Trains "Oriole" opened the "undershoot" stones "Transmashholding"

Transmashholding, after the June incident in the Zelenograd-Kryukovo area on the Moscow suburban railway (officially the CPPK), revealed a defective batch of Ivolga trains and promised to replace the marriage within a week.

"Oriole" was offered in the tenths as a competitor to the Siemens "Swallows" and went into series at the end of the decade. The project is expensive - the cost of one train is growing with each new generation - now the fourth series is in production, which enriches Transmashholding, which, in addition to the suburban traffic in Moscow, has taken over the city metro.

Transmashholding Man at City Hall

The position of the enterprise in the capital is strong - in 2003-2011, Maxim Liksutov was a member of the Transmashholding board of directors, who in 2011 first became an adviser to Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, and then his deputy and at the same time headed the department of transport and development of road transport infrastructure.

In the Liksutov era, Transmashholding literally grew into the Moscow economy and received contracts for many profitable projects, including Oriole suburban trains, problems with which began to occur in Moscow immediately after launch. In 2019, there was a scandal at the opening of two lines of the Moscow Central Diameter, when the Orioles turned out to be two times shorter than the declared characteristics, after which old electric trains were launched on the route.

Photo: Maxim Liksutov: https://ria.ru/20210514/liksutov-1732248819.html

The failure did not call into question Moscow's cooperation with Transmashholding and Liksutov's position in the mayor's office, the official has long turned into Sobyanin's right hand and is moving his people to key projects for the capital. Dmitry Pronin became the director of the Moskvich plant, which assembles Chinese car kits on the former Renault lines.

Previously, Pronin was Liksutov's deputy in the Department of Transport and controlled the Moscow taxi market, he came to the department from the Avilon development company, which he also did not forget about. For Sobyanin, everyone is doing their own thing in the "profile" direction of work, and this "profile" was usually outlined during the period of an entrepreneurial career.

Cyprus Offshore

Transmashholding is today headed by Kirill Lipa, and Iskander Makhmudov, Andrey Bokarev and Dmitry Komissarov are named among the beneficiaries, but TMH JSC (Transmashholding) is legally a subsidiary of the Cypriot company TRANSMASHHOLDING LIMITED.

Photo: Rusprofile.ru

Lokotech-Service LLC, which is engaged in train maintenance in Moscow, is registered for the same offshore. It turns out that under Sobyanin, suburban railway communication and the metro are legally and financially dependent on the Western structure? For some reason, this alignment has not changed in 28 months of SWO and brutal Western sanctions.

Moscow cars

This fact never interfered with the cooperation of Transmashholding and the Moscow mayor's office - for example, in February 2014, a consortium of Metrovagonmash OJSC and Transholdleasing CJSC (another subsidiary of Transmashholding) won a tender for the supply of 832 cars worth 144 billion rubles for the needs of the Moscow Metro State Unitary Enterprise. And here they beat very serious competitors in the person of Russian Machines, Sinara and Uralvagonzavod, each of which was backed by Western technologies in the person of Siemens, Bombardier and other leading companies in the world.

Iskander Makhmudov. Фото: https://www.forbes.ru/milliardery/492084-novym-beneficiarnym-vladel-cem-ugmk-stal-syn-byvsego-glavy-mid-uzbekistana

However, Transmashholding did not lag behind. Since 2009, the organization has been working with the French from Alstom, to whom Makhmudov and Bokarev sold a block package (25% + 1 share). As of February 2022, the French share in Transmashholding was 20% and was estimated at $478 million, but was bought out for only $75 million. So, "Transmashholding" import replaced almost for free.

Multi-millionaire is no longer a businessman

The deal on cars for Metrovagonmash was preceded by the purchase of Mosmetrostroy JSC by Makhmudov and Bokarev, which, according to rumors, happened with the approval of Liksutov. Thus, Transmashholding grew into the transport economy of the capital, and Liksutov legally left the game by selling his stake in Transmashholding to business partners.

For 2013, Liksutov, according to Forbes, had a capital of $650 million. Many projects were associated with him - for example, Aeroexpress, but the official was forced to get rid of them and transfer them to his wife, with whom he had previously divorced. It is not forbidden to be a multimillionaire in the mayor's office, but not an entrepreneur with an interest in a large number of companies.

Although questions were raised to Liksutov after that, he always answered them that he had sold everything, handed it over and gave it away, and now he works exclusively for the benefit of Muscovites in Sobyanin's team. Only oddities remain: Transgroup invest with the beneficiary Tatyana Liksutova continues to be directly related to Aeroexpress, although now they are not relatives.

Transmashholding strengthens its position

The sanctions and the departure of Alstom became a technological problem for Transmashholding - the dependence of the Russian economy on Western imports cannot be underestimated, but in general they strengthened the company's position in the Russian market. Now, without Transmashholding, purchases in Moscow and in other regions of the country, and even in Minsk, are sharpened for this structure.

Kirill Lipa. Photo: https://www.vedomosti.ru/industry/infrastructure_development/characters/2024/07/09/1046533-sovmestnoe-dolgosrochnoe-planirovanie

Transmashholding, under the leadership of Lipa, from the very beginning developed business according to the b2g scheme (business to government or "business for the state"). Thus, the problems that Russia faced in connection with the SWO for the company, if they hit, are mostly indirect.

The main thing that Transmashholding has is a customer represented by the state with guaranteed contracts, and difficulties with marriage, imperfections and technical inconsistencies can always be overcome - as we already know, the Moscow mayor's office has wise and responsive officials.

I believe that if you ask questions, then not Liksutov and Transmashholding, whose activities lie on the surface, but to Moscow Mayor Sobyanin, who does not struggle with such approaches, when one company, with its exit to a key post, de facto monopolized an entire branch of the Moscow economy. Here claims are not even from the point of view of the law, but ethics, because it is wrong? Or am I wrong?