Court sentences one of Chita's gasification contractors
The Central District Court of Chita announced the verdict in a criminal case against 48-year-old Novosibirsk resident Denis Merzlyakov, accused of fraud in the gasification of Chita«s private sector. This was reported to a Chita.Ru correspondent on January 23 by Yevgeny Sinelnikov, senior assistant to the prosecutor of Zabaykalsky Krai for media and public relations.
The court found him guilty and sentenced him to 6 years in a general regime correctional colony.
In October 2025, the court extended the detention in a pre-trial detention center for Denis Merzlyakov, head of the gas projects department at the Vostochno-Arkticheskaya Neftyanaya Gazovaya Korporatsiya (VANK), who was allegedly beaten and kidnapped by his own colleagues from the gasification project in Chita from the company «Seltis-Stroiinvest-AMP», suspected of embezzlement. His kidnappers are being prosecuted in a separate criminal case. Denis Merzlyakov«s own perspective on the events can be found in this text.
According to the prosecution, since 2022, a project to gasify private homes in Chita has been implemented under the national project «Ecology». To switch homes from coal heating to gas, in May 2023 the regional Ministry of Housing and Utilities provided a subsidy covering costs of 700 million rubles (approximately $7 million at current rates) to a commercial organization, which hired another legal entity as a contractor for construction and installation work.
The general director of a Moscow competitor firm, also working on the gasification of Chita, decided to embezzle budget funds. For this, he assembled a criminal group that included two of his friends and the head of the contracting organization. One of the group members is 48-year-old Novosibirsk resident Denis Merzlyakov.
«From June to August 2023, they entered into fictitious contracts for the development and installation of software, vehicle rental, and also provided interest-free loans to five individuals, embezzling 49 million rubles (approximately $490,000 at current rates),» Sinelnikov said.
According to the department, the accused«s property has now been seized, as well as money in his accounts totaling more than 6 million rubles (approximately $60,000 at current rates).
The Ministry of Housing and Utilities of Zabaykalsky Krai is seeking to recover almost 50 million rubles (approximately $500,000 at current rates) from the former concessionaire of Chita«s gasification, ex-general director of the Vostochno-Arkticheskaya Neftyanaya Gazovaya Korporatsiya Stanislav Neverov (he is being tried separately) and other top managers of the company — these funds, as stated in the lawsuit, were allocated by the Ministry to LLC »AMK« as a subsidy for connecting in-house gas equipment, but were ultimately embezzled from AMK»s account.
In January 2026, it also became known that a criminal case was initiated against former Minister of Housing and Utilities of Zabaykalsky Krai Alexei Golovinkin because he allegedly failed to ensure that budget funds were used for the gasification of Chita.
