As is well known, corruption is the use of official position for personal gain. Some corruption is hidden—conspiracies, embezzlement, fraud, forgery. And some is open, when obviously unacceptable and corrupt behavior is carried out quite openly, almost ostentatiously.
Open corruption may cause less direct financial damage if you literally add up the costs, but from the standpoint of the public interest it is, of course, more dangerous. It leads to the degradation of the state and the foundations of society. It breeds legal nihilism (as Dmitry Medvedev likes to say) and destroys the “spiritual bonds” (as Vladimir Putin likes to say) that are supposed to hold society together.
It is precisely this kind of outrageous incident that the Anti-Corruption Foundation wants to draw your attention to. The fact is that an aircraft has turned up in the Seychelles, a 14-hour flight from Moscow.
And not just any aircraft, but one belonging to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. And it was not merely spotted—it was photographed on location by a Russian citizen (who, evidently, got to the Seychelles by regular commercial transport).
The photograph was sent to the outlet Znak.com with the note: "Defense Ministry generals flew to the Seychelles for the May holidays, are boozing, and without sobering up are going from one fishing trip to another." Znak published a short report, and that report was forwarded to us at the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Apparently, whoever forwarded it remembered that we take a special interest in officials who enjoy flying abroad in style at the public’s expense and then raising hell there. This is a good moment to recall the story of former governor Bozhenov and his birthday celebration in Italy. We filed so many complaints with the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office back then that they were impossible to count. The law enforcement authorities in Volgograd did everything they could to let Bozhenov and United Russia (the ruling political party) off the hook, but we were right all the same: Bozhenov is a thief and a corrupt official, and he is now on the run. If they had put him where he belonged back then—not in the governor’s office, but on the defendant’s bench—none of these problems would have happened.
So, back to the never-sober generals out fishing. Really, the picture is already clear enough. The May holidays, the Seychelles, a government aircraft, and drunken generals—even a fool can see that these brazen characters went there to fish. A quick Google search for “fishing in the Seychelles” will immediately show you that the fishing there is indeed excellent, and clearly more interesting than in Crimea (sorry).
Why not hop on a plane paid for by taxpayers and go catch barracuda and mahi-mahi:
http://www.biggame-fishing.net/seychelles
But the ACF always makes formal claims—official statements and complaints—and those cannot be written merely on the basis of common public knowledge about the habits of Russian generals.
So we had the following tasks before us:
a) find out who posted the photo and whether it was fake,
b) determine whose aircraft it was,
c) if the aircraft really belonged to the Defense Ministry, find out whether the ministry had any business in the Seychelles,
d) if the Defense Ministry did have business in the Seychelles, determine whether this trip was part of it,
e) if this really was just drunken generals on a state aircraft, file crime reports and tell you the story.
a) This was the easiest part. ACF press secretary Anna Veduta contacted the editors of Znak.com and the author of the piece. They explained everything to her about the letter, the person who wrote it, and so on. We will not publish that information, but we will note that there is no doubt whatsoever about the reliability of the original information.
