Nikolai Emelyanovich Aksenenko Minister of Railways. Aksyonenko, Nikolai Emelyanovich. Work in the Ministry of Railways

31.03.2022

Nikolay Emelyanovich Aksyonenko(March 15, 1949, Novoaleksandrovka, Novosibirsk Region - July 20, 2005, Munich) - Russian statesman, First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in 1999-2000, Minister of Railways in 1997-2002 (with a break in May-September 1999).

Biography

Born March 15, 1949 in the village of Novoaleksandrovka, Bolotninsky District, Novosibirsk Region, in a large family of an assistant driver. Aksyonenko's mother was a housewife. Nikolai was the youngest, 13th child. In 1951 the family moved to Moshkovo.

I went to school at the age of six, because by that time I knew how to read and write well. In his youth, he was engaged in heavyweight boxing and football.

After graduating from school in 1966, he tried to enter the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute, but did not pass the entrance examinations. During the year he worked as a fitter at the Chkalov Novosibirsk Aviation Plant. In 1967, he entered the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers with a degree in railway engineering for the operation of railways. At the institute, he oversaw mass sports work, and there he met his future wife.

In 1969 he joined the CPSU.

Work on the railroad

In 1972 he graduated from the institute and went to work as a duty officer at the Vikhorevka and Nizhneudinsk stations of the East Siberian Railway.

In 1974 he was appointed head of the Azey station of the East Siberian Railway.

From 1978 to 1979 - deputy head of the Otrozhka station of the South-Eastern Railway.

Since 1979, he worked as a deputy head, later - head of the traffic department of the Voronezh branch of the South-Eastern Railway, deputy head of the traffic service of the same road.

In 1984, he transferred to the Oktyabrskaya railway, where he held the positions of deputy head of the Murmansk branch (until 1985), head of the Leningrad-Finland branch (until 1986), deputy head of the railway (from 1986 to 1991), chief economist, first deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya railroad.

in 1990 he graduated from the Academy of National Economy.

Work in the Ministry of Railways

In 1994-1996, he served as Deputy Minister, since 1996 - First Deputy Minister, since April 15, 1997 - Minister of Railways of Russia. During his work, a commission was created to regulate tariffs, the Kizlyar-Kizilyurt railway was completed, transit communication was established through the territory of Russia, and the telecommunications company TransTeleCom was created. At the same time, under him, a wave of closures of inactive dead-end branches swept through the Moscow Region (Panki - Dzerzhinsky, freight traffic was partially preserved; Mytishchi - Pirogovo, dismantled by the summer of 2001; Lesnoy Gorodok - Vnukovo Airport, restored as part of the Aeroexpress launch in 2004) . In 1998, the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation approved the "Concept for the structural reform of the federal railway transport", which defined the main tasks and goals of the restructuring of the industry.

Appointment as Deputy Prime Minister

On May 19, 1999, Aksenenko was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in the cabinet of Sergei Stepashin. Previously, he was considered by Boris Yeltsin as a candidate for the premiership, which the speaker of the Duma Gennady Seleznev managed to announce publicly, but in the end, Stepashin's candidacy was submitted to the Duma.

Aksyonenko was actively lobbied by Tatyana Dyachenko, Abramovich and Mamut. There was a moment when Yeltsin called Seleznev (May 17, 1999) and said that Aksyonenko's candidacy was being submitted to the Duma, which the Duma speaker announced at the plenary session. Everyone then made a fuss, because Stepashin's candidacy had already been submitted for the premiership. To which Seleznev replied: "I washed my ears in the morning."

And so it was. Tatyana went to her father, and in her presence Yeltsin actually called Seleznev. When she left, Boris Nikolaevich sent an adjutant to pick up a decree on Aksenenko, which he himself signed under Tatyana and sent to the Duma. They say that, not yet knowing this, Tatyana Borisovna called Aksenenko and told him to open the champagne.

Circumstances did not allow Aksyonenko to become president: the Chubais group seriously opposed him. Yeltsin, on the other hand, could not allow a split in power, and therefore, in the end, he found a compromise figure in the person of Putin.

Source from the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation

Minister of Railways and Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government N.E. Aksenenko was born on March 15, 1949 in the village of Novoaleksandrovka, Bolotninsky District, Novosibirsk Region, in the family of a railway engineer, an assistant machinist. He was the thirteenth and youngest child in the family. The difference between the elder and the younger was 24 years, so the older sisters treated Nikolai as if they were their son. He went to school a year earlier than expected - at the age of six, because by that time he already knew how to read and write well. One of his characteristics has been preserved from his school days. It sounds something like this: an active member of the Komsomol, he takes his studies responsibly, enjoys the respect of his comrades.

After leaving school, in 1966, 17-year-old N.E. Aksenenko went to work at the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant, where he began his career. In 1966-1967, he worked as an assembly fitter at an aircraft factory and at the same time studied at the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Engineers as a railway engineer for the operation of railways. According to N.E. Aksenenko, his father dissuaded him from entering this institute, but Nikolai firmly decided to continue the railway dynasty.

In 1972, Nikolai Aksenenko graduated from the institute and began working as a duty officer at the stations of the East Siberian Railway. In 1972-1974, he worked in this position at the Vikhorevka and Nizhneudinsk stations, and in 1974-1978 he was the head of the Azey and Nizhneudinsk stations of the East Siberian Railway. In 1978, Aksenenko left Siberia, for a year (until 1979) he worked as deputy head of the Otrozhka station of the South-Eastern Railway (Voronezh), and then, from 1979 to 1984, successively held the positions of deputy head, head of the traffic department of the Voronezh branch South-Eastern Railway, and, finally, the Deputy Head of the traffic service of the South-Eastern Railway.

After working for almost 7 years in Voronezh, in 1984 Aksenenko received a new assignment - to the north. In 1984-1985, he was deputy head of the Murmansk branch of the oldest in the country, the October Railway, then, in 1985-1986. - Head of the Leningrad-Finland branch of the October Railway. After that, for six years (1986-1991) Aksenenko served as deputy head of the October Railway. In parallel, he studied at the Academy of National Economy, from which he graduated in 1990. In 1991-1992, Nikolai Aksenenko combined two positions - deputy head of the railway and chief economist, and then, in 1992-1994, he worked as first deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya Railway.

Career growth N.E. Aksenenko continued. In 1994 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Railways, in 1996 - First Deputy Minister. Finally, on April 15, 1997, N.E. Aksenenko became the Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation in the government of Viktor Chernomyrdin. He took this post instead of A. Zaitsev, who at one time was just the head of the October Railway and now lost to his subordinate. His predecessor raised rates all the time - and there was confusion on the railroad. The first thing Aksenenko was told was to reduce tariffs, create a tariff body independent of the Ministry of Railways - a commission was organized to regulate tariffs, headed by Boris Nemtsov. Then - to hold for the first time after the count a tariff congress, which took place in Krasnoyarsk and in Moscow, where it was decided that there should be no exclusive discounts. A unique rule was adopted there: if you give a discount for one company, then it immediately applies to all the others. It was necessary to organize the work of the Trans-Siberian Railway, to complete the construction of a railway line around Chechnya. In addition, restore transit from Japan and South Korea to Brest. Aksenenko did all this in a tough regime.

