Underground Battle Halts Ufa 'Second City' Sewage Construction

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has again suspended the selection of a contractor for the first stage of water supply and sewerage facilities in Zaufimye. The initial contract price is impressive — 8.018 billion rubles (about $89.1 million at current rates). The lowest bid — 6 billion rubles (about $66.7 million at current rates) — was submitted by participant No. 4. But the winner has not been announced, as the final protocol is not yet ready.

The winner will be announced once all stages are completed, but for now the tender is being torn apart by numerous complaints. Back in June, a Moscow firm, JSC Donaerodorstroy, complained that the documents did not break down the cost of each type of work separately. This made it difficult to understand what needed to be done and what volumes to budget for.

On 18 July, the Ufa company VT Burgeoinzhiniring and Simferopol-based Master-Yug appealed to the FAS. Both participants disagreed with how the commission evaluated their bids during the re-review. On the 20th, another Moscow firm, VT Stroyinzhiniring, filed a complaint.

Master-Yug (likely bidder No. 4) pointed to a paradoxical situation: during the first review of its bid, the firm received the maximum 40 points under the experience criterion. Upon re-review, it received only 24. The commission considered only four of the submitted contracts but never explained which contracts had been rejected and why. At the same time, Master-Yug offered the best price and, in the company’s view, should have won had the evaluation been correct.

«In complying with the FAS Russia order to admit our bid after it was illegally excluded, the commission nevertheless went beyond that order, re-evaluated the bid and rejected contracts that it had previously accepted without objection,» the firm’s complaint says.

Burgeoinzhiniring faces a similar situation: the Ufa company’s bid was rejected the first time; upon re-review it scored 0 points for financial resources and experience, although it had previously received the maximum. The bidder appended eight contracts that met the procurement conditions, but the commission ignored them.

VT Stroyinzhiniring says the tender commission rejected its bid but allegedly illegally allowed several companies to participate that did not have the appropriate self-regulatory organization (SRO) level to work on government contracts of this scale. They also failed to confirm experience in building similar facilities.

Let us recall that the tender for the construction of the networks was announced at the end of May 2026. The customer is the Capital Construction Directorate of Bashkiria. As part of the first stage, water supply and sewerage facilities are to be built in Zaufimye — a project for which the republic received 8.5 billion rubles (about $94.4 million at current rates) in infrastructure credit.

The tender drew as many as eight bids. Five complaints have already been sent to the FAS. Some were found justified; violations were discovered during inspections, and the bids were ordered to be re-reviewed. The re-review was conducted, but the result did not satisfy the new complainants.

The second tender — for the construction of facilities worth 4.64 billion rubles (about $51.6 million at current rates), with a total of 12 billion rubles (about $133.3 million at current rates) budgeted across two stages — was also suspended following complaints from Energostroy and Burgeoinzhiniring. The FAS upheld the complaints and ordered the protocols to be annulled. The outcome of the second stage, like the first, remains in question.

If the violations are confirmed, the FAS will issue an order to eliminate them, which could in effect cancel the tender. The Zaufimye project, designed to provide water supply to the growing residential areas of Ufa, risks yet another delay. Meanwhile, the procurement saga continues, and the name of the winning company remains a secret — the «wars» continue, including over building houses above that very sewer line.

The lands of Zaufimye, where the water supply is being routed, are the subject of an arbitration and court «battle». The matter is that back in 2024, the Ufa mayor’s office announced a tender for the right to comprehensively develop 156.9 hectares in the area of the village of Yelkibayevo. At stake were investments of at least 207 billion rubles (about $2.3 billion at current rates) and the construction of up to 1.7 million square meters of housing, including 50-story buildings. At the time, experts spoke of the actual emergence of a full-fledged city near Ufa.

The winner was LLC «Specialized Developer «Vostokinvestproekt»». 51% of this company belongs to the construction empire ISK, headed by Ufa City Council chairman Marat Vasimov. 49% belongs to LLC «SD «PSK Vostochny»», where several well-known figures surfaced: city council deputy Andrei Noskov, former deputy mayor Oleg Filippov, and businesswoman Victoria Tarasova.

However, competitors filed a complaint. During the proceedings, it emerged that Vostokinvestproekt had been created three weeks before the tender, and the bid was submitted just three days after its creation. After reviewing the materials, the prosecutor’s office suspected something was off: the tender requirements could allegedly have been written for a specific developer.

The case went to arbitration, and the regional FAS froze the tender. At the same time, Chelyabinsk-based LLC Gornye Razrabotki obtained a court injunction barring the tender until the proceedings were completed.

No final verdict has been reached yet, and the «battle» over construction, both above ground and underground, continues.