As you probably know, yesterday yet another United Russia party member explained to us in court that you can’t trust your own eyes. You have to trust paperwork and the word of a United Russia politician. And if a country plot looks enormous, that doesn’t matter at all—never mind that it looks that way and is fenced off. You can simply say, "I never used this land, I never even set foot on it, so I don’t need to declare anything," and the court will believe you immediately.
But I’m writing about something else now: as you know, a site called "Shaltai-Boltai" has appeared online, where people claiming to be employees of the presidential administration are posting compromising material on one another.
We don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a trap or a setup, maybe it’s some hackers, maybe it really is an official acting as a people’s saboteur—but yesterday in court we confirmed that at least two previously unknown "Shaltai" facts about senior United Russia politician Rudensky (he’s who this is about) turned out to be true:
Part of the elite land in the Sosny country-house cooperative turned out to be registered in the name of the deputy’s 71-year-old mother. We had no way to trace this ourselves, so we asked to verify it—and it turned out to be true. Rudensky said that "Mom wanted her own little vegetable garden," so he put her in touch with a businessman from whom she leased this land (right next to the Istra River), and that’s where she set up her little garden. Just so you understand, this "little garden" covers 40 sotkas—about 4,000 square meters.
When I directly asked whether Shaltai’s information was accurate that the cost of building the house came to 45 million rubles (roughly ten times the deputy’s annual income), Rudensky—although the judge disallowed the question—did not deny it either, saying: "My wife has a large income."
So we can say that the information published on this mysterious website deserves attention, at least in the part concerning the remarkable head of the Economic Policy Committee, United Russia deputy, and chairman of the Sosny country-house cooperative, Igor Rudensky.
With that in mind, we carefully reviewed all the material that was posted (mostly data from hacked email) and present to your attention a piece in the fashionable, up-to-date style of "12 Facts from the Life of a Modest United Russia Politician".
Let’s begin:
1. RUDENSKY’S HOUSE REALLY DID COST HIM 43 MILLION RUBLES
2. WITH AN OFFICIAL SALARY OF 2–2.5 MILLION RUBLES, RUDENSKY ORDERS A TABLE COSTING 30,000 EUROS (1.4 MILLION RUBLES)
3. RUDENSKY SPENDS PLENTY ON OTHER FURNITURE AS WELL
4. DEPUTY RUDENSKY HAS TROUBLE STICKING TO A BUDGET
**5. RUDENSKY’S HOUSE HAS A ROOM FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL RELIEF**
6. BUT OF COURSE IT WOULDN’T BE COMPLETE WITHOUT A GOOD OLD FUR STORAGE ROOM
Nor without a tasting room, a hunting room, a shooting range, a dance hall, and a tanning salon with a hairdresser’s.
7. OOPS
8. BY AN "EXCLUSIVE METHOD," SOMEONE OBTAINED FOR RUDENSKY AN ISSUE OF "POPULAR POLITICS" THAT HAD BEEN PUBLICLY AVAILABLE FOR 3 MONTHS AND DISTRIBUTED IN A PRINT RUN OF ABOUT 1 MILLION COPIES
9. ON THE GROUNDS OF THE SOSNY DACHA SETTLEMENT, 25 CAMERAS AND A VIDEO SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM ARE BEING INSTALLED AT A COST OF 11.2 MILLION RUBLES. ANSHLAPOV AND RUDENSKY—ONE WEEK AFTER "DACHING"
**10. RUDENSKY’S 71-YEAR-OLD MOTHER OWNS SHARES IN 16 COMPANIES**
11. AT AGE 67, HOUSEWIFE VALENTINA STEPANOVNA RUDENSKAYA BECAME THE OWNER OF PROPERTY IN CYPRUS WORTH 372,000 EUROS (ABOUT 17 MILLION RUBLES)*
*We noticed a typo in the spelling of housewife Rudenskaya’s surname. The exact match of her first name and patronymic, her husband’s name, age, and address suggests that this is indeed the deputy’s mother.
12. AND ALTHOUGH THE HOUSE IS STILL JUST A "SHELL WITHOUT WINDOWS," THE DESIGNS LOOK PROMISING
So this is the kind of deputy we have from the most honest party of all.
We hope you enjoyed it. Tell your friends too—maybe they’ll enjoy it as well.