b) Fortunately, the ACF has a strong aviation unit, so we immediately asked Ruslan Leviev—a space and aviation enthusiast, programmer, internet anti-censorship activist, and longtime ACF volunteer and ally—to help us identify the aircraft. In a single day, Ruslan established that the plane with tail number RA-85155 is used by the Russian defense minister. Here is his report, published almost in full, and once again we thank him for his help:
_First, some background. The aircraft is indeed military—not in the sense of being a combat aircraft, but in the sense that it has been assigned to the Ministry of Defense since 2010. That means it never appears on aircraft-tracking services like flightradar24.com (except perhaps due to an accidental mistake by the flight crew, if they switch on the civilian ADS-B transponder, causing the service to “see” the aircraft). This is consistent with ICAO rules: military aircraft flight data are not tracked by civilian systems. These aircraft use military communications and military frequencies, and information from those cannot be intercepted by ordinary sensors available to “mere mortals” (unless one builds a special interception device, thereby breaking the law)._
_For that reason, all flightradar24.com knows about this aircraft is that on April 30 it took off from somewhere and landed somewhere (with dashes, of course, in the departure and destination fields)._
_Next, I started looking for information about the aircraft on plane-spotter resources (spotters are photographers who shoot airplanes, helicopters, and other flying equipment). As is well known, there is no problem photographing aircraft, including near military airfields, from outside the fence where access is unrestricted. One such airfield is Chkalovsky (near Star City, the Russian cosmonaut training center), where the largest number of photos of this aircraft have been taken. There are also many photographs of the aircraft from civilian airports in Russia—for example, in Abakan, Tomsk, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, and Moscow (Vnukovo). It is worth noting that all of these cities have major military facilities of one kind or another._
_There are also a relatively small number of photographs of this aircraft at various foreign airports: Helsinki, London, Paris, Prague, and Brussels. That became my main lead. I used the dates of those photos and searched Yandex for news from the corresponding dates, specifying the city. It turned out that absolutely all of those foreign flights were connected with trips by the Russian defense minister (sometimes Foreign Minister Lavrov flew with him as well, for one reason or another—for example, when there was a full summit of ministers abroad). So it is entirely safe to say that this aircraft is assigned to the Russian defense minister and the very highest-ranking Defense Ministry officials (Shoigu’s deputies)._
_Here it should again be noted that the defense minister is clearly assigned more than one departmental aircraft, so the appearance of this plane somewhere is not 100% proof that it was the defense minister himself who flew there (though the probability is very high—I would say 75–80%)._
Second: the aircraft is assigned specifically to the Russian Ministry of Defense. In other words, if senior officials from other ministries do fly on it (the foreign minister or, say, some FSB director), that happens only as an exception, when the defense minister is sharing a trip with another minister. As proof that the aircraft is assigned to the office of the defense minister (to the post, not the person—that is, from 2010 to 2012 it carried Serdyukov, and from 2012 to the present it has carried Shoigu), I provide a list of dates on which the aircraft was photographed by foreign spotters in cities where the Russian defense minister was appearing at the same time:
May 28, 2013
At a press conference in Helsinki, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said he was disappointed by the EU’s decision to lift the arms embargo on Syria. The press conference took place after his meeting with his Finnish counterpart Carl Haglund. News report and photo at Vantaa Airport (Helsinki, Finland).
March 12, 2013
This aircraft brought Defense Minister Shoigu and Foreign Minister Lavrov to London, where Russian and British foreign and defense ministers held talks as part of a strategic dialogue (the main issue was the situation in Syria). News report and photo at Heathrow Airport (London, United Kingdom).
November 1, 2012
An interesting news item appeared saying that two defendants in the Oboronservis case had been remanded in custody until December 10. The most interesting part of the report was this: “In court, investigators argued that Smetanova needed to be detained because she might flee on a Defense Ministry service aircraft. At one time, posing as an employee of the ministry’s property relations department, she flew to Paris together with the former head of that department, Yevgenia Vasilyeva, whose home was searched last week in connection with the Oboronservis case.” More details on Forbes.ru.
October 31, 2012
Just a few days before his dismissal, Serdyukov was in Paris with Lavrov for a meeting of the Franco-Russian Security Cooperation Council, where Syria was discussed. News report and spotter photo at Charles de Gaulle Airport, indicating that the aircraft had arrived from Auckland, New Zealand.
June 8, 2011
A meeting in Brussels of the Russia–NATO Council at the level of defense ministers, an attempt to reach agreement on creating a European missile defense system, Anatoly Serdyukov. News report and photo at Brussels Airport.
