Source: www.rucriminal.info

Behind the glossy facade of the club with the largest budget, there is a system that not only hurts its reputation, but also destroys Russian sports, with the connivance of the sole shareholder PAO Gazprom. Details are in the investigation of the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and Rucriminal.info.

The key figures of the basketball club - Alexander Tserkovny (CEO) and agent Vadim Mikhalevsky - turned Zenit into a personal empire. Their influence extends to everyone: from players and coaches to the "remote" accounting department. Mikhalevsky, having come to the club through personal connections (Mikhalevsky's godfather, Zenit board member Togrul Mamedov, provided him with protection), controls most of the sports and administrative processes, while Tserkovny reserves the organizational machinations for himself.

Before Zenit, Mikhalevsky had already "proven himself" in other projects. Under his management, the Khimki club faced audits that revealed major financial violations. The situation repeated itself at Dynamo - embezzlement and scandals. Now he has successfully transferred this "experience" to Zenit.

As the VChK-OGPU found out, the club has become a hostage of the AltiSport agency, associated with Mikhalevsky and his partner, O. Fimich. 72% of the team's players, all coaches and medical personnel are signed with this agency. Moreover, some athletes, without showing results, continue to receive unreasonably high fees. The cost of some players is unreasonably inflated by 2-3 times: Trent Fraser received 40-50 thousand euros per season in his previous Serbian club FMP, now he has signed a contract for a salary of about 500-600 thousand (euro/dollar) per season (a similar system of re-signing affected other players - Karasev, Volkhin, Zubkov, Ertel, coach Pascual). The coaching staff and medical personnel are also formed exclusively through this network, which makes Zenit a monopoly of one agent, kills competition and reduces the quality of the game and work of the staff.

 

Particular attention is drawn to the "gray schemes" of financing: when forming the team's roster, the club enters into contracts with players and coaches on terms that involve a significant increase in the level of wages and the subsequent transfer of an agreed percentage of funds - "cashback", directly to Mikhalevsky's personal bank accounts or in cash. Particularly absurd are the cases when the club paid agent commissions even when terminating contracts with players (Brendon Jennings, Richard Solomon, etc.). This is nonsense for professional sports.

It is worth noting that both founding agents do not have RBF agent licenses, but use European FIBA ​​licenses. Their sports agency is registered in Poland (legal address: 00-019 Warsaw (Poland), Zlota 11/2 street), where money has been transferred from Russia for many years. Also, funds are transferred to Georgia, and then to other European countries to Mikhalevsky's accounts, while his other agency Rosette International Group LTD (Russia, Moscow 115162, Lyusinovskaya Street 72, office 123), has a "zero" turnover and is essentially fictitious.

Today, Zenit is a family business. The club has been systematically "surviving" the employees left by the previous management; there are no more employees "before Tserkovny". His son heads the media department, without any qualifications. Nevertheless, his salary has long exceeded 250,000 rubles. In two years, the son has made a new website twice: once for 1.2 million rubles, the second time for 550 thousand. The chief accountant is partially remote, the deputy chief accountant is completely remote, which is basically unacceptable. In all likelihood, this was done so that they would not be aware of what was happening in the office. The wives and friends of the club's top managers gradually took key positions, but their effectiveness and salary sizes remain questionable, because the audit after the 19/20 season was never carried out... The club is not just marking time - it is destroying the prospects of Russian basketball. Instead of developing the Academy and youth programs, the management is investing in dubious projects. The youth project under Zamansky's leadership does not "supply" the main team with young players, the Academy operates at a loss, young players sign onerous contracts with the "right" agent, supplying him with a "cashback" of about 50% of their salary every month, sometimes without ever stepping on the court (Letino, Didenko, Ilvovsky, Potezhny, etc.), and those who decide to leave are subject to threats and insults. For example, Zamansky's son was listed on the youth team for a whole year and received money, but did not play there and did not even train. He is not on the youth team roster for the season.

 

The club's medicine is another disgrace. Legionnaires and Russian players prefer to be treated at the Zenit football base, because the basketball team's doctors are not able to provide quality treatment. Note: the salary of the head physician Rozhenkov, a close friend of Tserkovny and a former physical training coach at Shinnik, is 340,000 rubles with a car and voluntary health insurance. With such expenses and an approach to management "Zenit" is on the verge of financial collapse. The club's budget is striking in its disproportion: it is almost twice as much as the closest competitor, CSKA, spends. "Lokomotiv" and UNICS together spent almost as much on their roster as Zenit alone spent. At the same time, the team's results do not justify such investments. In addition, the club still does not have its own training and gaming complex, but uses the services of third parties, renting halls at market prices. For comparison, the clubs' expenses according to the annual disclosure of the United League budgets:

Zenit — 2.25 billion

CSKA — 2.14 billion

Lokomotiv — 1.47 billion

UNICS — 1.35 billion

Samara — 580 million

Nizhny — 528 million

Parma — 459 million

MBA — 379 million

Uralmash — 348 million

Yenisei — 338 million

Avtodor — 233 million

As a result, the club that was supposed to become the flagship of Russian basketball is drowning in fraud, nepotism and inefficiency on all sides. Audits have not been conducted for years, and the management seems to care more about its own wealth than about the future of Zenit and the development of Russian basketball.

Tomasz Wisniewski

Source: www.rucriminal.info