As the "chief railroad worker" Nikolai Aksenenko was remembered for several grandiose projects. He was the first to propose connecting Sakhalin Island to the mainland by a bridge or railway tunnel. The project was estimated at almost $ 20 billion. Speaking about this ambitious plan, Aksenenko emphasized: “The project of a tunnel under the strait separating Sakhalin from the mainland was developed under Stalin. Now there are optimal prerequisites for its implementation in terms of economic, political and social situation in the country. This project is extremely profitable from a commercial point of view." In addition, Minister Aksenenko has repeatedly stated the need to revive the BAM, which brings the treasury up to 6 billion rubles. losses per year: "At one time, the BAM was built in order to unload the Trans-Siberian Railway. While it was being built, the intensity of traffic along the Trans-Siberian Railway decreased, and the BAM became unprofitable. It is impossible to close the highway. You can get rid of losses only by increasing the volume of traffic. To do this we need real projects, and we have them. Specialists have calculated that by the end of 2005 we will be able to load the BAM to break even. By the same time, we plan to make the BAM two-track, which will also increase its capacity."

Under Nikolai Aksenenko, the idea came up to simplify the railway communication with Europe, which has a narrower gauge than in Russia. Nevertheless, Nikolai Aksenenko managed to implement one megaproject. Under him, the Transtelecom company was created with the most modern equipment for fiber-optic communication lines. Under Minister Aksenenko, railways became one of the dynamically developing sectors of the Russian economy, and the Lokomotiv football club became his most popular project. From an average team, Loko became the leader of the Russian championship and received money for the most modern stadium in Russia. And the Lokomotiv-Belogorye team from Belgorod became the flagship of the national volleyball.

While still Deputy Minister of Railways, Aksenenko entered big politics. In 1996, the Ministry of Railways played a large role in organizing the election campaign of Boris Yeltsin. Aksenenko oversaw pro-presidential PR and budget "infusions" on him from the Ministry of Railways. After the resignation of the Government of Russia on March 25, 1998, Nikolai Aksenenko retained the post of Minister of Railways in the government of Sergei Kiriyenko. During the transition period from August 23 to September 1998, Aksenenko was acting, and on September 25, 1998, by Decree of the President of Russia, he was again approved as Minister of Railways already in the office of Yevgeny Primakov.

On March 13, 1999, Nikolai Aksenenko was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree, and on May 12 of the same year, after the resignation of Yevgeny Primakov, by decree of the President of Russia No. 579, he was appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation in the government of Sergei Stepashin . So decided President Boris Yeltsin. That spring of 1999, Aksenenko almost became the head of the government, becoming the hero of one of Yeltsin's squiggles. But the president ended up using him as a red herring. Then Boris Yeltsin, having removed Primakov from the prime ministers, called the speaker of the State Duma Gennady Seleznev and said that he was submitting Aksenenko's candidacy for consideration by the deputies. When the official paper was delivered to Okhotny Ryad, it contained the name of Sergei Stepashin.

B.N. Yeltsin, in his book "The Presidential Marathon," recalled that even then he considered Vladimir Putin's successor, but wanted to give the country a "breather." That is why he considered alternative options - Aksenenko and Stepashin. "So, who is on my list now? Nikolai Aksenenko, the Minister of Railways," writes Yeltsin. knows how to talk to people, has come a long way of work, rose, as they say, from the ground. A strong leader. However, the Duma treats him hostilely, meets with hostility. This is a good option to anger, tease the Duma in advance. Prepare it for a confrontation. And then give her a completely different candidate." And below: "So, it's decided. I'm nominating Stepashin. But I like the way I turned the intrigue with Aksenenko. A sort of squiggle. The Duma members are waiting for him, preparing for battle. And at this moment I will give them another candidate." Be that as it may, Yeltsin's "squiggle" and the reputation of "Berezovsky's man" put an end to Nikolai Aksenenko's career prospects. Soon Aksenenko became a personal enemy of Sergei Stepashin, who saw him as a competitor.

Aksenenko did not become prime minister. In May 1999, in the Primakov government, he received a post almost equal to that of the prime minister - First Deputy Prime Minister in charge of economic policy and the real sector of the economy. This time was for him the rise of his career. Supported by the head of administration Alexander Voloshin, he had real weight. President B.N. Yeltsin, according to government officials, stimulated Aksyonenko's political ambitions. It was then that Boris Nikolayevich announced him in front of television cameras as his possible successor. Aksenenko was one of the presidential candidates, a source close to the Kremlin who knows both the president and Aksenenko well confirms: "Yeltsin considered him as a candidate, it was his personal project, he sympathized with him." Nikolai Aksenenko's campaign headquarters was even formed for the upcoming campaign. But later Yeltsin found himself another successor, Vladimir Putin. On August 18, 1999, Putin became prime minister, and Aksenenko was again appointed to the post of first deputy prime minister. It was said that circumstances prevented Aksenenko from becoming president: he was actively lobbied by Tatyana Dyachenko, Abramovich and Mamut, but the Chubais group seriously opposed him. Yeltsin could not allow a split in power, and therefore found a compromise figure in the face of Putin. According to a source close to the Kremlin, Aksenenko withstood the blow and "calmly survived it." "He was a strong man, jumped over grudges and continued to plow."

Aksenenko, according to ex-Energy Minister Viktor Kalyuzhny, was a workaholic - his working day began at 7 am and ended closer to night. Aksenenko's meetings lasted no more than 35 minutes, but, leaving them, everyone understood what needed to be done and where to go. Aksenenko held on independently. Taking advantage of the prime minister's absence, in September 1999 he signed an order for the resignation of Transneft president Dmitry Savelyev, a protege of Sergei Kiriyenko. Asked by Vedomosti why he removed Savelyev behind Putin's back, without waiting for his return from New Zealand, Aksenenko then said: "I had the right to act as prime minister."

On January 10, 2000, Mikhail Kasyanov dismissed Nikolai Aksenenko from the post of First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, retaining the portfolio of the head of the Ministry of Railways for him. In May 2000, during the formation of the government of Mikhail Kasyanov, Aksenenko could not find a vice-premiership, and he was again appointed to the post of Minister of Railways. "He calmly reacted to Kasyanov's question, who does he want to remain - a minister or a deputy prime minister?" says a source close to the Kremlin, "and said that he was a minister because it was my own." And until his resignation in 2002, Aksenenko was developing a plan for reforming the department under his control. By the way, at first the railway chief resisted the reform of the Ministry of Railways, until he created his own system and put his people in key positions. It was during the discussion of this reform, according to Izvestia, that in December 2001 Nikolai Aksenenko first felt the aggravation of the disease right in the White House. Soon the resignation followed, and then - the accusation of embezzlement of public funds.

On October 9, 2001, a criminal case was opened against Nikolai Aksenenko. The materials of the Accounts Chamber formed the basis. He was summoned to the Prosecutor General's Office, where he was interrogated as a witness. After the interrogation, the Minister was read out the decision to implicate him as a defendant. The criminal case initiated under Part 3 of Art. 160 ("Assignment of entrusted funds using official position") and part 3 of Art. 286 ("Exceeding official powers with causing grave consequences") of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, was sent to the Moscow City Court in 2003. The former minister was mainly accused of illegally spending on the maintenance of the central apparatus of the Ministry of Railways the profits of the railways transferred to the departmental education and health funds. The accusation that the Prosecutor General's Office brought against the former Minister of Railways consisted of three parts: illegal centralization of the revenues of 17 railways (which, according to the investigation, was nothing more than abuse of power), embezzlement of these funds (which consisted in expanding the staff of the central office ministry for 250 people, the payment of bonuses and inflated travel allowances to employees of this apparatus, which took 70 million rubles, or at the then exchange rate, a little more than 20 thousand dollars) and non-payment of taxes by his subordinates. According to sources, there was evidence that Aksenenko was allegedly involved in the misuse of about one million dollars. They also tried to accuse Aksenenko of exceeding his authority in creating off-budget funds for education and healthcare, but these charges did not appear in the final version.

