The firms of the beloved head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations Alexander Kurenkov, Elena Milskaya, which she owns through nominal values, received 4.6 billion rubles in 2022 thanks to state contracts, among other things. This follows from the investigation of the «Project».
Kurenkov took over as minister in 2022. This happened after the death of the previous head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Yevgeny Zinichev. He died in September 2021 near Norilsk, in the Putoransky Reserve. It was officially announced then that Zinichev fell off a cliff, saving film director Alexander Melnik.
A local resident who became an eyewitness said that the director and the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations were friends, and by the time they arrived at the reserve they were drunk. “It was just the first minister who broke down. When they were standing side by side, he slipped, he was carried away, and Melnik tried to grab him, ”recalled the interlocutor of the Project.
Eight months later, Putin introduced the then 49-year-old Kurenkov, who had previously worked in the FSO, as the new head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Details of the minister's personal life are not mentioned in official documents and other sources. On the website of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, among other things, there is no standard wording «married, has children.» At the same time, the journalists found out that immediately after the divorce in 2019, he celebrated his wedding with Elena Milskaya.
A year earlier, Milskaya, a frequent guest of charity and church events, received the ownership of a 1,000-square-meter house in the Razdory-2 village on Rublevsky Highway. Such a cottage costs about 600 million rubles. In 2021, the 16-year-old son of a woman from a past partner became the owner of a house in the Gorki-2 village. In the first case, the property is located near the residence assigned to the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, in the second case, near the house of security chief Dmitry Medvedev.
Now both sites in Rosreestr are listed as belonging to the Russian Federation. As Proekt notes, this actually indicates that Kurenkov's relatives own the land and houses. The family is also trying to hide several expensive cars: LexusLX 570, MercedesBenz AMG G63, MercedesBenz S450, BentleyContinental GT, PorscheBoxster S. Their total cost is approximately 79.7 million rubles.
As journalists noted, the image of the beloved head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations is ambiguous. She gives icons to celebrities, talks about traditional values, is on the Board of Trustees of the Safe Internet League, and also talks in an interview with the Tsargrad TV channel about her faith in the president. At the same time, Milskaya owns real estate and a fleet worth hundreds of millions of rubles.
In addition, she has a construction company, PozitivInfo, and Kaliningrad Balttrans, which leases equipment. Previously, Milskaya owned them openly, but then nominal owners appeared. These organizations became subcontractors in fulfilling the order of the National Cultural Heritage Foundation.
The fund was required to build cultural, educational and museum complexes initiated by Putin «to unlock the potential of our regions.» Milskaya is the owner of another company in the Kaliningrad region, not associated with this state order. Only three companies received 4.6 billion rubles last year. Only «PozitivInfo» earned 1.8 billion rubles at the construction site under the state contract.
At the same time, objects in the Kaliningrad region have not yet been completed, they are 30-70% ready, the journalists specified. “There are more questions than answers regarding the construction of the cultural center. This construction is one of the elements of the theater of the absurd that is unfolding in the country. This is perceived as a master's whim and, which is not ruled out, possible money laundering,” Solomon Ginzburg, a member of the public chamber of the Kaliningrad region, told the Project.
The Kurenkov family receives budget money and a subspecies of helping people. A month after the minister took office, on behalf of the department, an agreement was signed on cooperation with the National Monitoring Center for Assistance to Missing and Injured Children. In the next three years, the center was guaranteed 600 million rubles. This NPO is owned by Milskaya. To a greater extent, it is the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations that advertises the center. In the stories dedicated to the activities of the head of the department, people in NPO branded T-shirts repeatedly appeared.
After Milskaya decided to organize the training of the volunteers of her center for helping children at the Gudermes Special Forces University, Daniil Martynov, who created the Russian University of Special Forces, became an adviser to the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Already in December last year, Milskaya and Martynov set about creating centers for «military sports education and patriotic training of youth.» Now there are 12 branches of the organization. They were allocated 2.7 billion rubles from the government reserve fund in 2023.