n the last five years, reform of public toilets has been underway in Moscow, in which all over the city there are paid booths of a "golden" color - they need to pay 50 rubles for their visits. As Ivan Golunov, the special mediator of Medusa, explained, installation of toilets is handled by companies of a former Moscow official who has joint business interests with the son of Russia's Prosecutor General Igor Chaika. At the same time, the toilets themselves are unprofitable, and since 2017 they have also become subsidized: the city authorities allocate several hundred million rubles annually for their creation and maintenance.

Toilets-buffets and refugees from Donbass

On the beginning of the toilet revolution in Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin announced back in August 2011 - then the mayor complained that the existing blue plastic toilets "are unpresentable" and "morally and physically obsolete." A little more than a year later, the city government adopted a program that was supposed to lead to the emergence of European-style public toilets in Moscow - in particular, it was supposed to exceed the Soviet standards, according to which the city should have one toilet for six thousand people, and attract private to the industry Investors, spending on all this 6.6 billion rubles.

The general layout of the toilets appeared on the investment portal of Moscow, and soon an auction was announced, in which they played the right for ten-year rent of plots of urban land intended to house 1,200 toilets (there are also 215 free toilets serviced by the city budget in Moscow, On their maintenance and repair allocate more than half a billion rubles).

Two lots were played at the auction - each approximately 600 seats. The price of each of them as a result amounted to 200 with a small million rubles: the winners, the company "Komhoz-service" and "St. Consulting ", were to pay monthly to the city budget about one and a half million rubles for the lease of land. Investors were full of hope: they planned to earn not only on the fee for visiting toilets, but also by placing payment terminals and advertising on booths; A representative of one of the companies said that for entrepreneurs "the image is more important than payback," pointing out that in the CIS no one else produces toilets that take into account the needs of people with disabilities.

With business, problems quickly began: large brands did not hurry to advertise on toilets; The terminals for payment for communication services were not very popular either. Technological innovations did not work particularly well. City authorities, inspired by the experience of the transport card "Troika", decided to transfer it to this sphere too: the owner of the "toilet card of the Muscovite", which could be bought by everyone in the same payment terminal, had to put money on it in advance. After a while they were refused, and now you can simply pay with booths in cash.

Trying to increase revenues, the winners of the auctions offered the authorities to combine toilets with vending machines and even kiosks to sell food. Experts in response noted that the close proximity of the buffet and the toilet "can cause uncomfortable associations among the Muscovite", and officials pointed to the already existing problems of the operator company. "It is difficult to go into these booths, plus there is quite dirty," said the head of the Moscow department of trade and services Alexei Nemeryuk. - The service of street toilets is very in demand, but it must be able to provide a qualitative presentation. And the cost should be adequate. "

The cost of visiting a toilet was 50 rubles - and really frightened off many. "According to our observations, in the" golden "toilets, even in the most transitory places there are not more than one hundred visitors per month," the expert of the portal "Toilet.ru" Vladimir Priorov told Medusa. One of the owners of toilets - the company "Komhoz-service" - in 2016 claimed that the average attendance of "golden" toilets is 27 people per day.

"In the cold, toilet booths are often occupied by homeless people. During one of the inspections with journalists, we found that in the toilet module on Tverskoy Boulevard there are refugees from Donbass, "adds Priorov. Last winter, a visitor to one of the "golden" toilets on Sukharevskaya Square found a corpse of a homeless person in the booth.
Toilets from Seychelles

Following Moscow, "golden" toilets began to appear in major cities of the Moscow region. In 2014, on the eve of the celebration of the 700th anniversary of Sergius of Radonezh, a few dozen new cabs were installed on the streets of Sergiev Posad. "Some managers of the company in the recent past were in the civil service, so it was not difficult to implement this public-private partnership," the representative of the company "St. Consulting ».

"Art. Consulting ", as well as" Komhoz-service "- organizations that installed toilets - belong to offshore companies registered in the Seychelles at the same address. According to the laws of this country, information about business owners is not disclosed. On the toilet modules of both companies the same mobile phone number is indicated, according to which it is proposed to call in case of problems. In response to the question "Medusa" about the name of the company owning the toilets, this phone "Medusa" was answered by: "Avenue Management". Some "golden" toilets posted advertising company Avenue Industrial Group, part of the holding Avenue Group. The telephone number placed on the booths is also indicated in the advertisements for employees searching for street lavatories, posted on the Internet on behalf of the Avenue Group.

The Avenue Group website indicates that it is "an Austrian investment and construction holding company specializing in construction, investment and recycling"; Its current portfolio of projects in the CIS and Eastern Europe company estimates at 3.7 billion dollars. According to the trade register of Austria, the owners of the holding are Sergey Glyadelkin and his son Sergey Sergeevich Glyadelkin.

