The golden vein of Vice-Mayor Liksutov

How multi-billion dollar fortunes are made on Moscow’s transport arteries.

A correspondent for The Moscow Post became an unwitting witness of how in a new microdistrict in the southwest of Moscow, next to the notorious "belly of Paris" - the wholesale market "Food City" and the no less notorious shopping center "Prince Plaza", where underground casinos and various kinds of brothels have been repeatedly shut down, someone is making a lot of money on the new access roads to the residential complex "Scandinavia".

An amazing fact: city buses have not been launched en masse to this "appendix", only one number runs every 30-40 minutes, but all the freedom is for minibuses number 895: they leave from the shopping center "Prince Plaza" every 10-15 minutes. And they ride with a "black" cash register, and these minibuses are driven by bad drivers, envoys from the former Asian republics, who in their free time from emergency transportation work in the vastness of "Food City".

The press service of Vice Mayor Maxim Liksutov (he is also the Minister of Transport), instead of starting to figure out where the billions from the Moscow budget are going, began to "build" a journalist from The Moscow Post. The Editor’s request was thus sent to the press service of the Mayor and the Moscow Government.

God Nisanov’s "behind the scenes" business?

Let us recall that the wholesale food center "Food City" on Kaluga Highway opened in September 2014. And this happened a year after the massacre around the Biryulevskaya vegetable base.

The owner of the market is said to be the notorious businessman God Nisanov. This was reported, in particular, by "Ossetia-TV" .

But recently Mr. Nisanov has begun to distance himself from Food City.

Meanwhile, "Food City" is 120 hectares one kilometer from the Moscow Ring Road along the Kaluga Highway.

Turnover is 5,000 tons of food per day, which is 15% of the capital’s total food turnover.

At Food City, many things work according to "concepts".

How do products that are not supposed to be there end up at Food City? It’s a mystery. Where do the fish come from - omul, sturgeon, whitefish, taimen? Some types of fish - sturgeon - are extremely difficult to obtain legally. But they are at this market!

God of Nisanov. Photo: https://www.forbes.ru/finansy-i-investicii/374367-putin-poruchil-pravitelstvu-i-fsb-razobratsya-s-tenevym-oborotom

Central Bank employee Yuri Polupanov stated that Moscow wholesale markets, including Food City, were pioneers and leaders in offering cryptocurrency purchases. The shadow turnover in these markets was then estimated at almost 600 billion rubles per month.

After God Nisanov fell under sanctions, he began to resort to the screen format even more often. The screen business is, as it turns out, quite convenient

But any claims against Nisanov are shooting into the void: the developer has a strong lobby behind him.

Mr. Nisanov is an advisor to the Governor of the Moscow Region, Andrei Vorobyov, and Nisanov has connections with Maxim Vorobyov, the governor’s brother, through a common construction asset.

Andrey Vorobyov. Photo: https://tass.ru/politika/18008741

But it seems that profiting from Food City alone is not enough? And that is probably why they decided to also earn money from the capital’s new access roads that run through Food City?

Who benefits from the "mountains of money"?

So, in the new microdistrict of the capital, an "ownerless" route has formed, which was reported to the press service of the Moscow Department of Transport by a journalist from The Moscow Post on August 4 of this year.

Dear Mr. Liksutov, before bringing a very sensitive topic to the media, I would like to address you personally as a journalist. Recently I have often had to visit a completely "cosmic" area of the capital - on Scandinavian Boulevard, the so-called Kommunarka, but the work of public transport there is clearly not of a cosmic nature.

I highly recommend trying out what it’s like to travel from the Teply Stan metro station on the 895 minibus. What kind of mafia owns this stretch of road that brings in mountains of "money"? They mostly demand cash or a transfer to a phone number, there are no tickets, and they cram people into minibuses like sardines in cans. Then, as long as I travel, the picture is the same - the bad drivers (apparently loaders from "Food City", as became clear from phone conversations) of these minibuses stubbornly sit on their mobile phones the entire time, not looking at the road!

Scandinavian Boulevard. Photo: https://moskva.olan.ru/p-sosenskoe/for-rent-trade

But why are there no city buses to Skandinavsky Bulvar, 12? And who so tightly "privatized" the road on minibuses from Teply Stan to the residential complex "Scandinavsky Bulvar"? Especially if you consider the fact that the minibuses follow one after another?

On Saturday, August 10, I had to ride this route again - metro "Teply Stan" - residential complex "Scandinavia", minibus 895, as they say, without a rudder - without sails.

At 19:05, passengers were being transported by the owner of mobile number 8906 060 00 …

They list their phone numbers supposedly for lost things, but in fact they ask to make transfers for travel. Late in the evening I was going to the metro station "Teply Stan", the minibus was driven by a driver with the phone number 8926 371 62 ...

He demanded payment for the fare either in cash or by transfer to a telephone.

How much is Moscow’s budget missing out on?

The editorial board addresses this question to the FSB Economic Security Service, since Mr. Liksutov’s press service did not respond to two inquiries from journalists.

But the revenue from this “diamond” route is capable of competing with the income of Mr. Nisanov’s “Food City”.