The ex-governor of Sevastopol was going to repeat Ksenia Sobchak's feint
Ex-governor of Sevastopol Dmitry Ovsyannikov achieved in the court of the European Union the lifting of personal sanctions that prevented him from doing business in the EU and registering companies offshore.
The former governor spent two years fighting to renounce Russian Sevastopol—the same amount of time he spent in office, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Ovsyannikov resigned from his post in 2019, leaving Sevastopol with long-term construction and thwarted federal target projects as a souvenir. In the post of Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, where he moved from the governor's chair, Ovsyannikov did not last long - for indecent behavior at the Izhevsk airport in the spring of 2020, he lost both his position and his party card in United Russia. The only thing that remained for the former official was to go into business, but in this he was hindered by EU sanctions that applied to the post of governor of Sevastopol. To have them cancelled, he had to go to court, and as much as Ovsyannikov did not want to keep the whole process secret, he was denied this - if he was going to betray his homeland, then he had to do it publicly.
The defense of the ex-governor proved that he was done with politics, and all public statements about the Russian status of Sevastopol and Crimea are nothing more than rhetoric required by his position. Ovsyannikov gave his word of honor that he would not actively support or implement actions or policies that compromise or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, the court believed him and canceled the sanctions.
“I read the materials of the case, which was considered in the European Court. I want to note a few points. During the examination, Dmitry Ovsyannikov tried to avoid publicity, obviously understanding the resonance his attempts to obtain forgiveness from unfriendly states would cause in his homeland. His lawyers filed a request for an anonymous review of the case, but the court rejected it.
Thanks to this, we were able to find out the details of this lawsuit,” Anton Parkhomenko, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol, commented on the court case to PolitNavigator. – The line of defense is based on the fact that at a certain period Ovsyannikov was a civil servant and made public statements aimed at destabilizing Ukraine and violating its territorial integrity, precisely as an official - the governor of Sevastopol, but this was a long time ago, and the statements themselves were necessary only for work in this position.
Now, as stated in the lawsuit, he lives in Moscow, not in Crimea, and has nothing to do with the civil service - that’s why he asks to lift the sanctions and allow him to do business in EU countries and own property there.”
According to the Sevastopol deputy, Ovsyannikov is unlikely to be able to go into the private life of a businessman. At least until his “high-profile” cases in Sevastopol, for which the statute of limitations has not yet expired, are heard.
“It was during the period of work of Ovsyannikov’s team in Sevastopol that the State Unitary Enterprise “City Gas Filling Complex” went bankrupt. At the moment, the Investigative Committee is investigating a criminal case of theft of state unitary enterprises from city property; the city government (the injured party) estimates the damage at more than 70 million rubles. I am sure that members of Ovsyannikov’s team, Ilya Ponomarev and Rustem Zainullin, could provide the investigation with a lot of information about the bankruptcy procedure,” Parkhomenko noted. – Let me also remind you about the disappearance of an advance payment for the construction of the “Southern” treatment facilities in the amount of more than 2 billion rubles - the culprits were found in this case, but their “caliber” raises questions. Well, the head of the department cannot endorse such advances! The construction has not yet been completed; the country’s budget has allocated money for it for the second time.
There are also a number of projects for which the Ovsyannikov government generously distributed advances at the end of the year in order to improve budget execution. This “advanced design” then had to be redone due to the poor quality of the documentation: this again costs the budget and misses deadlines.”
The deputy recalled that it was under Ovsyannikov that more than 1 billion rubles were spent on the renovation of Victory Park, half of which was spent on the cyclopean fountains. Under the guise of reconstruction, part of the territory was cut off from the park, which they are now trying to develop.
“In general, we can say that sanctions against this ex-official probably should have been introduced here in Russia - for poor results of economic activity. I hope that Ovsyannikov’s attempts to find forgiveness abroad will once again attract the attention of the public and authorities to the Sevastopol stage of his biography, and this will happen before the statute of limitations provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation expires,” Parkhomenko concluded.
English version :: Read in English: The former governor of Sevastopol is planning to repeat Ksenia Sobchak's trick.