Particular attention of the Prosecutor General's Office was attracted by the charitable activities of the head of the Ministry of Railways: the minister easily signed payment orders for millions of rubles to pay assistance to theaters and artists. In January 2000, at the request of Nikolai Koshman, the government's plenipotentiary in Chechnya, Aksenenko allocated 25 million rubles to the republic. for economic and social recovery. In the same year, the ministry transferred more than 11 million rubles. at the expense of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra as charitable assistance for restoration work, and at the request of Lyudmila Zykina, the Academy of Culture of Russia headed by her received 5 million rubles from the Ministry of Railways. "for the conduct of statutory activities." But the administration of the Kemerovo region was the luckiest of all - at the request of Aman Tuleyev, the ministry provided it with assistance in the amount of 70 million rubles. to pay off debts of housing and communal services enterprises. Aksenenko did not refuse help to anyone - neither the administration of the Chechen Republic, nor the families of those who died on. In total, more than 513 million rubles were spent for charitable purposes. The Prosecutor General's Office regarded these actions as "embezzlement, that is, the theft of someone else's property entrusted to the guilty, committed repeatedly, using one's official position, on a large scale." However, under each fact of embezzlement found by the prosecutor's office, it is indicated: "the funds were spent for the indicated purposes." The third part of the accusation concerned the tax policy of the Ministry of Railways. By centralizing the revenues of 17 railways, Aksenenko, according to investigators, deliberately limited their financial and economic independence. For this reason, the railways systematically underpaid most of the tax payments to the budget. Thus, in his telegrams addressed to the railway departments, the minister determined only about 3 billion rubles to be paid as taxes for the last quarter of 2000. with an actual debt of almost 25 billion rubles.

Meanwhile, one of the heads of the legal service of the Ministry of Railways, who is well acquainted with the situation, said that virtually all the charges are untenable. According to him, the revenue centralization system of 17 Russian railways has been operating since the mid-40s of the last century, and it fully complied and still complies with the law "On Federal Railway Transport", the Regulations on the Ministry of Railways and the special procedure for conducting operations on revenue accounts of the Ministry of Railways approved by the Bank of Russia. Moreover, in December 1999, this system was approved at an expanded board of the Ministry of Railways, which was attended by the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the current general director of Russian Railways, Gennady Fadeev, and the leaders of all 17 roads. As for the fact of limiting tax payments, the entire debt of the railways to the budget was recognized as objective and settled by a special government decree. The accusation of embezzlement, according to the representative of the Ministry of Railways, is also untenable. Funds from the profits that Aksenenko allegedly squandered belong to 17 railways. At a meeting of the board of the Ministry of Railways, the estimate and report on the expenditure of these funds were approved every year. This means there is no damage.

On January 3, 2002, Aksenenko submitted his resignation from the post of minister, and on the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree dismissing him from his post. There are several versions about the "collision" with the all-powerful railway worker. One of them is Aksenenko's conflict with aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska over railway tariffs and ownership of transport, because the profit of aluminum companies depends on this, transport accounts for up to 30 percent of the cost of aluminum. Another version is the disagreement between Aksenenko and Anatoly Chubais. According to many sources, the head of RAO EU has always had bad relations with Aksenenko, although this conflict is mainly industrial - between the consumer and the producer (MPS owes RAO UES). Finally, according to the third version, Putin, after his reprisal against Berezovsky and Gusinsky, needed the next victim, in which case he would blame them for all the failures in the country, which were quite possible due to the fall in oil prices. So it was quite logical to make another victim in the fight against corruption from the chief railway worker.

Nikolai Emelyanovich himself allegedly considered Chubais, Deripaska and Sergei Stepashin to be his "customers", with whom Aksenenko's relations were always far from ideal. They say that when Stepashin retired from the post of prime minister, he could not restrain himself and quipped to Aksenenko: "Nikolai Emelyanovich, I think that you won't stay long either." However, Stepashin's forecast turned out to be erroneous: after he left the White House, Minister Aksenenko lingered in his chair, although he also failed to receive the Kremlin promised to him. In the spring of 2001, when Stepashin became head of the Accounts Chamber, Aksenenko's ministry came under the scrutiny of auditors. Stepashin's adviser, Vladislav Ignatov, denied that the Ministry of Railways was biased and that Stepashin had settled scores with Aksenenko. The auditors argued that a large part of the profits of the railways was concentrated in various funds of the Ministry of Railways, from which non-targeted operations were carried out. The Ministry of Railways bought apartments for its employees for 400-800 thousand dollars. The auditors called the Ministry of Railways investments of 4.3 billion rubles unreasonable. in the construction of the global backbone communication network "Transtelecom". The auditors accused Aksenenko of choosing too expensive contracts, which went to the Baltic Construction Company. The accounts in Transcreditbank, bought by the Ministry of Railways, concealed the profits of all participants in the chains and schemes for these contracts, the auditors claimed. According to the auditors, 100% of depreciation deductions of enterprises in the industry were "illegally consolidated" on accounts in the same bank, which in 2000 amounted to 52.8 billion rubles.

One thing was clear - Aksyonenko's resignation was the result of a power struggle between Yeltsin's old guard and new politicians from St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown. After all, Aksenenko was the sole proprietor of a monopoly that owns 159,000 km of railroad tracks with 5 million employees and a turnover of 10 billion dollars. In addition, according to Sergei Yushenkov, "a colossal amount of real money rotates in the Ministry of Railways. The taxes of this department alone amount to 3.5 billion rubles a month, and the turnover of money over the same period is about a billion dollars." The position of the minister is no less important in political terms: 17 chiefs of railways control the entire country. Aksenenko was not Putin's man, he was a representative of the "Yeltsin Guard", which in recent years has been constantly pushed to the sidelines. For him were Roman Abramovich, Tatyana Dyachenko with Valentin Yumashev, Boris Berezovsky. Against - the new team of Putin and Chubais with Gref, who dreams of "demonopolization" of the Ministry of Railways. Putin himself, most likely, had nothing to do with this: "To dismiss a person, the president does not need to start criminal cases."

Only a few publicly stood up for the disgraced official. "The materials that I have seen do not confirm the facts of abuse," Mikhail Kasyanov said in the autumn of 2001. By the time Aksenenko fell ill, all that remained in the accusations was abnormal spending of funds mainly for charity, says a source close to the Kremlin. “It looks like it was not very legal from a legal point of view, but from the point of view of the goals, there was nothing criminal,” he says.

On October 6, 2003, Aksenenko's lawyers applied to the Prosecutor General's Office with a request to issue their client permission to temporarily leave Russia for examination and treatment in one of the foreign clinics - the former minister was rapidly developing a blood disease that the best Russian doctors could not diagnose. Three days later, he was removed from his undertaking not to leave and was allowed to go abroad, but "in exchange" he signed a protocol of refusal to further familiarize himself with the case (out of almost 300 volumes, the accused had only managed to read half by this point).

Nikolai Aksenenko (he was diagnosed with blood leukemia) was taken to Munich on a special medical plane. Almost all this time he spent in the clinic of the University of Gross-Hadern. One of the close friends of the former minister, asking not to be named, spoke about the last months of Nikolai Aksenenko’s life: “German doctors were surprised at the strength of his body. He underwent two difficult operations to transplant internal organs. The bone marrow donor during one of the operations was his son Rustam. Almost all 22 months since he was taken to Germany, he was chained to a hospital bed. I heard in Russia they said that he walks around the casino here - it's all a lie. He fought for his life. He hoped for recovery to the last, although and he understood that he had few chances. He constantly experienced what happened to him in Russia. I think, because of these experiences, his illness worsened."

