State Corporation "Rostec" is trying to "whitewash" the image with the help of self-praise in the media through 550 thousand publications covering 10 million users. PASMI journalists found a competition for PR-services worth almost 100 million rubles, which was posted shortly after a series of investigative journalism about luxury foreign real estate relatives and friends of Sergei Chemezov.

Half a million compliments

On March 29, a contract for PR-support of Rostec and organizations belonging to the corporation appeared on the website of state purchases. The initial contract amount is 92.7 million rubles.

The winner will have to do a massive job. Firstly, it is an analysis of the number and nature of references to Rostec companies in the media and social networks and the preparation of the brightest negative and positive informational reasons related to the state corporation.

Secondly, the performer will have to do analytics of Rostec accounts in social networks, monitoring the level of engagement, quality and quantity of content.

Further, in the terms of the contract is prescribed information support, which includes the creation of a press office that operates around the clock and seven days a week.

His tasks include the preparation and distribution of materials related to Rostec, as well as the holding of PR companies and press events. The new team will be responsible for interacting with the media: prepare responses to requests and monitor published materials for factual errors.

Requirements for the contractor are quite high: at least 550 thousand positive or neutral publications should be published in the media, at least 12.5 thousand of them should appear in the top 10 media (according to Medialogia, for example, Izvestia, Kommersant "," Vedomosti ").

The share of positive publications, at the request of the customer, should be at least 97%, and the total campaign coverage should be at least 10 million users.

Scale matters

In the opinion of political PR-specialist Dmitry Skuratov, the contract, in the first place, is designed to reduce the negative index for the state-owned company - the higher it is, the more difficult it is for companies to find investors.

The expert noted that the effectiveness of such efforts depends on the scale of distribution of negative information. For example, you can write as many complimentary articles about Medvedev, but people will still remember him ducks and "you stick there."

“Now the task of PR specialists is to show positive publications to those users who have not seen the negative - the more of these people the better for Rostec,” Skuratov explains.

According to him, officials and businessmen often use such services to “whiten” their reputation, and the scale depends on the level of their position and the financial condition of the client.

“Someone has personal assistants - they are also responsible for the SMM and the formation of a positive agenda. Some, for example, Elena Yampolskaya (chair of the State Duma Committee on Culture) create a separate PR-agency that serves only them, ”Skuratov explained.

Reputation Villas

The reason for the announcement of a large-scale PR campaign "Rostec" could be recent articles in the media. In March, Medusa published an OCCRP investigation about Troika Dialog's offshore universe, through which the money of influential Russian officials and businessmen passed.

Later, the journalists found out that one of the offshore companies Delco Network, which is part of the Troika system, in 2008 issued a loan of € 12.2 million to a Moscow pensioner Anna Kurepina. The loan was issued for the purchase of real estate in Spain - villas in one of the prestigious villages of S'Agaro. The pensioner, according to journalists, turned out to be a relative of Vladimir Artyakov, deputy head of Rostec, Sergey Chemezov. Kurepina and Artyukov were registered in the same apartment in Moscow.

Chemezov has been friends with Artyakov for a long time, since the time of joint work with Vladimir Putin in the civil service in St. Petersburg: in 1996, Chemezov was headed by the foreign affairs manager of the Russian president, while Putin was the deputy manager.

Since 1999, Chemezov and Artyakov went uphill as well - the latter almost all the time followed in the wake of the future head of Rostec. The only exception was the period from 2007 to 2012, when Artyakov was the governor of the Samara region.

In 1999, Chemezov became the head of FSUE Promeksport - Artyakov became his deputy, in 2004 Chemezov moved to the position of general director of Rosoboronexport - there too, as a deputy, Artyakov also went. In 2012, Chemezov’s friend resigned from the governor’s post to become deputy again - this time at Rostec.

The Artyakovs' property in S'Agaro is two two-storeyed villas in the style of an Italian palazzo.

“In the basement of the villa there is a garage and a wine cellar, on the first floor there are two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a kitchen, a living room and a separate laundry room. On the second floor there are two more bedrooms, one of them with a dressing room. Both open onto a spacious terrace of 40 square meters. The villa and the land on which it stands are owned by Dmitry Artyakov’s son and his wife Yulia. According to an extract from the Spanish registry, Kurepina sold real estate to them in 2014, ”journalists said.

Across the road from the possessions of Artyakovs, the house of the "chief" is located (as one of the builders called him in the villa of the deputy Rostec). The journalists found out that the two-story fortress with a tower with loopholes attached to it, is owned by Anastasia Ignatova - daughter of Sergey Chemezov’s wife Ekaterina Ignatova.

According to the documents, Ignatova acquired the land and the villa in 2017, and before that it was recorded on the company from Liechtenstein - Societe Immobiliere Elsamex. Journalists could not find out who exactly is behind this company, but found out that her interests in real estate transactions were represented by Spanish citizen Maria Baer Pakhomova, sister of the general director of Rostec subsidiary Aviacapital-service Roman Pakhomov.

Survivor businesswoman

In the same investigation, journalists wrote that Anna Kurepina, an Artyakova relative, not only owns real estate in Spain, but also engages in business activities. She, along with another pensioner, Lyudmila Rukavishnikova (presumably Sergei Chemezov's mother-in-law), owns Rostec's non-core property, for example, the five-story Spiridonovka 20 shopping center, a couple of kilometers from the Kremlin.

In addition, Rukavishnikova owned the company, which had a share in the Sochi sanatorium "Green Grove", where the famous cottage of Stalin is located. Rostec spent about 800 million rubles to restore the “Green Grove” to the Sochi Olympics.

A separate investigation about Rukavishnikova was made by the “Interlocutor”: he found out that the pensioner’s entrepreneurial spirit appeared just after her daughter met Sergey Chemezov.

At the same time, an elderly lady's passion for real estate does not end there - she also owns AFK-Service, which owns a four-story mansion on the Patriarch's Ponds, where the AvtoVAZ headquarters used to be located. Now the area is rented, at a price of about 2 thousand rubles per square meter.