March 15, 2011
Defense Minister Serdyukov was in Paris discussing with French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet the contract for the construction of four Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. That contract had previously been signed between Russia and France. News report and photo at Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris, France).
c) Could the Defense Ministry have business in the Seychelles? As funny as it may sound at first glance, theoretically it could. We dug around and found a single news item:
Russia intends to increase the number of its military bases abroad and is holding talks with a number of countries, including Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Seychelles, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told journalists in Moscow on Wednesday. http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20140226/997169612.html
This is an important point. We understood that as soon as the story about the generals fishing came out, the Defense Ministry’s first excuse would be: WE WEREN’T DRINKING ON A FISHING TRIP, WE WERE IN IMPORTANT TALKS ABOUT OPENING A MILITARY BASE.
At this point, Veduta stepped in again. She
reviewed all recent news from all official Seychelles government bodies. There was no mention of any contacts with Russian state institutions, even though they publish news about far less significant events—you can see for yourself. From this site you can navigate to the websites of all the ministries and agencies.
monitored all Seychelles media published in English and French (the country’s official languages). Another official language is Creole, but we decided to stop there. There is no mention whatsoever of visits by Russian officials or military personnel. None at all in recent times, let alone in May 2014. There is only a press release disavowing reports in a number of media outlets about the possibility of a Russian military base in the Seychelles.
- called the Seychelles embassy in Moscow. They declined to comment.
after that, we contacted the press attaché of the Seychelles Foreign Ministry (yes, we actually called the Seychelles) and received information from him that no official delegations from the Russian Federation or the Russian Defense Ministry came to the Seychelles in May 2014. We have a recording of the conversation.
caused a small international stir by obtaining an official letter from the press attaché stating once again that they have no plans to open any Russian military bases. They declined to comment on private or military aircraft.
d) Thus, what had seemed fairly obvious from the start became clear: this was a leisure trip by top Defense Ministry officials who went fishing over the May holidays, using a state aircraft.
e) The Anti-Corruption Foundation is sending official letters to
- the Russian Ministry of Defense
- the Main Military Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation
- the FSB of the Russian Federation
- the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation
- the President of the Russian Federation,
asking them to verify all of these claims and decide whether to open criminal cases over possible embezzlement, abuse of office, and so on.
By our estimate, chartering such an aircraft to the Seychelles and back costs no less than $200,000.
That is a very expensive fishing trip. As Russian citizens and taxpayers, we do not want to pay for it, and we consider it an act of corruption.
We also demand an explanation from Russian Defense Minister S. K. Shoigu about what happened and appropriate personnel decisions. There is some reason for hope here: as we recall, Shoigu once fired a driver for rude behavior on the road.
Separately, we would like to draw the attention of both Shoigu and the FSB to the fact that fishing in the Seychelles is itself quite an expensive pastime. It is unlikely that the “never-sober generals” were fishing with rods from the shore. Most likely, like everyone else, they went out by boat. Which means:
http://www.maldives.ru/moscow/pages/countries/seychelles/info/fishing.html
Maybe they paid for it themselves, or maybe Banderite spies (a derogatory Russian term for Ukrainian nationalists), funded by a likely adversary, chipped in for the pleasure of hauling dogtooth tuna out of the water. That should be checked.
So there you have it: a very ugly story of corruption that undermines the foundations of the state and lowers the morale of our armed forces.
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Please help spread this information. Especially if you know any officers—send it to them, let them be happy for the generals.
If you can tell us anything about this story or share other stories about secret and non-official flights by this aircraft, write to us at fbk@fbk.info.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation is funded solely by voluntary donations from citizens. If you like what we do, take a look here.
Update
Many thanks to attentive readers for the tip: http://www.flightradar24.com/data/airplanes/ra-85155/
By a strange coincidence, the “visit of a high-level delegation” lasted exactly until May 10. This time the aircraft did show up on the map:
That is, the aircraft departed the Seychelles at 12:07 on May 10, landed in Abu Dhabi at 16:28, and took off from there for Moscow at 18:52. It landed in Moscow at Vnukovo at 23:33, from where it then returned to base (judging by the 20-minute flight time from Vnukovo—01:24 to 01:53—that would have been Chkalovsky).