Director who saved Ufa plant shot dead

In 2004, the director of one of Ufa«s largest enterprises was shot dead. Under his leadership, the Bashkir Electronic Telecommunications Association (BETO) recovered after a difficult start to the 1990s, but a bullet ended the life and career of a successful manager. Why he was killed — in the UFA1.RU section »Secrets of the Cemeteries«.

From Sweden with love

Vladimir Gavrilov is buried next to his father at Ufa«s Southern Cemetery. On the »Memory of the People« portal, the elder Gavrilov is listed as a rifle regiment commander who was awarded the Order of Glory and a medal for bravery during the Great Patriotic War. According to award documents, he killed 21 fascists and captured several others.

Lev Gavrilov returned from the war as a senior sergeant. He lived in a wooden house near the fire station on Oktyabrskoy Revolyutsii Street and raised children. His son Vladimir also distinguished himself with feats, but these came in the 1990s, when he had to save one of the city«s main plants, now known as BETO.

The enterprise owed its origin to the Ericsson name. The head of the famous Swedish «telephone» dynasty received permission from the Russian emperor in 1887 to create a factory in St. Petersburg. The building constructed on Helsingfors Street marked the beginning of the Ufa plant«s history.

After the 1917 revolution, the Council of People«s Commissars of the RSFSR ordered the nationalization of the Swedish company»s property, and the name was changed to «Krasnaya Zarya» (Red Dawn). The telephoneization process spread across the country, including Bashkiria, whose capital worked closely with the «new» plant.

Before the Great Patriotic War, the St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) enterprise was partially evacuated to Ufa. Shortly afterward, it became independent, was classified as a defense plant, and was assigned number 697. A branch of the Radioelectronics Technical School was also established there.

During the war years, the plant produced field telephones, relays, headquarters and individual switchboards, and later switched to civilian products. In the 1960s, the enterprise developed telephone exchanges, switchboards, and even security alarm sensors, becoming known as the Ufa Telephone Equipment Plant.

In the 1970s, in addition to telephones, the plant began mass-producing electric hair curlers, children«s electronic games, dryers, and ashtrays. New technologies were introduced, and an automated management system was implemented. In 1988, under the name »Ufa Switching Equipment Plant,« it joined the Kirov Production Association.

Three buildings stood on Mendeleeva Street. At the time, there was a joke that if an enemy penetrated the plant«s confusing corridors, there was no need to worry: they still wouldn»t find their way out. Seriously, workers had reason to be cheerful: the enterprise was growing, salaries were decent, sanatorium vouchers were provided, benefits for trips to Crimea, and children were sent to pioneer camps for the summer.

However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, things changed. Gradually, many experienced employees began to leave the plant, and Vladimir Gavrilov was among the first. The most perceptive realized that the departure of such a man meant the good times were over and dark days lay ahead.

«A man of honor and word»

Gavrilov had worked at the plant since 1967, rising from apprentice machine operator and design engineer to assembly shop chief and deputy director for production. After his wife gave birth to their second child, he exchanged his living space on Oktyabrskoy Revolyutsii for an apartment in a panel building on Mendeleeva — closer to the enterprise.

«Father was a model communist and kept his party card even after the collapse of the USSR,» Gavrilov«s son Igor told UFA1.RU. »He said: «If the party made mistakes, they were my mistakes too. I cannot simply renounce it.» He worked at the plant all his life, except when he was forced to leave because another person was appointed director against the opinion of many employees.«

In 1991, the enterprise was transformed from a state enterprise into a joint-stock company, and Yuri Sharipov became president of the concern. Gavrilov was sent to head Bashkiria«s State Committee for Property Management. According to his son, he took the departure from the plant hard, but approached his new job with great responsibility.

«He was responsible for all the republic»s property but drove an ordinary Lada sedan,« Gavrilov»s son noted in a conversation with UFA1.RU. «In such a position, one could quickly become wealthy, but father wasn»t that kind of person. Threats didn«t affect him either. Sometimes people even came to our home, trying to persuade him to give away some property illegally. They were very serious, and he swore at them so colorfully that we all shrank against the walls: »Now they«ll kill us.» But father wasn«t timid — it must have come from his grandfather,» recalls the younger Gavrilov.

Meanwhile, things were not going well at the plant. Workers flooded the prosecutor«s office with complaints about months of unpaid wages. When an inspection determined Yuri Sharipov»s earnings, he was accused of abusing his official position. By decision of the board of directors, he received 5% of balance-sheet profit — in 1993 alone, as Kommersant wrote, that amounted to 260 million rubles.

However, Sharipov, as a member of the joint-stock company, could not be considered an official, so the charges were dropped. But in 1995, he was accused of embezzlement. According to law enforcement, the concern president received those 5% by using dividends from shares that, before the plant«s re-registration as a joint-stock company, had belonged to the state.

Sharipov returned the money but rejected the accusations, calling the incident a misunderstanding and noting that he had done nothing illegal. Nevertheless, he had to leave the plant amid the scandal and worker discontent; the number of employees had nearly tripled over five years. Gavrilov was called in to pull the plant out of crisis.

