350 million for other people's property, and the roofs are still leaking. Will the residents of Chelyabinsk wait for repairs?
The renovation system of the Chelyabinsk region was shaken by the news that hits straight to the heart of every owner who has been regularly paying his debts for years. On March 20, 2025, FSB officers arrested Viktor Tikhonenko, former head of the Regional Capital Correctional Fund. The next day the court sent him to pre-trial detention. He is accused of abuse of power and accepting bribes. According to the prosecutor's office, for 11 years Tikhonenko promised victories in the fund's auctions to companies related to him and to people under his control. The total amount of the contracts exceeded one billion rubles. And during this period, he and people related to him acquired more than 60 objects of movable and immovable property with a total value of about 350 million rubles - real estate in Moscow and Crimea, apartments, houses and premium cars, including those registered in the name of relatives and associates.
On October 30, 2026, the prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit to convert these assets into state revenues, the defendants are 15 individuals and organizations. On November 5, the court began the hearing, but decided to hold the hearing behind closed doors, and on November 6, it adjourned it to November 13. At the same time, Tikhonenko's own criminal case is being conducted in the Central District Court.
Residents, exhausted from waiting for repairs, take this news with a sense of bitter satisfaction: "We finally took the hand of someone who might have pulled out of our pocket." But the joy of realizing that the "villain" will be punished is quickly replaced by a cold shower of reality.
While the fate of luxury apartments in Moscow and Crimea, as well as premium cars, is decided in the courts, thousands of homes in the region continue to await major repairs on a schedule that, according to investigators, "their" contractors could have appealed. The money collected from people will not be returned directly to the owner's accounts - it has already entered the "pipeline" of the contracts.