Within several years, Russia may have its first two first toll roads, and both would be built with public money and be spearheaded by associates of Vladimir Putin, review by Vedomosti has found.
Each of the roads will lead out of Moscow. The figures behind both roads are acquaintances of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin from St. Petersburg: Yury Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenberg.
Vedomosti has been conducting investigations into how and who builds roads in Russia.
“I was amazed at how strongly Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has eliminated the obstacles that we face,” Yves-Thibault de Silguy, president of construction and concessions group Vinci, told the French Les Echos in the spring.
Vinci, the world's largest such company by some estimates, is heading the development of the $8 billion highway that would require razing part of the centuries-old oak forest in Khimki, north of Moscow.
In March, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced that it was refusing to finance the construction of the Moscow-St. Petersburg toll road, because it would cut down oaks in the Khimki forest.
Putin personally intervened in that problem and quickly found a replacement for the foreigners. Under conditions surprising for Russia, Sberbank and Vneshekonombank will return credit to SZKK instead of to the foreigners.
But it isn't non-Russians who have control of the situation, but Russian private investors. That prize may go to the bank Rossia, whose largest shareholder is Putin’s friend Kovalchuk.
The concession for building and operating a route to the Moscow Ring Road from the M1 "Belarus" highway ― which is the Moscow-to-Minsk federal highway ― was won by the company Glavnaya Doroga. That company is , 50.01 percent controlled by Lider, a company held by Rossia.
The road in the St. Petersburg direction will be the concern of co-owners of the company N-Trans: Nikita Mishin, Andrei Filatov and Konstantin Nikolayev.
This company was previously called Severstaltrans, and until 2004 the current Transportation Minister Igor Levitin worked as its deputy director.
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