Meanwhile, the trial of the former minister has not yet begun. Aksenenko's case, sent to the Moscow City Court, was returned to the Prosecutor General's Office due to the fact that "it is not possible to bring the accused to trial." The Prosecutor General's Office appealed against the return of the case to the Supreme Court of Russia, whose presidium on April 15, 2005 ordered the Presidium of the Moscow City Court to "initiate supervisory proceedings" and reconsider the issue of accepting the case for proceedings. However, this decision was not made. Nikolai Aksenenko, former Minister of Railways and former First Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation, died after a long illness at the age of 57 on July 20, 2005 in Munich, at the Gross-Hadern clinic, where he received treatment. At the time of his death, his wife and children were with him.

The coffin with the body of Nikolai Aksenenko was delivered to St. Petersburg by train from Moscow on July 24 at about half past six in the morning. He was accompanied by vice-presidents of JSC "Russian Railways" Boris Lapidus and Valentin Gapanovich, Head of the Moscow Railway Vladimir Starostenko and Chairman of the Russian Trade Union of Railway Workers and Transport Builders Nikolai Nikiforov. The new head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, ordered two special cars to be attached to the Moscow-Petersburg train - for all the company's employees, as well as for the relatives and friends of Nikolai Aksenenko, who wanted to say goodbye to him.

The decision to bury Aksenenko in St. Petersburg was made by his relatives, who permanently reside in the northern capital. The necessary permissions were obtained without problems. The funeral service in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Lavra began at one o'clock in the afternoon, about 300 people gathered in the church - relatives and friends of the deceased. Since the entrance to the temple was not closed, visitors, including tourists, could see the service, but the security guards tried to push them away and asked them not to take photos and videos. Then the motorcade went to the Nikolskoye cemetery, located next to the temple. All the way to the burial place near the graves of Galina Starovoitova was strewn with carnations and roses. The funeral ceremony continued at the cemetery. A wooden cross with an enamel portrait of Aksenenko was installed on the grave, and the grave itself was completely covered with fresh flowers. Wreaths were sent by the government of the Russian Federation, the first president of Russia Boris Yeltsin, the leaders of the railways, the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga Vladimir, the Lokomotiv football club.

Aksenenko's case was dismissed after his death. The court did not begin to consider the case until the death of the former minister. "Political ambitions were already killed, and Aksenenko was released abroad, as it turned out, to die," the White House official said. However, the minister's relatives were given the right to insist on this process in order to achieve the posthumous rehabilitation of Aksenenko, who never pleaded guilty, considering the accusation "politically motivated."

The political career of Nikolai Aksenenko was short-lived, but stormy. A rural boy who started as a fitter, he got on the railroad and made a brilliant career there from the station attendant to the Minister of Railways. And, having headed the Ministry of Railways, in 1997-2002 he managed to work with six prime ministers. Aksenenko never held positions either in the party or in the Komsomol, exclusively economic. At the height of his career, having risen under Yeltsin and entering the Kremlin elite, he could well become the president of Russia. He was one of the brightest state business officials in the recent history of the country. But his career ended in 2002 with the loss of all government posts and a criminal case brought by the Prosecutor General's Office. He was called both a "squanderer of state funds" (as recorded in the criminal case) and a lover of nepotism (there were too many relatives of the minister in the Ministry of Railways). He collapsed somehow immediately, without moaning and accusations against the "friends" who set him up. And then - death in a foreign land from an incurable disease, in disgrace, under the threat of criminal punishment. A professional railway worker, in politics, apparently, he went the wrong way. His fate is a reflection of the situation in the power structures of modern Russia, where the struggle of clans, parties, groups of influence, open and undercover, plays with a person, and even a country. And opinions about the activities of Aksenenko, about his role in politics and the economy, respectively, were and are too ambiguous ...

I am not an oligarch, but a civil servant who constantly feels responsible for the safety of people, for the development of a system of communications. To ensure that people have access to and comfortable use of railways.

Nikolai Aksenenko, October 2000

Alexey Fomin

The MPS empire is systematically preparing for self-liquidation. Aksenenko, without waiting for the reform of the most powerful and cumbersome branch of the national economy to be imposed from outside, himself drew up a plan for reorganization and formulated it very clearly in one of his interviews.

“The essence of the restructuring,” the minister said, “is to separate the functions of state regulation and economic management of the industry, which the Ministry of Railways is now in charge of in one person. As a result, a newly created joint-stock company, the entire block of shares of which will belong to the state, and the Ministry of Railways will carry out the state policy in the field of transport".

The government and Putin did not like the plan. However, they are not in a hurry to completely reject it. The railway department is now the field where everyone strives to play for himself. There are three players: the "family", Putin and Aksenenko himself, who formally wears a "family" T-shirt. But at the same time, he is not averse to scoring a goal against his “native” team, since his teammates cannot offer anything but the bench.

In a simplified version, the situation looks something like this. The hopes placed on Putin by the Yeltsin team are crumbling one by one. After the occupation of the power peaks by the St. Petersburg and Chekists, the "family" has several large bastions left, which it zealously defends. These are the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Railways. With the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under the leadership of Berezovsky's friend Rushailo, the siege for the next year was lifted (see "!" No. 6). With Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration, the issue has been resolved, but Putin is not yet able to kick him out of the Kremlin just like that. One condition interferes: for Alexander Stalievich it is necessary to find a chair for the head of some natural monopoly.

Where did the newspapermen just not woo Voloshin! And in Gazprom, and in RAO UES - all in vain. Now there has been a rumor that Alexander Stalievich will head the Russian Railways, which does not yet exist in nature. The current head of the presidential administration began his career as an assistant driver. He remembers from which side to approach the diesel locomotive, and in a new position he should not let him down.

It can be assumed that Aksenenko was given the task of creating the most profitable enterprise. And who will eventually get this enterprise, they did not say.

However, the main Russian railway worker is a fairly independent figure and, apparently, does not intend to give up without a fight. Russian Railways is his brainchild, and he wants to collect money for the transportation of goods on the state "piece of iron" himself.

Train arrival

The Russian railway empire has remained unshakable since Anna Karenina made an unsuccessful attempt to stop a steam locomotive with her body. Under socialism, every subject of the empire was sure that the paths he traveled and maintained should lead to a brighter future. That is, "forward - to communism."

The unexpected change in Lenin's direction caused confusion among the railroad workers. However, the debugged mechanism continued to work properly. The Ministry of Railways remained a state within a state with all the attributes that a state should have: police, counterintelligence, troops, universities, a football team, newspapers, hospitals, clinics, rest homes, pioneer camps, etc.

On a commercial footing, the state department stood up quietly and imperceptibly. In 1994, Nikolai Emelyanovich Aksenenko firmly settled in the building on Novaya Basmannaya Street. The man is by no means a stranger. Aksenenko graduated from the Institute of Railway Engineers in Novosibirsk and the Academy of National Economy. On the railroad for 22 years. He started as a station attendant. The industry knows inside and out.

See money - don't waste time

Life rarely gives you the chance to be in the right place at the right time. And not everyone can take advantage of this opportunity. This does not apply to Aksenenko. Having moved to the capital, the current minister quickly figured out who to make friends with, who to put on. I bet on Abramovich - and I was not mistaken. Even then, young Roma demonstrated miracles of enterprise and resourcefulness, discovering in himself the makings of a future oligarch.

According to knowledgeable people, the cooperation between Aksenenko and Abramovich began in 1992. The latter then headed the small enterprise "AVK". According to forged documents, the management of this company bought 55 tanks of diesel fuel at the Ukhta oil refinery, allegedly to be sent to one of the military units in the Kaliningrad region. However, thanks to the efforts of "some railroad workers" for some reason, the train with fuel went to Riga, where it disappeared. The fuel was sold through shell companies. Profit, about 4 million rubles, was distributed along the chain.

