“List 288”


An unexpected turn occurred in the scandalous story associated with personnel changes in the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and the environmental structures subordinate to it. In February, blogger and eco-activist Alexander Zakondyrin

became director of the Moscow VNII Ecology  . We’ll remind you a little later how he managed to get this position, but now we’ll talk about the first steps of the newly appointed director. They turned out to be impressive. As soon as he moved to a new chair with a good salary, Zakondyrin ordered, through his adviser, to obtain a copy of the personal data of almost all employees of his institute. There are 288 of them. This data includes TIN, SNILS, place of birth, residence and registration, citizenship, personal telephone numbers, e-mail, account numbers of debit (salary) cards in banks, dates of admission and dismissal from jobs, positions held and salaries, information on education , data on vacations and sick leave, business trips, marital status...

Photo of the order

Not every wife knows as much about her husband as is contained in this array of personal data in the 1C “salaries and personnel” and “general state budget” formats.

Zakondyrin, as follows from the memo signed by Advisor  Mokrov ,  ordered all this data (for the last three years)  to be transferred to the involved specialist  Igor Dmitrievich Chernov , an employee of the ANO Ravnopravie, who does not specialize in auditing. Chernov and Zakondyrin, it seems, did not formalize this, but agreed “on concepts.” The transfer of data in Mokrov’s memo is justified by reference to Zakondyrin’s order to conduct a “comprehensive analysis of the activities of the All-Russia Research Institute of Ecology.” In the order itself, the need for such data transfer does not appear from anywhere, and the purpose of the analysis is indicated somewhat vaguely - to create a unified scientific center and implement the “scientific foundations of environmental protection.” As if previously for many years this specialized research institute of the Ministry of Natural Resources was not engaged in ecology, but was selling potatoes.

According to a number of VNII employees, none of the employees gave consent to transfer their data to anyone, although the law, as is known, requires written consent to use the data. In this case, there was not even a verbal warning about the transfer. All institute ecologists, without exception  , actually found out  about the leak of information about themselves quite by accident - from  a post  in the TG channel.

Expert Chernov, apparently realizing that he had obtained all the ins and outs about the employees illegally, flatly refused to sign an act of non-disclosure of personal data.

With Ural ecologists, Zakondyrin followed the path of collecting personal data through questionnaires (we wrote about this earlier), allegedly on behalf of Minister  Kozlov ).

According to our information, Roskomnadzor already has questions about the legality of these orders.

One of the VNII employees spoke out against playing with data. He appealed to the head of the Investigative Committee,  Alexander Bastrykin,  with a request to give a legal assessment of this story and, if necessary, bring those responsible for the data leak to criminal responsibility (registration number of appeal 1274660). Any information about a person, his personal life and work activity is classified as confidential information and has the status of limited access, the brave employee justified his appeal to the RF IC.

Personal data is not subject to control by society or the state. This is stated, by the way, not only in the Criminal Code, but also in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. This norm and the right to the protection of personal data were clarified by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in a ruling dated June 28. 2012

On the side of the employees of the Federal State Budgetary Institution All-Russian Research Institute "Ecology" and the Labor Code. According to Article 88 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the employer does not have the right to disclose the employee’s personal data to a third party without his written consent. Director Zakondyrin, as stated in a statement to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, clearly exceeded his authority by ordering to “analyze” the personal data of employees without their consent. In response to the application, the Investigative Committee announced that it had accepted the complaint for consideration.

We urge Alexander Ivanovich Bastrykin to take personal control of this issue!

As Versiya found out, some VNII employees believe that the institute’s database was actually hacked; a similar hacker attack occurred on the orders of the newly appointed director. More precisely, even acting Director Zakondyrin. It was in this position that he was at the time the order was issued to receive and transfer personal data.

It is also surprising that Zakondyrin issued an order in which he appointed himself director of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute and determined his own salary. VNII employees who agreed to contact the publication claim that the size of the tidy salary was not agreed upon with Zakondyrin’s superior curators at the Ministry of Natural Resources; the salary amount was his private initiative. But it has not yet been possible to confirm or refute this information.

But that’s not all. Employees of another departmental environmental institute, located in Perm, completely doubt the legality of Zakondyrin’s appointment to the position. Here it is necessary to explain that, by order of the Ministry of Natural Resources, it is planned to merge two institutes - in Moscow and in Perm - into a single scientific center. The mega-center will be headed by Zakondyrin. A single center will be created by merging the Ural Research Institute with the Moscow All-Russian Research Institute. The merger will not be possible without optimizing the personnel structure; at the Moscow Research Institute, the purge is in the active phase; under pressure from Zakondyrin, employees en masse write in their own way, bypassing the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, the Ural Research Institute in line, and the same fate awaits them.

