It took me a year and a half to persuade Oleg Vyugin, the independent director of OJSC AK Transneft, to do this. To put before the board of directors the question of publishing all information related to the company’s charitable spending. Transneft’s charity expenses are indeed impressive. In 2005–2008, the company spent a total of about 15 billion rubles on these purposes. The peak came in 2007—7.2 billion rubles (Gazprom’s planned spending on charity and sponsorship in 2009 was about the same—7.4 billion rubles); in 2008, it was just over 1 billion rubles. In January–March 2009, Transneft’s spending on this amounted to 136 million rubles (-58.7% compared with the same period in 2008). In its reports, the company states that part of the money from the sale of residual oil in the pipeline system is spent on charity. But Transneft prefers not to disclose the recipients of these donations. I wrote letters to Vyugin. I sued him. And then I wrote letters again. All in vain. Oleg Vyugin did not want to help me uncover the terrible secret of the vanished billions. Amusingly, the decisive role in this story (in my opinion) was played by the newspaper Vedomosti. It was in its pages that Vyugin published his much-discussed article, “Post-Crisis Development: The Fire Has Been Put Out, Now It’s Time to Build.” The article is excellent, but it contained many fine arguments that, to put it mildly, contradict the author’s practical actions. I wrote about this in my own post, which was also featured prominently on Vedomosti’s homepage. That same day, I wrote Vyugin yet another letter. Polite and brief. Calling on him to start with himself. And so he did:
Well, good for him—what else can I say. The man had the courage to be consistent and admit he was wrong. It’s nice to know there are people for whom something like “reputation” still means something. Even if it took four tries. Unfortunately, in the oil and gas extraction and transportation sector, that’s a very rare species. Officially: as a shareholder of OJSC AK Transneft, I withdraw my claims against the company’s independent director, O. Vyugin. Until new circumstances arise)) By the way, I’m absolutely certain the board of directors will reject the proposal, but at least the issue will be officially raised, and we’ll be able to see who voted and how. And of course, we’ll keep squeezing the transsexual... Transneft guys. There’ll soon be a lot of interesting stuff about them on our screens.