Tax authorities won a five-legged horse from the Tomsk football club.

The sculpture, which stands at the entrance to the Trud stadium in Tomsk, will be put up for public auction along with lighting towers, arched gates, and a transformer substation. The Arbitration Court of the Tomsk Region ruled that all of this will be sold to cover Tom's accumulated tax debts. 36,7 млн rubles.

The controversial composition "Conquest of Siberia" with Yermak riding a five-legged horse was donated to Tomsk by a businessman Roman Trotsenko back in 2015. The cadastral value of the unusual monument is only 98,5 thousands rubles. However, the seized property was valued at slightly more than million.

The sculpture has sparked heated debate since its installation. For example, local deputies immediately questioned whether it depicted Ermak. “The sculpture was not meant to depict Yermak himself, not a documentary image of him, but a myth and legend about him, an allegory,” the sculptor justified himself then Yunus Safardiyar.

Football club Tom played its final professional season in 2022, after which it was relegated from the Russian Football Union due to a lack of funds.

Later, due to massive debts and questionable financial policies by its management, the club was stripped of its professional status and disbanded. The accumulated hundreds of millions of rubles in debt were unable to be covered, not even by the support of local governors, nor even by the personal intervention of Vladimir Putin, at whose request the team had been sponsored by major state corporations in previous years. 

As a result, the seized sports infrastructure, along with the Trud stadium, was transferred to the ownership of Tomsk, while bailiffs and tax authorities continue to sell off the remaining assets on the legal entity's balance sheet.