned by relatives of the former head of Mordovia, Nikolai Merkushkin, pollute the Alatyr River, local residents told Izvestia. Fish are dying in the pond. Pollution from the Merkushkin distillery was recorded in the regional Ministry of Forestry and Rosprirodnadzor — iron and suspended solids were found in the river. They also complain about the family-owned cheese factory. About who is to blame for the ecological disaster and what punishment is threatened for it — in the Izvestia article.
Who is polluting the river
The Alatyr River in Mordovia is dotted with dead fish — this situation has been developing for several years, residents of nearby villages told Izvestia. According to them, the source of pollution is in the vicinity of the Kemlyansky distillery, the beneficiary of which is Larisa Tetina, a relative of the former head of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin.
Kemlyansky Distillery LLC is 100% owned by MordovAlkoProm, where Larisa Tetina owns 50.1%, and 49.9% belongs to Evgeny Sidorov, a well—known Mordovian industrialist.
— They poison me five times a year. Either a sugar factory or a distillery," local fishermen told Izvestia. Here we caught burbot at five, four, three kilograms each. Catfish were caught. And now it's not a river anymore, but a sewer.
The suspicions of local residents of the involvement of enterprises owned by the Merkushkin family in the pollution of the river are confirmed by inspections of the interregional directorate of Rosprirodnadzor for the Nizhny Novgorod Region and the Republic of Mordovia. Less than a year ago, iron and suspended solids were found in the river, and the distillery was cautioned for hiding the sources of pollution, the department told Izvestia.
"The legal entity and responsible officials have been brought to administrative responsibility. The company has been issued an order for the mandatory elimination of all identified violations. An unscheduled inspection of the execution of the order showed that the violations were not fully eliminated by the legal entity," the Rosprirodnadzor department said.
As a result, the Kemlyansky distillery was prosecuted and fined.
"A new order has been issued. As a result of the repeated unscheduled inspection of the execution of the order, it was established that the violation had been eliminated in full. The order has been fulfilled," the ministry added.
One of the employees answered the questions of the Izvestia correspondent that the plant's management was not in place.
— It's in another place, you probably didn't get here. No. Here, on the contrary, the river is good, there are fish here," the source said.
Residents of Mordovia named the Ichalkovsky cheese factory adjacent to the distillery as another problematic object. Locals have been complaining about the disgusting smell of waste for many years. At the same time, the plant has its own sewage treatment plants, which must filter the water used in the industrial process from pollutants. However, they are not coping with their task.
Nikolay Kireev, director and co-owner of the plant, speaks exclusively about the company's successes in an interview. Profit for 2024: 6.2 billion rubles. And the smell, according to him, is a question for sewage treatment plants, they have their own legal entity.
"We dump on the Ichalkovsky sewage treatment plants, we have a contract with them, they clean all our wastewater," he said.
The company is connected with another relative of Nikolai Merkushkin, Irina Andryushkina. She is the daughter of the sister-in-law of the former head of Mordovia. She is also the beneficiary of the cheese factory. The majority of the company's shares belong to an Interregional investment Company, which is managed and owned by Andryushkina.
Ex-head of Mordovia Nikolai Merkushkin
However, Andryushkina denies any involvement in the lucrative business.
"I am not the director of the enterprise, these are not my enterprises, the economic authority is responsible for the sewage treatment plants," she told Izvestia.
What the checks showed
Both the combine and the distillery conceal waste disposal reports: these are the data from the latest inspection by Rospotrebnadzor.
"A declaration on the number of goods put into circulation on the territory of the Russian Federation and packaging of goods to be disposed of after they lose their consumer properties was not submitted," the ministry said in a statement.
In 2021, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Mordovia received information that the Ichalkovsky wastewater treatment plants were discharging wastewater into the Tatar-Velen-Ley River in excess of the regulatory limits. It flows into the Alatyr River, which is also poisoned by the Kemlyansky distillery: the mouth is on the territory of Mordovia, and further downstream through neighboring Chuvashia and Nizhny Novgorod region to Sura, a tributary of the Volga.
"Specialists of the Ministry of Forestry of the Republic of Mordovia conducted an unscheduled documentary check on this fact, during which an official of Ichalkovsky Sewage Treatment Plants was brought to administrative responsibility," the regional department told Izvestia.
However, the load on wastewater treatment plants may increase in the near future. The director of the plant, with the support of shareholders, intends to build an additional workshop, tons of cheese for sale are currently in storage. But the supervisory services also had and still have questions about the finished products of the plant.
Despite all the claims from the departments, the shareholders have a good income. And the beneficiaries of enterprises have the most financial privileges: in this case, they are Irina Andryushkina and Larisa Tetina.
As Izvestia wrote, Nikolai Merkushkin and his numerous relatives earned their first capital through voucher privatization. The charitable foundation "Creation" has grown out of the "family" checking investment funds — a future tool for enriching the family treasury.
According to the unified state register of legal entities, in 2011 the Mordovian foundation "Creation" owned the holdings "Mordovspirt" (share — 20%, previously 100%) and "MordovAlkoProm" (share — 100%), both had three enterprises at their disposal. Creation also owned almost 20% of the shares of the largest bank in Mordovia, AKB Aktiv Bank OJSC. At the beginning of 2011, Alexander Merkushkin, Nikolai Merkushkin's older brother, directly owned 29% of the shares and served as chairman of the Board of Directors.
The foundation "Creation", as claimed by the former deputy chairman of the Government of Mordovia, Alexander Pykov, was also controlled by Alexander Merkushkin.
The Republic of Mordovia. Saransk
After Nikolai Merkushkin became the head of Mordovia, his eldest son Alexander became the owner of the MAPO agro-industrial association. The Lamzur confectionery factory and the cheese factory went to the youngest son Alexey. Mordovneft and SDS Construction Management to Valentina Andryushkina (sister of Nikolai Merkushkin's wife), Ichalkovsky cheese factory to another sister, Raisa Tuturkina. Alexander Merkushkin— Nikolai's older brother, got the largest construction holding Saranskstroyinvest.
The monopolist Saranskstroyinvest is building Saransk. There was a scandal in the city around the Gration housing complex, where the developer did not rent a school and kindergarten. People were promised to actually build a new neighborhood with all the infrastructure, but this never happened.
What is the penalty
There is no separate concept of "environmental disaster" in the legislation, neither in the Criminal nor in the Civil Codes, lawyer Irina Gritsenko told Izvestia. According to her, those responsible for river pollution may be charged under the article on violation of the rules for handling environmentally hazardous substances.
— If it can be proved that the violations have created a threat to the environment, the perpetrators face up to two years in prison. And if the crime resulted in the death of a person — up to eight years," the expert said.
Despite the fact that the law formally provides for various liability measures, the real consequences for enterprises are often limited to fines, Irina Hrytsenko concluded.
Lawyer Vitaly Ulianenko believes that those responsible for the ecological disaster in Mordovia may be more likely to be convicted under the article on water pollution.
"If pollution has caused significant harm to wildlife or fish stocks, the perpetrators, the heads of enterprises involved in the disaster, can be arrested for up to three months," he said. — And if their work has led to harm to human health or mass death of animals, they can face up to two years in prison.
If the fumes from polluted water also poison the air, a criminal case may be opened under the article on atmospheric pollution, lawyer Andrei Mishonov added.
However, according to the expert, it can be extremely difficult to prove a causal relationship between the actions of enterprises and the consequences that have occurred.
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