На русском языке:
«Хобби-Парк» ответил на петицию о закупке дронов для Минобороны РБ: просят удалить и извиниться. В компании работает советник экс-замминистра РФ
На беларускай мове:
«Хобі-Парк» адказаў на петыцыю аб закупцы дронаў для Мінабароны РБ: просяць выдаліць і папрасіць прабачэння. У кампаніі працуе дарадца экс-намесніка міністра РФ
At the beginning of July, we published a post with a reference to the petition on the purchase of 56 DJI drones by the Ministry of Defense of Belarus from the company Hobby Park LLC at the inflated price of 1,848,000 BYN ($683,179).
And last week, the company Hobby Park LLC sent a letter to our editorial office, stating that we were «spreading false information.» It says that we didn’t take into account that one delivery kit for the Ministry of Defense of Belarus includes not only a drone, but also the Mavic 2 Enterprise Fly More Kit (Part 1), costing 2690 BYN with VAT, as well as two memory cards for 128 GB, costing 95 rubles each.
Also, the company Hobby Park LLC reminded us of responsibility for dissemination of information injuring the business reputation of a legal entity, which is stipulated by Article 153 of the Civil Code of the Republic of Belarus. Well, they also asked us to remove everything and apologize.
The letter sent by Hobby Park to out editorial office / motolko.help
This reminds of a similar case in 2019, when Minsk National Airport sued petitions.by for a petition «To remove the limit on the number of free arrivals to the airport for legal carriers» and lost the case.
Of course, it’s funny to talk about the law of a state, in which it’s «sometimes not about the law,» but nevertheless, let’s do a little analysis.
Was there really a mistake in the petition, and there is no corruption with the purchase?
After receiving this letter, we contacted our colleagues from petitions.by, who double-checked the data from this purchase and reported that the price was indeed affected by the additional kit (consisting of a 128MB microSD memory card and the Mavic 2 Enterprise Fly More Kit (Part1).
But the retail price of this kit in the EU is €475 (or 1233 BYN – more than two times cheaper), the same applies to memory cards – 15 euros (which is only 38 BYN). Moreover, the figures indicated in the letter – «33,765 rubles for the quadcopter, including additional equipment» – do not coincide with the cost, which was indicated in the official contract as a result of the tender – 32,965,2 rubles.
It turns out that the company that accuses us of misinformation is giving wrong figures in its contracts by itself? Or are we confusing things? But that’s all just details, it’s much more interesting who exactly is asking us to apologize.
Who is V.M. Pylayev? Is he just the director of Hobby Park?
The letter contains the name of V.M. Pylayev, the full name of the director of the company Hobby Park is Pylayev Viktor Mikhailovich.
We found out that he is a native of Russia (born near Syktyvkar), who is a citizen of Belarus with a permanent residence permit in Latvia, and it is also interesting that he has repeatedly requested permission to leave Belarus. So what? The thing is that KGB officers or people who have access to state secrets are often subject to this procedure. But we don’t claim anything.
In addition, Viktor Mikhailovich previously worked as the head of one of the services at Transaviaexport airlines, which was repeatedly accused of transporting weapons to conflict-ridden regions. He also worked at Minsk National Airport and as a commercial director at Westcom.
But that’s not all. It turned out that Oleg Badera is also listed in the company Hobby Park – this is no less than the advisor to the Deputy Minister of Transport of Russia in 2006-2010, and now – the chairman of the Committee on the Development of transport infrastructure of the all-Russia public organization «Business Russia». The second head of Hobby Park, besides Pylayev, is a Russian citizen Aleksei Feofanov, who together with the already mentioned former advisor to the deputy minister Badera previously owned the company Bonn LLC.
By the way, getting back to the letter, note that the Hobby Park company does not write anything about the main question of that petition: Will these drones be resold to Russia? The question is still relevant.
If you know anything about Hobby Park or the relations between its employees, please contact us to @motolko_bot