In 1997, Abramovich was already in charge of Sibneft and, with the help of Berezovsky, established strong ties in the Kremlin. Therefore, when the question arose of the candidacy of the new Minister of Railways, Aksenenko did not have any rivals.

Shortly after Nikolai Emelyanovich took over the new office, Sibneft received from the Ministry of Railways a preferential tariff for transporting oil abroad and used it, to the envy of other exporters, for a year. For this, the minister was honored with the right to be called a friend of the "family" and secured complete immunity for himself.

While other oligarchs fought each other for the right to purchase state-owned enterprises to be privatized at auctions, Abramovich and Berezovsky, without straining, took the transport monopoly, instructing its leader how and where to put the financial flows of the Ministry of Railways to make everyone feel good.

Every year, about 10 billion dollars pass through the MPS, so there is enough for everyone when distributing profits.

Minister Aksenenko turned out to be a good manager. He has long considered his department to be a commercial enterprise that must develop, make a profit and master new types of business. One problem - he can not learn to distinguish his wool from the state.
Having become a minister, Nikolai Yemelyanovich immediately streamlined the payments for transportation, 70 percent of which before him was carried out by barter. He achieved the participation of forwarding companies in the transportation process and the right to provide them with preferential rates. As a result, the Ministry of Railways got rid of payments in kind, and firms began to receive real profits due to benefits. Those enterprises, at the helm of which were either friends or relatives of the minister and his entourage, became the main beneficiaries, and accordingly, the leaders.

At the expense of the profits of the ministry, Aksenenko began to develop the infrastructure of the industry and its social base. He began to build houses, hospitals and clinics for railway workers, modern office buildings for road leaders. True, the choice of contractors was limited to one or two construction companies, which, by a strange coincidence, were also led by people who were not strangers to the minister.

The most successful office here can be considered the Baltic Construction Company. Her MPS was simply overwhelmed with orders. And not only MPS. Now BSK is putting in order Yeltsin's new residence in Barvikha, where Boris Nikolayevich is supposed to move from Gorki.

Again, like a real entrepreneur, Aksenenko began to invest in the creation of profitable enterprises. He bought factories, ports, developed oil and coal deposits. He acted as the founder of the telecommunications company Transtelecom, the second largest long-distance operator in Russia. For some reason, the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation qualified these actions as misuse of public funds. Although the issue is debatable. It's just that Aksenenko and the state have different goals, but the means are the same.

Dispersal field

Despite strong ties in the power elite of the state, Aksenenko always realized that the minister's chair is a rather shaky object, from which, given the current Russian political situation, one can fly off at any moment.

Once this almost happened when Abramovich sent him to work as deputy prime minister. Then someone did not like this idea, and Aksenenko almost lost his job. In a hurry, he had to return to his native road and free the main office in the building on Novaya Basmannaya from Minister Starostenko. Nikolai Emelyanovich has a wife, two children and a lot of nephews. Everyone wants to eat. Therefore, this time he began to prepare in advance for farewell to the ministerial chair.

The total length of Russian railways is 87 thousand kilometers. Along them is a right-of-way, which is not used in any way and where any construction is prohibited. This fact excited the minister.

The train of thought was, apparently, this: since our roads, then this lane belongs to the Ministry of Railways. If you lay a fiber-optic cable along the road, you get the company Transtelecom, which, if used correctly, can bring fabulous profits and overtake the monopolist in this area, Rostelecom. Telecommunications are television, mobile and satellite communications, the Internet. This is the future, this is a calm, well-fed old age for the minister and a comfortable existence for his descendants.

Work boiled over. Since then, Aksenenko has been dragging every free penny to Transtelecom for laying cables and launching satellites. Officially, this is called investing in the development of information technologies in the industry for better and more efficient management of the cumbersome railway economy. Every month, the Ministry of Railways unfastens more than 50 million dollars for these needs (note, the Ministry of Railways, and not its leader at all). The basic calculation is that 20 percent of the network's capacity is enough for railroad workers, and the remaining 80 percent can be sold at dumping prices, thus luring customers away from Rostelecom.

By next year, the length of the company's communication lines will be 35,000 kilometers. This will require about a billion dollars.

Everything was going well until the government became concerned about the reform of the Ministry of Railways. Transtelecom unexpectedly announced the sale of 49 percent of the company's shares in one package. The formal pretext is to raise funds for laying the network. Although all this is more reminiscent of the withdrawal of the assets of the enterprise, so that after the restructuring it does not remain completely in the hands of the state.

One can easily guess on whose behalf a strategic investor will act, ready to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a profitable project. "This is our cow, and we will milk it!" - so, it seems, the hero of one of the fashionable domestic television series put it.

In general, Nikolai Yemelyanovich meets the upcoming changes fully armed, with a clear personal plan of action, which cannot be said about ordinary railway workers. For them, reform is a real tragedy. The unknown suffocates the traveler.

Reserve

As mentioned above, despite all the cataclysms that took place in Russia, the Ministry of Railways remained an indestructible structure - a real reserve of counter plans, conference calls, labor dynasties, cipher terminology, a pocket trade union and healthy informers.

Clear hierarchy, almost military discipline. The high authorities here are not only respected and feared, they are idolized here. It is enough to look into the departmental newspaper Gudok and everything will become clear. By the way, this is perhaps the only newspaper in the country where the letter "ё" has been used recently. The editorial team decided in this way to please the minister, whose name is written through an undeservedly humiliated Russian letter.

No one in the Ministry of Railways will ever dare to question Aksenenko's authority. Despite the fact that the leaders of all seventeen roads are quite independent figures. Their positions are equated to the rank of a minister, and they accept the appointment personally from the president.

Excessive independence tried to show only the former head of the Oktyabrskaya road Kuznetsov, for which he was immediately fired. Therefore, his colleagues silently look at the commercial activity of Aksenenko, while incurring losses and turning a blind eye to the activities of some forwarding companies.

The minister reacts painfully to attacks from the outside, and in order to have as few of them as possible, he pays for powerful PR in the media and throws dust in the eyes of taxpayers and the government with the help of all kinds of actions. He installs turnstiles at Moscow railway stations, declaring war on hares, sends hundreds of passenger cars to Chechnya for refugees to live in, and launches comfortable electric trains every six months.

Behind these shows, the average person does not see that the industry is rapidly fading away. The wagon fleet is shrinking, and almost no new wagons are being bought, bridges are collapsing, you can’t look at train stations and stations in the outback without crying. The adventures of holidaymakers who tried to get to the south last summer, and then get back, can not be commented at all.

Aksenenko likes to redirect all claims to his department to the state, which subsidizes the industry poorly and is in no hurry to issue stabilization loans. Energy companies do not want to forgive the debts of the Ministry of Railways. At the same time, the minister forgets about the super profits of the Ministry of Railways, received at the expense of high tariffs. True, these profits are still being dissolved in the bowels of "friendly" intermediary offices.

Perestroyka

The planned reform of the Ministry of Railways is not a step forward, but an attempt to preserve what remains. One of the first deputies Aksenenko formulated the need to start restructuring as follows: “Unfortunately, the railways have come to that critical point beyond which there is no longer an opportunity to draw on their internal resources - and they turned out to be not bottomless. And on the other hand, rail transport from an island of prosperity began to turn into a monster that no longer fits into the existing economic and legislative model."

Sounds like a judgment. The doctor said: to the morgue means to the morgue.

No one really knows how to reform the Ministry of Railways. Scary. The slightest oversight in such a matter can lead to the paralysis of almost the entire industry.

The main thing is to determine the goals of the reform, because they are different for all interested participants in the process. Aksenenko has one, Voloshin has another, the state, represented by the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Antimonopoly Policy, has a third.

