Will it explode in winter?
In the Saratov region, preparations for winter are being disrupted: local authorities report that the T Plus monopolist, controlled by billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, does not have time to complete network repairs by the beginning of the heating season. Law enforcement agencies are about to begin inspections of the company, however, it is unlikely that future accidents will be avoided.
The deputy chairman of the government of the Saratov region, Sergei Sokolov, recently sent an appeal to law enforcement agencies to check the activities of T Plus PJSC. In his telegram channel, the official noted that on some highways in the region the company still has not completed stripping work and has not completed the reconstruction of networks.
However, this is not the first time that T Plus networks in Saratov have had problems. In other regions, where the company also has a monopoly in the production and supply of utilities, numerous accidents occurred last winter.
At the same time, the holding Victor Vekselberg does not forget to regularly raise tariffs and come up with intricate schemes for distributing networks to various companies, which we will discuss later.
There is no money, there is profit
Last year, the heating season in the Saratov region turned out to be particularly scandalous. T Plus suffered a record number of accidents and network breaks – about 500 in Saratov alone. Compared to the previous year, the number of accidents increased by 20%. The largest emergencies occurred at two thermal power plants, which left more than 800 houses without heat last winter. Experts fear that the situation could repeat itself this winter.
Let us note that T Plus PJSC actually controls the entire housing and communal services infrastructure in the region: the company owns all the main heat-generating facilities and main networks in Saratov, Engels and Balakovo. Also, the central heating point and intra-block networks are under concession from T Plus.
By the way, special mention should be made about the latter. According to the agreement, by 2043, T Plus must invest 12 billion rubles in the Saratov housing and communal services infrastructure. This is approximately 500 million rubles per year. However, at the beginning of the year, the regional Ministry of Construction presented its arithmetic. To solve problems on networks, approximately 15 billion rubles are required, of which 6 billion must be spent on routine repairs.
It is appropriate to assume that even if T Plus regularly fulfills the obligations laid down in the concession agreement, it will still not be possible to patch up the existing holes.
Leaky pipes are a problem not only for consumers, but also for T Plus itself. For example, non-standard losses on networks, which incur losses on the company, amounted to 275 thousand Gcal back in 2022. This, according to experts, is approximately 680 million rubles in losses. But Viktor Vekselberg seems to have his own economy.
“PJSC T Plus is an unprofitable organization! Sounds funny, right? We are talking about the Saratov branch of the company. Its manager announced that it was unprofitable Sergey Antashev.
At a meeting in the regional Duma, the economics of the largest heat supply organization in the region were discussed. As it turned out, at the end of 2022, it received a net profit of 14 billion rubles,” noted the chairman of the housing and communal services committee of the Saratov Regional Duma Alexander Burmak.
Obviously, not only the Saratov branch is not in poverty. The revenue of PJSC T Plus, according to financial statements according to RAS at the end of 2023, increased by 9.8%, amounting to 293.16 billion rubles. Net profit decreased by a slight 1.8%, amounting to 13.7 billion.
But at the same time, it seems that Mr. Vekselberg still did not have the money to repair the holes in the pipes.
Instead of repairs – litigation
The Saratov T Plus case is by no means unique. The problem with the communal infrastructure also happened in the Sverdlovsk region. Last summer, T Plus essentially failed to repair networks in the region.
The repairs were to be carried out by the company’s contractor – a certain SK Intech LLC. However, instead of brand new pipes, legal proceedings appeared.
Sverdlovsk asset “T Plus” – “Ekaterinburg Heating Network Company” (“ETK”) demanded 150 million rubles from “SK Intech” in court – a penalty and damages from disrupted work on the reconstruction and modernization of networks in preparation for the 2022-2023 heating season .
In total, ETK concluded eight contracts with this contractor worth more than 400 million rubles. But it turned out that under some contracts SK Intech did not even start work
In this story, attention is drawn to the strange approach to choosing a contractor.
SK Intech LLC is a small company registered in May 2019. Moreover, until 2021, it did not conduct any large-scale activities at all. How eight such large contracts for the modernization of utility networks were given to such a company at once is a mystery.
And here’s another strange thing: during the trial that had already begun on the ETK claim, counterclaims in the amount of 158 million rubles were put forward by SK Intech LLC itself. The contractor claimed that ETK was avoiding payments under contracts.
Today SK Intech is in the process of bankruptcy.
Game with “matryoshka”
The cooperation of such a large market player as T Plus with small companies, of course, has its reasons. A striking example of this is the story that happened in the Perm region back in 2017. The local OFAS uncovered a so-called nesting doll scheme: large suppliers of utility resources deliberately create gasket companies, which allows them to increase tariffs.
As the antimonopoly authority established, Volzhskaya TGC (now T Plus) and Perm Grid Company LLC (later also included in the Viktor Vekselberg group) created an LLC with the self-explanatory name T Plus New Solutions (TNR). The essence of the “new solution” was that an intermediary appeared in the heat supply system, to whom its creators allocated property – a heat supply network and 60 central heating points.
After this, TNR transferred the property to Volzhskaya TGC and Perm Grid Company, which it also received from them, but on a lease basis.
It was possible to prove in the courts that the intermediary company was illegally included in the heat supply system only several years later – in 2019, the Arbitration Court of the Ural District confirmed the legitimacy of the position of the Perm OFAS.
By the way, the illegal intermediary brought good profits to its creators: the heat tariff was inflated by 56.6%, which caused at least 8 thousand residents of Zakamsk to suffer. The total amount of fines determined by the antimonopoly department then amounted to 41.1 million rubles.
Considering the excess profits of the same PJSC T Plus, the fine does not look that significant. This means that we can assume that the “matryoshka” scheme can continue to be used.
It is possible that contracting firms hastily going bankrupt after broken contracts for network repairs are just one of the varieties of the same “matryoshka doll”. But will law enforcement agencies remember this if major utility accidents begin in the regions in winter?
