Mikhail Men
15 January 2021.
A court in Moscow has extended pretrial restrictions until 28 February 2021, for the auditor of the Account Chamber, Mikhail Men, charged with embezzling $9.6 million from Ivanovo region where he was governor from 2005 to 2013. The money was allocated in 2011 to support small businesses.
Men recruited Pavel Konkov (who succeeded him later) to borrow 1 billion rubles ($13.2 million) from the Finance Ministry. Bulk of the money was then transferred through a public foundation to a subsidiary of “Prodo,” one of Russia’s biggest meat-processing companies which would nor qualify as a small business. Governor Men was allegedly in cahoots with the subsidiary’s managing director and a senior executive at Prodo. According to Meduza, in the summer of 2020, Prodo suddenly and unexpectedly repaid the Ivanovo regional government’s 700-million-rouble loan to its subsidiary. But other sources report that the money disappeared from the subsidiary of Prodo.
Men’s successor as governor of Ivanovo, Pavel Konkov, was also arrested last year for embezzlement of funds, and investigations are still ongoing. Managing Director of the Ivanovo Broiler enterprise, subsidiary of Prodo, Dmitry Grishin was also arrested.
Men’s father was one of the great protagonists of Russia’s exit from communism, assassinated in 1990.
Michael Men was a music producer. He released an album called Made In Moscow. He was Minister of Construction Industry, Housing and Utilities Sector from 2013 to 2018. He was as a deputy governor of Moscow Oblast from 1999 to 2002 and a deputy mayor of Moscow from 2002 to 2005.
Sources: Asia News, Rapsi News, Medusa.io