The main battle is for the right to regulate railway tariffs. Aksenenko wants to get them out of the MAP's control. He intends to determine the cost of travel and transportation himself. The Ministry of Antimonopoly Policy is strongly opposed. In this scenario, nothing will protect the client from unreasonable tariff increases, and only friends and relatives of the owner of the monopoly will continue to have benefits.

Economists are also not satisfied with the MPS approach to roads. The minister wants to deprive them of the status of state unitary enterprises, completely subordinate them to the central office of the Russian Railways company and manage resources and financial flows from Moscow. At the same time, regional budgets are deprived of revenues from the activities of railways.

Bargaining between the IPU and the government will be a long one. There is only one result so far: they will simply change the sign in the main office. It is not known only whose name will show off on the main office.

Reference

AKSENENKO Nikolai Emelyanovich

Place of birth: Novoaleksandrovka village, Bolotninsky district, Novosibirsk region.

Education: Graduated from the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers in 1972. Specialty - railway engineer for the operation of railways. Graduated from the Academy of National Economy in 1990.

Marital status: Married. Has two children. Son is 25 years old, daughter is 21 years old.

Hobbies: loves to listen to classical music, especially opera. Favorite writers, philosophers - Berdyaev, Rozanov, Bunin, Tolstoy, Turgenev.

The main stages of the biography:

He began his career in 1966 as a fitter at the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant. At the same time, he studied at the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers with a degree in railway engineering for the operation of railways.

From 1972 to 1978 worked as a station duty officer, head of the stations of the East Siberian Railway.

In 1978–1984 - Deputy head of the station, head of the traffic department, deputy head of the Voronezh branch of the South-Eastern Railway, deputy head of the traffic service of the South-Eastern Railway.

From 1984 to 1994 - Deputy Head of the Murmansk Branch, Head of the Leningrad-Finland Branch of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, Deputy Head and Chief Economist of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, First Deputy Head of the Railway.

In 1994–1997 - Deputy Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

Since 1997 - Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

On May 12, 1999, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 579, he was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation.

On January 10, 2000, by decree of the Acting President of Russia Vladimir Putin, Nikolai Aksenenko was relieved of the post of First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation and appointed Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

Awarded with the Order "For Services to the Fatherland".

Direct speech

We were seven brothers and six sisters. I am the youngest, thirteenth. Unfortunately, not everyone is alive... The difference between the oldest and the youngest is 24 years. The older sisters - they are now in their seventies - treated me like their son ...

As with many, probably, both the element of chance and the element of dependence on general circumstances played their role. My father was a railway worker - an engineer, a locomotive driver ... By the way, he did not advise me to go to college. He dissuaded me because he knew: this is a hell of a job.

It seems to me that if "hands did not reach" Berdyaev, Bunin, Rozanov - those classics who, in my opinion, described the situation in Russia in great detail and in many ways on the eve of the revolution and after it, and perceived it "from the inside", and not detachedly from the outside - then how can one try to understand our yesterday and today?

My wife and I met in college and have been together ever since. I was very lucky that fate brought me to her. We managed to keep the feelings and perception of each other as they were in our student years. I must admit that to a greater extent this is the merit of his wife. Once I started working, I always had very little time for my family. But my family has never come second to me. The wife worked too. The kids, the house, the grocery lines, she got it all. We lived and stood on our own. No one helped us with anything other than a kind word.

My daughter is 21 years old, she is studying in St. Petersburg, at the Palmiro Togliatti University, studying economics and finance. Son - 25. He graduated from the same institute, studied management, finance, economics. Today he is completely independent.

I don't interfere in his affairs. My task, as I always believed, is to give children upbringing, education, and it was also important for me that they understand what decency is ...

Everyone has the right to decide for himself whether to drink or not to drink, to smoke or not to smoke. But to be addicted to bad habits, I think, is unworthy... I tried to smoke once, at the age of seventeen - on a bet, in a puff. It was the first and last time. And as far as I remember, there has always been a negative attitude towards alcohol. Whenever I saw a person lose his mind after drinking, I was disgusted. In my opinion, a drunk person is an insulting challenge to others. And besides, how can one work at full strength, indulging in such weaknesses and allowing them for oneself?

Do you think you have many enemies?

Rather, it can be said about those who seek to interfere with creative work in the interests of the state, the majority of the population of Russia. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of such people ...

I am not a vindictive person. This, of course, does not mean that I do not make tough decisions. These are different things, different approaches.

Origin

* Date of Birth

* Place of Birth

Novoaleksandrovka village, Bolotninsky district, Novosibirsk region.

* Citizenship

Citizen of the Russian Federation

Education

* Graduate School

Graduated from the Novosibirsk Institute of Railway Transport Engineers. Graduated in 1972. Specialty by education - railway engineer for the operation of railways.

Academy of National Economy in 1990

Family status

Has two children.

The main stages of the biography

He began his career in 1966 as a fitter at the Novosibirsk Aviation Plant.

From 1972 to 1978 he worked as a station duty officer, head of the stations of the East Siberian Railway.

In 1978 - 1984 he was deputy head of the station, head of the traffic department, deputy head of the Voronezh branch of the South-Eastern Railway, deputy head of the traffic service of the South-Eastern Railway.

From 1984 to 1994 he was deputy head of the Murmansk branch, head of the Leningrad-Finland branch of the Oktyabrskaya railway, deputy head and chief economist of the Oktyabrskaya railway, first deputy head of the railway.

In 1994 - 1997 - Deputy Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

Since 1997 - Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

During the government crisis - Acting Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

August to September 1998 - and about. Minister of Railways.

After the resignation of the Stepashin government (August 1999) - acting. First Deputy Prime Minister

September 16, 1999 appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Russian Federation - Minister of Railways of the Russian Federation.

January 10, 2000 and. Presidential Decree Vladimir Putin dismissed Nikolai Aksenenko from the post of First Deputy Prime Minister and appointed him Minister of Railways.

On May 7, 2000, in connection with the assumption of the office of President Putin, all members of the government resigned and became acting until the appointment of new ministers.

On October 19, 2001, Aksenenko was summoned to the Prosecutor General's Office, where he was charged with abuse of power.

On October 23, he issued a statement in which he assured that he would contribute in every possible way to an objective investigation and the establishment of the truth.

On October 13, 2003, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation completed the investigation and sent the criminal case against Aksenenko to court. He is accused of committing crimes under paragraph "c" of part 3 of Article 286 (abuse of official authority, committed with grave consequences), and paragraph "b" of part 3 of Article 160 (large-scale misappropriation or embezzlement) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Origin, marital status

From an interview. “We were seven brothers and six sisters. I am the youngest, thirteenth. Unfortunately, not everyone is alive... The difference between the oldest and the youngest is 24 years. The older sisters - they are now over seventy already - treated me like their son ... My father was a railway worker - an engineer, a locomotive driver ... He, by the way, did not advise me to go to college. He dissuaded me because he knew: this is a hell of a job. My wife and I met in college and have been together ever since. I was very lucky that fate brought me to her. We managed to keep the feelings and perception of each other as they were in our student years. I must admit that to a greater extent this is the merit of his wife. Once I started working, I always had very little time for my family. But my family has never been in second place for me. (Stringer, 2000)

Third party ratings, characteristics

Aksenenko, having moved to the capital, quickly figured out who to make friends with, who to bet on. I put it on Abramovich - and I was not mistaken. According to knowledgeable people, the cooperation between Aksenenko and Abramovich began in 1992. The latter then headed the small enterprise "AVK". In 1997, Abramovich was already in charge of Sibneft and, with the help of Berezovsky, established strong ties in the Kremlin. Therefore, when the question arose of the candidacy of the new Minister of Railways, Aksenenko did not have any rivals. Shortly after Nikolai Emelyanovich took over the new office, Sibneft received from the Ministry of Railways a preferential tariff for transporting oil abroad and used it, to the envy of other exporters, for a year.