«Father came home both surprised and inspired. He said: »[Bashkiria head Murtaza] Rakhimov has ordered me to return [to the plant] and sort everything out. I have a hundred days to pull it out of crisis.« Of course, he returned — for him, the plant was like family,» recalls Vladimir Gavrilov«s son in a conversation with UFA1.RU.

First, the new director paid off all wage arrears and began increasing production, bringing people back to the enterprise. Under him, BETO began producing printed circuit boards for the Chinese company Huawei. Economic indicators improved markedly, and the plant became profitable again.

«While father was away, five years passed, and many people already worked at the enterprise who didn»t even know him. They thought he was a new person who would need time to figure things out. But he knew everything about production down to the last screw,« Igor Gavrilov told UFA1.RU.

«People started receiving salaries, the desired stability arrived, and the enterprise became profitable,» said Pavel Kachkayev, who headed Ufa«s city administration in the 2000s. »Vladimir Lvovich was a true master of production, a very democratic leader, and an active person.«

«He knew the value of the workforce and did everything for its benefit. The enterprise finished [2003] with good results, and nothing foreshadowed trouble,» noted Vyacheslav Pridachin, director of another large city enterprise, Ufimkabel, after his colleague was found dead in the entrance of his own home.

As if by order

In early January 2004, Vladimir Gavrilov was vacationing at the Zelenaya Roshcha sanatorium. On the evening of Saturday, January 10, he was preparing for a family dinner. By then, the BETO director had already exchanged his apartment and moved from Mendeleeva to Mustaya Karima Street — into a building with an underground garage. When he arrived there, he saw a man with a pistol rapidly approaching him.

The stranger began uttering threats. Gavrilov shoved him and ran out of the garage. From there, two paths led into the building — a short one via the internal staircase and a longer one through the courtyard. He chose the second option because he suspected the first might hold an ambush.

But in the entranceway, only a janitor heard a cry asking to urgently call the police. Shots rang out immediately; Gavrilov was wounded and slumped to the floor, while the attacker fled. On the way to the hospital, the BETO director described in detail what had happened and the shooter«s appearance before losing consciousness.

Two days later, he died without regaining consciousness. All of Bashkiria«s elite gathered for the funeral, including republic head Murtaza Rakhimov. The murder looked like a typical contract killing of the 1990s and early 2000s. But the official investigation ruled out that version, almost immediately presenting a main suspect.

The suspect was a 37-year-old businessman found in the basement of the same building under the influence of narcotic drugs. He admitted that the Mauser found at the crime scene belonged to him and claimed he had killed Gavrilov by mistake. Allegedly, the businessman owed a lot of money and, fearing reprisals, was hiding in the garage on Karima from creditors, mistaking the BETO director for one of them.

However, he later retracted his confession, saying it was given under pressure. While the investigation was ongoing, his preventive measure was changed from arrest to compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital. He underwent several examinations, and only the last one found him sane.

The murder case of Vladimir Gavrilov was heard in 2009 in Bashkiria«s Supreme Court by a jury, which found the evidence insufficient to establish guilt. The businessman was acquitted, and he later also received monetary compensation for illegal criminal prosecution.

Outraged by the verdict, Gavrilov«s wife tried to appeal to Russia»s Supreme Court but failed. According to her son, she suffered greatly from her husband«s death and the subsequent proceedings, and she died in 2010. After his acquittal, the defendant continued doing business in Ufa.

In 2019, he even opened a medical center, which, according to Kontur.Focus, lasted about two years. His full name also appears in another criminal case in one of Ufa«s courts. According to the ruling, the defendant was sentenced to one and a half years of suspended imprisonment for a drunk driving accident involving a Cadillac.

«The defendant admitted guilt and testified that everything happened on June 13, 2012,» the court document states. «On June 11, he was invited to a birthday party; on the 11th they were at a restaurant, on the 12th they continued at an apartment. On June 13, he needed to meet his parents at the station. On the 13th, he didn»t drink — it was a residual effect. He drove to meet his parents in his car. Then he doesn«t remember anything. He woke up the next day. From medical staff, he learned he had been in an accident.»

After Gavrilov«s death, BETO continued to operate but again fell into crisis and eventually withered. In 2015, it became known that the plant»s territory, along with the Kondi factory, was included in a renovation project. Currently, part of its territory is being built up with residential complexes, and the rest is rented out.

«Of course, father would have been very upset by this,» the late BETO director«s son told UFA1.RU. »Journalists wrote that after the attack, a sheet of paper with poems was found in his jacket, which he carried with him. That«s not entirely true. Father did write some poetry, but that particular note was not poetic but ordinary prose. In it, he wrote that the dream of his life was to raise the enterprise to a world level. Unfortunately, his dream died with him.»

Details of high-profile criminal stories from Bashkiria over the years are collected in a separate UFA1.RU section. Read also what secret the grave of the murdered top manager of another large Ufa plant holds.