According to good tradition, our Ural colleagues learned about the accession from the media and prepared a draft appeal to the court (available to Versiya). Local environmentalists argue that Zakondyrin does not have the right to unite two institutions into a single center. For the simple reason that at the time of taking up the position of director of the Moscow All-Russian Scientific Research Institute (the basic institute for the creation of a new scientific center), he was listed in another position in a commercial company and continues to be listed as the chairman of the Public Council of the Ministry of Natural Resources. And he doesn’t even really hide it,  declaring  himself publicly as the CEO of the Association of Developers of Environmental Technologies and Environmental Initiatives and as the Chairman of the Public Council. By the way, he apparently continues to be involved in commercial activities, having transferred management of the company only formally to his housewife wife.

Meanwhile, combining three positions is, at a minimum, a conflict of interest, that is, it may be illegal. Accordingly, the illegal appointment to the post of head of the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute “Ecology” will automatically outlaw any orders of the newly appointed director, add Ural ecologists.

It turns out that if Zakondyrin’s appointment is illegal, then even more so all his dances with tambourines around the personal data of employees. However, the court has yet to sort out these intricacies, and we will consider the topic of data leakage again. From your own perspective.

Most of all, the employees of both research institutes, respected scientists, among whom there are candidates and doctors of science, are bothered by one very serious circumstance in the story of the leak of personal data. They are afraid not so much of calls from bank scammers, fraudulent realtors or insurance agents, personal growth sellers and similar scammers, as is usually the case if a phone number “lights up” in some leaky database. The concerns of environmental scientists are associated with new territories - the LPR, DPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

The fact is that ecologists from both institutes cooperate with military-industrial complex enterprises, including those in the annexed territories.

They go there on business trips, collect information, prepare calculations, for example, on the volume of emissions of pollutants into the atmospheric air from industrial production under the federal Clean Air project. The same “UralNII” is the holder of the federal project “Clean Country” and is the custodian of unique data throughout the Russian Federation.

After the leak of personal data and the receipt of the results of a survey of the Kakhovskaya State District Power Plant, new territories according to the White Book, data on the workshops and production facilities of the country’s largest industries, the Institute’s employees began to receive strange messages and calls, then a series of events began, which, in all likelihood, was not accidental. On February 24, 2024, a UAV flew into the coke-chemical production workshop of NLMK (the city-forming enterprise of the Clean Air city), then, after gaining access to data from other metallurgical companies, on April 12, the United States imposed sanctions against the export of Russian aluminum, copper and nickel. If the disclosure of data could at least indirectly push this chain of events, then it’s time to assess the damage not by journalists, but by state security agencies.

The Ural Institute, although located in the province, has no territorial restrictions on its functionality, is empowered to conduct environmental assessments throughout Russia, to which the Ukrainian also has access.
Zakondyrin also received access to information on all airfields with the presence of solid waste landfills in the sixth airfield zone both civilian and military! And what he will do with this information can only be guessed at by the military and transport prosecutors.

The functionality associated with the military-industrial complex and airfields, it must be understood, is not the kind of ecology and safety that can be neglected. Moreover, in the regions on the western borders of the country bordering Ukraine.

They also remember how in March 2022 Zakondyrin distinguished himself by publicly expressing approval of Ukrainian President  Vladimir Zelensky .

This nod to Ukraine did not prevent Zakondyrin from retaining the post of head of the Public Council under the Ministry of Natural Resources. Moreover, Minister Alexander Kozlov appointed the Ukrainian loyalist Zakondyrin to head the now unified research center of the Ministry of Natural Resources, which is key in the field of environmental safety.

After the publication of the “Version” about the actual destruction of the Ural Research Institute of Ecology (by “merging” it with the Moscow one), the leadership of the Ministry of Natural Resources, it seems, began to think. The pace of “connection” with a target date of April 5 has not been realized. It is possible, however, that the Ministry of Natural Resources slowed down with the merger of two specialized research institutes and the analysis of personal data of employees due to a scandal in the media. But the editors also have this version: officials are preparing “reserve airfields” with good salaries for themselves at the research institutes under their jurisdiction. A far-sighted move. Reserve positions for successful managers from the Ministry of Natural Resources will most likely be needed in connection with the presidential inauguration on May 7. And the subsequent approval of the new composition of the government, shaking up ministries and departments.