The CEO of the Pobeda low-cost airline, who fled from Russia after the start of the special operation, Andrey Kalmykov, who had previously been fired of his own free will, continues to work for the company. This information was published by the Nezygar Telegram channel.
According to the information provided by him, the low-cost airline “signed a civil law contract with Kalmykov for 2.4 million rubles. per month. “He advises the company on commercial matters,” adds the channel. It is clarified that in this way, Pobeda has already made a decision to cancel flights to the southern airports of Russia until the end of the summer schedule of 2022, as well as a decision to suspend the operation of part of the fleet and send part of the personnel to idle time.
via videoconference, the former CEO himself has a residence permit in Turkey and lives in his apartment in Antalya. In addition, Kalmykov is still connected to the corporate program for employees and can use free tickets from airlines that are part of the Aeroflot group,” the source adds.
Recall that the ex-general director of Pobeda became the hero of scandals even in the “fat years”. Back in 2012, in connection with the bankruptcy of Lanta Tour, former employees of Lanta addressed an open letter to the authorities, in which they stated that they were unable to compete with the family tourism business of the then commercial director of Aeroflot, Andrei Kalmykov, who is the founder of the tour operator “Sunrise”. According to the authors of the letter, it is no longer a secret that this then-top manager of the national air carrier, controlling the Sunrise travel holding, successfully “clears the field” for him from competitors. Those who wrote the letter were sure that Kalmykov was simply disconnecting other tour operators from the Aeroflot air ticket booking system to please his company. As a result, Lanta was left without working capital, which caused the collapse of the company, which affected thousands of tourists.
In December 2012 Andrey Kalmykov was dismissed from the post of Deputy Director for Commerce of Aeroflot, which allows him to control the distribution of seats on the carrier's flights among customers – tour operators. And although at that time it didn’t come to a criminal case, Kalmykov’s position became very precarious: the tourist market was expecting the start of criminal prosecution against the deputy director of Aeroflot at any moment.
cases against Kalmykov were told to the press by the official representative of the Investigative Committee of Russia (TFR) Vladimir Markin. Immediately after that, searches and seizures of documents began in Aeroflot and Sunrise.
Against the First Deputy General Director of Aeroflot for Production, namely, Kalmykov began to hold such a position since December 2012, the case was initiated by the Moscow Interregional Investigation Department for Transport of the ICR on the grounds of a crime under Part 1 of Art. 201 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – “Abuse of authority”. According to Vladimir Markin, investigators have already established several facts when Kalmykov, being Aeroflot’s deputy general director for commerce, lobbied for the interests of companies that were affiliated with his close relatives and provided them with clear advantages when concluding contracts with the national carrier, thereby causing significant harm to the rights and the interests of the airline and the state as the main shareholder of the airline on an especially large scale.
So, for example, in 2011, with the participation of Andrey Kalmykov, Aeroflot signed an agreement with Sunrise Tour Group on the sale of 85,866 seats, while the price of one seat was $221. At the same time, a comparable commercial offer was received from the TEZ-tour tour operator to purchase 46,000 seats on the same route at a price of $320 per seat. The rejection of the TEZ-tour offer resulted in Aeroflot not receiving a profit in the amount of $4,583 million, or 131.1 million rubles. At the same time, the auditors considered that the total amount of damage to the state under the above transaction amounted to 78,236 million rubles. And the Accounts Chamber established that Sunrise Tour Group during the period of concluding transactions with Aeroflot in 2010-2011 belonged to SunriseAsset Management LLC, the founders of which were Andrey Kalmykov's wife and his mother.
When In this case, complaints from TEZ-tour about the corresponding “distribution” have been received before. “After Andrey Kalmykov joined Aeroflot, the situation changed in a negative direction. Despite the fact that we were among the first to support the idea of electronic trading and took an active part in them, Aeroflot unilaterally, without any reason, began to change the results of the won lots and the prices for them. Our applications for air transportation are rejected without any explanation, at the same time, contracts are concluded with selected tour operators, such as Pegas Touristik, Sunrise, which, according to our information, are cheaper than our offers, and do not represent commercial benefits … “, – then Vladimir Kaganer, then the general director of the TEZ Tour, wrote to President Dmitry Medvedev.
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