Minister Aksenenko turned out to be a good manager. He has long considered his department to be a commercial enterprise that must develop, make a profit and master new types of business. One problem - he can not learn to distinguish his wool from the state. Having become a minister, Nikolai Yemelyanovich immediately streamlined the payments for transportation, 70 percent of which before him was carried out by barter. He achieved the participation of forwarding companies in the transportation process and the right to provide them with preferential rates. As a result, the Ministry of Railways got rid of payments in kind, and firms began to receive real profits due to benefits.

The minister reacts painfully to attacks from outside, and in order to have as few of them as possible, he pays for powerful PR in the media and throws dust in the eyes of taxpayers and the government with the help of all kinds of actions. He installs turnstiles at Moscow railway stations, declaring war on hares, sends hundreds of passenger cars to Chechnya for refugees to live in, and launches comfortable electric trains every six months. (Stringer, 2000)

A large number of journalistic investigations are devoted to Aksenenko's stay in the ministerial chair. Among them are scams with Pension Fund bills, the sale of gasoline to Chechnya from the stocks of OZhD, the purchase of rails in Japan through an offshore company in Cyprus ... But the main investigations are devoted to Eastern Fertiliger Trading, whose representative in Russia is the son of the minister Rustam, and CJSC PFG " Evrosib", which is headed by the minister's nephew Sergei. Both firms were mainly engaged in the transportation of goods and enjoyed excessive benefits. For example, Aksenenko allowed them to pay with "money surrogates" rather than "live" money, made discounts from approved tariffs. For a long time, there was a regulation that required all foreign transportation to be processed only in Transrail. ("Russia", 2000)

"Aksenenko case"

On October 9, 2001, a criminal case on the facts of abuses in the Ministry of Railways was initiated. On October 19, Nikolai Aksenenko was summoned to the Prosecutor General's Office, where he was charged with abuse of power. The head of the Ministry of Railways refused to sign the decision to bring charges, as well as an undertaking not to leave the place. Nevertheless, the prosecutor's office is convinced that this does not change the case - he remains the accused. In addition, the prosecutor's office claims that they are already studying the materials of the audit of the Accounts Chamber, which revealed several violations on the part of the leadership of the Ministry of Railways: illegal spending of 700 billion rubles earmarked for "Northern delivery" in 1997, non-payment of taxes in the amount of 11 billion rubles for 2000 and the purchase of apartments by persons who have nothing to do with the Ministry of Railways. "Aksenenko's refusal to sign the decision to charge him and not to leave does not change his status as a defendant in this criminal case," the Prosecutor General's Office stated. After a visit to the State Enterprise, Aksenenko organized a press conference, at which he said that the charges were related to the economic activities of the Ministry of Railways - the only agency in Russia that combines the functions of an economic entity and a state regulatory body.

Aksenenko's position is very serious. According to well-known lawyer Yuri Korinevsky, who defended the former head of Roskomdragmet Yevgeny Bychkov in the Golden ADA case, "the investigator can now remove the accused from his post under the sanction of Ustinov or his deputy." And a representative of the presidential administration told Vedomosti that "the situation when the ministry is headed by a person against whom a criminal investigation is being carried out is not normal." The Kremlin is clearly not going to defend the unfortunate minister. "Everyone is equal before the law," Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the presidential administration, said on October 22, adding that Aksenenko "appeals to the executive branch" in vain, trying to avoid the prosecutor's attention.

Nikolai Aksenenko, the head of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Federation, "is sure that the groundlessness" of the accusations against him will be established in the near future. The minister’s statement, received on October 23, says: “I will do my best to promote an objective investigation, to establish the truth. The collegium of the ministry and I, as its chairman, will continue the line of maintaining the integrity of the industry, carrying out a structural reform that has received the approval of the government and the Presidium of the State Council of the Russian Federation. I believe that Until the end of the investigation, this statement will be the last on my part, and I hope that other responsible persons will be guided by the law, common sense and generally accepted ethics, which do not allow drawing premature conclusions.

Official statement of the PRESS SERVICE of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Federation

"Some media have spread provocative information that Russian Minister of Railways Nikolai Aksenenko has resigned.

In this regard, the Center for Public Relations "Trans-Media" of the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Federation states: the Minister of Railways of Russia, Nikolai Aksenenko, has not resigned and is not going to resign. Minister of Railways N. Aksenenko was indeed invited to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation as a witness and answered questions related to the economic activities of the ministry.

Unfortunately, until now, some departments that show a constant interest in this topic either do not know or have forgotten that the Ministry of Railways of the Russian Federation is the only ministry that combines state and economic functions. This is recorded in the Regulations on the Ministry of Railways of Russia, approved by the government of the Russian Federation back in 1996. The ongoing reform of the Ministry of Railways of Russia, in particular, is aimed at eliminating this dual function and preserving the Russian railways as a single system under state control.

Apparently, someone really does not want the reform of the Ministry of Railways, supported by the President of Russia and already approved by the Government of the Russian Federation, to be implemented.

Additional Information

Hobbies: loves to listen to classical music, especially opera. Favorite writers, philosophers - Berdyaev, Rozanov, Bunin, Tolstoy, Turgenev.

I do not smoke. He has a negative attitude towards alcohol: “every time I saw a person lose his mind after drinking, I was disgusted. In my opinion, a drunk person is an insulting challenge to others. And besides, how can you work at full strength, indulging in such weaknesses and allowing them for yourself?

www.vedomosti.ru

If fate had turned out a little differently, the former Minister of Communications and Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Aksenenko would have been president. A tough and uncompromising leader - this is how his former subordinates and the Kremlin authorities characterize him. On Wednesday in Munich, he died of leukemia.

Aksenenko was born in 1949 in a village near the Ob, halfway between Novosibirsk and Tomsk. In the family, he was the youngest, the 11th child. His father worked as a locomotive driver, and Nicholas decided to continue the dynasty. After graduating from school, he worked as a mechanic at a factory and studied to be a railway engineer.

For a little over 20 years, Aksenenko has grown to the position of Deputy Minister of Railways: from the duty officer at one of the Siberian stations to the deputy head of the Oktyabrskaya road, from where in 1994 he was called to Moscow. In 1997, he headed the Ministry of Railways and managed to work with six prime ministers.

Five minutes to the president

The political career of Nikolai Aksenenko was short-lived, but stormy. In May 1999, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in the government of Yevgeny Primakov. With this nomination, President Boris Yeltsin began to pave the way for the removal of the prime minister. Yeltsin, according to government officials, stimulated Aksyonenko's political ambitions by implying that in time he would transfer full power to him. Aksenenko was one of the presidential candidates, confirms a source close to the Kremlin, who knows both the president himself and Aksenenko well. “Yeltsin considered him as a candidate, it was his personal project, he sympathized with him,” he says.

After Primakov's resignation, Yeltsin promised the then speaker of the Duma, Gennady Seleznev, to send a presentation against Aksenenko as a candidate for prime minister. Seleznev informed the deputies about this. But Anatoly Chubais, chairman of the board of RAO UES, managed to convince Yeltsin in a matter of hours, and a package for Sergei Stepashin came to the Duma. In the new cabinet, Aksenenko, supported by the head of the administration Alexander Voloshin, had a weight almost equal to that of the prime minister. During the formation of the government, he, together with Voloshin, came to Yeltsin, who was resting in Bocharov Creek, before Stepashin. To the surprise of the latter, much has already been decided. Yeltsin refused to appoint Mikhail Zadornov as Minister of Finance to Stepashin, preference was given to the then Deputy Minister of Finance Mikhail Kasyanov.