This name is well known to Moscow developers: in 1998-2005, Glyadelkin Sr. headed the SUE "Center-Moscow", which supervised construction in the center of Moscow - in particular, distributed land for construction in the area of Ostozhenka; This street later became known as the Moscow "Golden mile". After Glyadelkin left the civil service, it turned out that he was the main owner of a large construction company "MSM-1", as well as a residential complex "North Park" - for his sake, part of the park "Pokrovskoe-Streshnevo" was cut down. Due to financial problems, the construction of the complex was delayed for seven years; People who bought apartments in it, went on a hunger strike and held protests - but the authorities did not apply sanctions to the developer. Igor Tkach, who at that time was in charge of the Moscow Department of Supervision in the field of shared construction, after his discharge from the civil service in 2011, became a co-owner of a number of Sergei Glyadelkin's companies - in particular, at some point he owned the same "St. Consulting ».

Even before the arrival of Sergei Sobyanin as Mayor of Moscow, Glyadelkin initiated a major corruption scandal: according to his statement, in 2010 a criminal case was brought against Alexander Ryabinin, the Moscow mayor for investment control. Glyadelkin argued that when his company tried to take part in the construction of buildings on the site of demolished five-story buildings in the Left Bank district, the official demanded from him two million dollars, a non-residential premises in Zamoskvorechye and a penthouse in Novy Arbat. Ryabinin called the criminal prosecution "provocation." When the lawyer of the official at the court asked Glyadelkin how long he worked for the FSB and whether he had rewards for the completed tasks, he replied: "I will not answer these questions, as I gave a subscription on non-disclosure." Ryabinin was found guilty, he was sentenced to three years probation and a fine of one million rubles.

Avenue Group Sergei Glyadelkin had joint projects with Igor Chaika, the youngest son of the Russian Prosecutor General. In autumn 2013, they established the company Techno p-region, which planned a business for the collection and processing of garbage (Avenue Group owns a waste sorting plant in the Kostroma region and is going to build another one under Vladimir). Igor Chaika stated that he had never engaged in the garbage business, and soon after the publication of the investigation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation on the business of the relatives of the prosecutor general, the Chaika authorities transferred their share to the company "Techno p-region" to the managers of Glyadelkin. However, in June 2017, Chaika announced that he intends to acquire the company Charter, which won contracts worth 42 billion rubles for garbage disposal from Moscow and which, according to FBK, is owned by the manager of the Chaika company, Alexander Turcan.

The National Idea of Moscow

Since the beginning of 2015, "Komhoz-service" and "St. Consulting "stopped paying the city budget for leased land - and in February 2016 the contracts with them were terminated. A few days later a new tender was held for "providing sanitation and hygiene services" - it was won by the company "Ork", which in the next two years will receive from the city budget 693 million rubles for the maintenance and servicing of 300 paid toilets. According to the officials of the capital, this amount will compensate almost 80% of the expenses of the owners of toilets (one hour of the work of one booth, according to the calculations of the mayor's office, costs slightly more than 150 rubles). Thus, Muscovites will pay for toilets not only directly, at 50 rubles per visit, but also deducting taxes to the city budget, which will subsidize the booths.

The list of places for installing toilet modules almost completely coincides with the addresses where paid "golden toilets" are already installed. Actually, they all stayed in their places and continue to work, but some of them moved a little - this explains the temporary accumulation of booths in the middle of May in public gardens near the metro stations "Baumanskaya", "Voykovskaya" and "Dinamo".

The phone of the company "Ork", which will install and service toilets at the expense of the budget, coincides with the same number that unites "St. Consulting "and" Komhoz-service ", according to which the correspondent of" Medusa "called. The company "Ork" is owned by Boris Ermakov, who previously headed the waste sorting plant on Altufevskoe highway. It, in turn, belongs to the company "Charter", owned by one of the managers of Igor Chaika and which the son of the Prosecutor General intends to acquire.

"Medusa" got through to Igor Chaika. He said that, according to his information, Ermakov had to do with the sorting complex before the Charter got it. "No assets owned or managed by [Yermakova] are in the sphere of interests [belonging to Chaika Company]", "the son of the Prosecutor General told Medusa. The question of his relationship with Sergei Glyadelkin, he left unanswered.

Representatives of the Avenue Group did not respond to the request "Medusa"; Boris Yermakov could not be contacted either. The press service of the Moscow City Administration, headed by Peter Biryukov, advised us to ask questions about why toilets are paid from the city budget to the mayor's press service; There the requests of the Medusa were ignored.

The spread of the "golden" toilets in Moscow had time to interest politicians. In October 2016, the Party of the Rebirth of Russia founded by the late speaker of the State Duma Gennady Seleznev came up with the initiative to popularize the "culture of going to a public toilet." "I think that in general the idea of ​​building public street toilets should be the national idea of ​​Moscow," said Sergey Bukharov, a member of the Central Council of the Party of the Russian Revival, told the Moscow agency, also a member of the council of political parties under the Moscow City Duma. The party proposed the mayor's office to develop a single logo for public toilets, "reflecting the seriousness and importance of this process."

However, the Moscow authorities did not take an interest in this proposal. As Medusa was informed in the Party of Russian Revival, they eventually decided that "this is not the most urgent topic for appealing to the Moscow government for today."