"Railroader"

There were legends about the temperament of the Siberian Aksenenko. In the government, he headed the commission on operational issues and could scold any minister. A former senior official who knew Aksenenko well, characterizes him as follows: "A strong business executive, of the Soviet type." “You can’t call him a modern leader, but in reality he was fighting, very tough, army,” he says.

Aksenenko held on independently. He did not go to the Duma when the deputies wanted to hear information about the financial relations of the Ministry of Railways with the Swiss company Transrail. With such an energetic subordinate, Stepashin did not last even three months. Announcing his resignation to members of the government, he openly made it clear that he owed this not least to “Nikolai Yemelyanovich”.

But Yeltsin found another successor, Vladimir Putin. In August 1999, Putin became prime minister, and Aksenenko became first deputy prime minister. But he knew how to take a hit and "calmly survived it," says a Vedomosti source close to the Kremlin. “He was a strong man, jumped over grudges and continued to plow,” he recalls.

Under the new favorite, Aksenenko remained self-willed and independent. Taking advantage of the prime minister's absence, in September 1999 Aksenenko signed an order for the resignation of the president of Transneft, Dmitry Savelyev, a protege of Sergei Kiriyenko. A few hours later, OMON officers threw Savelyev out of the Transneft office. When asked by Vedomosti why he removed Savelyev behind Putin's back, without waiting for his return from New Zealand, Aksenenko then said: "I had the right - I acted as prime minister."

Aksenenko did not stop and Putin-president. In January 2000, an accident occurred on the Oktyabrskaya railway, which was headed by Alexander Kuznetsov. According to a White House official, he had a good relationship with Putin since the latter's tenure at the St. Petersburg mayor's office. “Although Putin was acting president at the time, he was still weak in the apparatus and could not defend [Kuznetsov], whose dismissal Aksenenko demanded,” says a White House official. “It was all the more humiliating that with his signature, Putin fired a man whom he thought would eventually be put at the head of the Ministry of Railways.” It was not possible to contact Morozov, who is now working at Severstaltrans.

In the government of Kasyanov, Aksenenko could not find a vice-premier post, and in 2000 he remained "in charge of the iron." “He calmly reacted to Kasyanov's question, who does he want to remain - a minister or a deputy prime minister? - says a source close to the Kremlin, - and said that the minister, because it is my native.

business minister

Aksenenko the businessman attracted no less attention than Aksenenko the politician. As head of the IPU, he pursued a discount policy for which he was criticized. In 2001, the Ministry of Economic Development conducted a study showing that various companies received from the Ministry of Railways discounts of 30-80% on the marginal rates of import tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Development estimated the total amount of discounts at $2 billion a year. Aksenenko himself in 2001 stated that since 1997, when he took over the ministry, he managed to bring the state more than 400 billion rubles. additional income “due to the soft tariff policy”. In an interview with Vedomosti, he called the assessment of the Ministry of Economic Development a “terry lie”. But later, Aksenenko's successor, Gennady Fadeev, estimated the amount of discounts from the Ministry of Railways at 54 billion rubles. in year.

Since 2001, the government has launched a tariff unification program. The Ministry of Railways was against it, and Aksenenko himself constantly postponed the implementation of this program and announced multibillion-dollar losses of the Ministry of Railways, trying to leave the Ministry of Railways "a state within a state," his colleagues recall.

In the spring of 2001, Stepashin became head of the Accounts Chamber, and Aksenenko's work came under the scrutiny of auditors. Stepashin's adviser, Vladislav Ignatov, denies that the Ministry of Railways was biased and that Stepashin settled scores with Aksenenko. The auditors argued that a large part of the profits of the railways was concentrated in various funds of the Ministry of Railways, from which non-targeted operations were carried out. The MPS bought apartments for its employees for $400,000-800,000. The auditors called the investment of the MPS 4.3 billion rubles unreasonable. in the construction of the global backbone communication network Transtelecom. The auditors accused Aksenenko of choosing too expensive contracts, which went to the Baltic Construction Company. The accounts in Transcreditbank, bought by the Ministry of Railways, concealed the profits of all participants in the chains and schemes for these contracts, the auditors claimed. According to the auditors, 100% of depreciation deductions of enterprises in the industry were “illegally consolidated” on accounts in the same bank, which in 2000 amounted to 52.8 billion rubles.

The name of Aksenenko was associated with the Transrail company established by the Ministry of Railways in 1989. Until the end of the 90s, she was the main freight forwarder of the Omministry. But, according to Aksenenko's former colleagues at the Ministry of Railways, he himself was never a co-owner of Transrail. “When he became the head of the Ministry of Railways, he immediately canceled discounts for him, so it is simply illogical to associate him with Transrail,” says one of Vedomosti's interlocutors.

“Aksenenko was not involved in business at all, it was the prerogative of his son Rustam, whom he, of course, supported, most often in vain,” says Aksenenko's colleague from the Ministry of Railways. Rustam Aksenenko owned several transport assets at once, the largest of which are BaltTransService (now owned by Severstal-Trans) and the forwarding company Iriston, where Maxim Liksutov and Sergey Glinka were his partners. Later they broke up, and Glinka and Liksutov moved to Transgroup, which they created together with Iskander Makhmudov. And Aksenenko Jr., who now lives in Switzerland, has left nothing significant in our country, two sources familiar with him say.

End of the road

“And then criminal cases arose,” says a Vedomosti source close to the Kremlin. The Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case against Aksenenko in October 2001, three months before his resignation from the post of minister. The materials of the Accounts Chamber formed the basis. The prosecutor's office accused him of exceeding official authority (Article 286 of the Criminal Code) and misappropriating entrusted funds (Article 160 of the Criminal Code), which consisted in expanding the staff of the central office of the ministry by 250 people, paying bonuses and inflated travel expenses to employees of this apparatus, which took 70 million rub. They also tried to accuse Aksenenko of exceeding his authority in creating off-budget funds for education and healthcare, but these charges did not appear in the final version. In 2003 the case was transferred to the Moscow City Court.

“They arose for a reason, of course, the security forces fought with him. Apparently, they believed that he was still a candidate, ”continues the interlocutor of Vedomosti. In his opinion, Putin had nothing to do with this: “To dismiss a person, the President does not need to start criminal cases.”

Kasyanov and Chubais publicly stood up for the disgraced official. “The materials I've seen do not confirm abuses,” Kasyanov said in the fall of 2001. By the time Aksenenko fell ill, the accusations were for excessive spending, mostly on charity, says a source close to the Kremlin. “It didn’t seem to be very legal from a legal point of view, and from the point of view of the goals, there was nothing criminal,” he says.

The Prosecutor General's Office withdrew a written undertaking not to leave Aksenenko, and in 2002 he went to Germany for treatment. The court did not begin to consider the case until Aksenenko's death. “Political ambitions were already killed, and Aksenenko was released abroad, as it turned out, to die,” a White House official said. On July 20, 2005, Aksenenko died after undergoing two surgeries, one of which was his son Rustam.

“The tragedy of Aksenenko was that with his Siberian childishness he created enemies for himself from scratch,” says one of Aksenenko's former deputies. “With just his phrase “I care about everything in the government,” he turned half of the White House against him.” “Nikolai Emelyanovich was a complex but strong personality,” adds Anna Belova, Vice President of Russian Railways. “Of course, he did a lot, which raises questions, but it was he who laid the foundation for today's Russian Railways.”

Alexander BECKER, Elena MAZNEVA, Ekaterina DERBILOVA