The original post was published on 27 November 2013 at navalny.livejournal.com
What do you see in this photograph? If all you see is a river, country houses, forest edges, and mushroom clearings, take a closer look.
There, waaay over there, right in the middle of the photo, you can see the perfect explanation for why the political regime of Toad_on_the_Pipeline so fiercely refuses to ratify Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption and reacts so painfully to attempts to introduce an "illicit enrichment" article into the Criminal Code.
If those measures were implemented, this photograph would create major problems for certain people in the Kremlin and United Russia.
Let me explain in more detail—and I’m sure you’ll like this story.
This is the village of Leshkovo in the Istra district of Moscow Region. This is exactly where these splendid rich palaces stand,
Now let’s go through each plot separately, in order, so to speak, of increasing interest. One of them belongs to the “simple miner,” Sergei Neverov, secretary of the general council of the United Russia party.
I already wrote about him in detail (and promised to write about his neighbors too, which I am now doing).
Let me briefly remind you that Neverov, who loves portraying himself as a “simple miner—a working man,” has never been in business, has spent recent years ~~living off our backs~~ in government service, has no significant income, and yet somehow managed to acquire a “country plot” worth 92 million rubles, which he registered in the name of his mother-in-law—a 75-year-old pensioner from Novokuznetsk.
When I wrote about his palace on September 4 this year, Neverov had the nerve to say that he bought and would build all this with “money raised from selling an apartment in Novokuznetsk.” According to his disclosure, we can see that Neverov really did own a two-room apartment of 67 square meters (about 721 sq ft) in that city.
A question for everyone: can we believe, even for a second, that a 67-square-meter apartment in Novokuznetsk is remotely comparable in value to a huge plot on the bank of the Moscow River and a house that is probably twice the size of the main Palace of Pioneers in Novokuznetsk (a Soviet-era youth center)?
Of course not. We understand that Neverov is a disgusting liar and bribe-taker, like everyone in United Russia. And the mysterious sources of his income can be explained by one word only: “corruption.”
All right then, on to the neighbors. Meet Igor Nikolayevich Rudensky.
http://www.duma.gov.ru/structure/deputies/131170/ A prominent United Russia member and chairman of the State Duma committee on economic policy.
As for economic policy, Deputy Rudensky is doing very, very well indeed.
He registered Plot #1 (2,996 square meters, about 32,249 sq ft) under the country-house partnership “SOSNY” (“Pines”) and does not declare it, though he should; Plot #2 (8,213 square meters, about 88,404 sq ft) is registered directly to Rudensky himself. The total value of the 11,209 square meters of land is about 74 million rubles. And, as we can see, construction of a huge house is underway on the property.
Let’s look at Rudensky’s official income: 2006 — 1.2 million rubles 2010 — 1.9 million rubles 2011 — 1.9 million rubles 2012 — 2 million rubles My God. What a shock. What an astonishing anomaly. In 2006, Deputy Rudensky earned 1.2 million rubles, and had 198,914 rubles and 23 kopecks in his bank account. He remained a deputy, and then in 2008 bought land for a sum equal to dozens of years of his annual salary at that time.
There is no explanation for where United Russia member Rudensky got the tens of millions of rubles needed to acquire this marvelous estate. Maybe he found buried treasure. Or maybe he’s simply a thief and a bribe-taker. You decide.
Well now, who’s this inventive soul who built himself a full hockey rink on his property? Or I don’t know—what is it, a circus? An arena for gladiator fights? A rodeo field?
This is Nikolai Ivanovich Ashlapov.
Just look at that stern, strong-willed face. There is no doubt that at the moment this photo was taken, Nikolai Ivanovich was thinking about Russia.
He is one of our state construction officials: until recently, head of the federal state unitary enterprise “Spetsstroyengineering under the Federal Agency for Special Construction” (Spetsstroy of Russia); previously head of the federal state unitary enterprise “Main Directorate for the Construction of Roads and Airfields under the Federal Agency for Special Construction”; deputy minister of regional development of Russia; acting governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai; and a deputy of the fourth State Duma.
Ashlapov is a member of the United Russia party.
And it was precisely Nikolai Ivanovich Ashlapov who oversaw preparations for the APEC summit—the very one remembered for monstrous theft, wildly inflated prices, useless construction, and facilities that started falling apart immediately.
Nikolai Ivanovich himself claims that “Projects like those for the APEC summit are a recipe for overcoming crisis.” One could agree—if the crisis in question is a personal budget crisis. United Russia member Ashlapov appears to have overcome that sort of crisis quite successfully, judging by the size of his country estate. The value of the plot and house comes to roughly 178 million rubles.
Apparently, to avoid inviting obvious comparisons between the costliness of the construction projects overseen by United Russia member Ashlapov and the size of his estate, Nikolai Ivanovich chose not to declare it in full.
The actual property consists of three cadastral plots:
Plot #1, area 11,347 square meters (about 122,139 sq ft) Plot #2, area 750 square meters (about 8,073 sq ft), registered to the DNP “SOSNY” Plot #3, area 237 square meters (about 2,551 sq ft), registered to the DNP “SOSNY” Neither the second nor the third plot appears in the disclosure.
Let’s move on to the next, very remarkable neighbor.
Beautiful, isn’t it? You can tell right away that someone with modern ideas about country living lives here. A European lives here. This is Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko, deputy prime minister and chief of the government staff.
What a serious little “for signature” folder he has. Looking at Prikhodko’s “country house,” you realize that skillful use of that folder can bring in excellent returns.
Plot #1 has an area of 19,817 square meters (about 213,308 sq ft), Plot #2 8,143 square meters (about 87,650 sq ft). That makes 27,960 square meters in total, or nearly 3 hectares (about 6.9 acres). The first plot was registered as his property in 2011, the second in 2008. Why—that will be explained below.
There is also a house of 1,580 square meters (about 17,007 sq ft) and a bathhouse of 137 square meters (about 1,475 sq ft) on the property.
Let’s take a closer look at Sergei Eduardovich’s biography:
In 1986–1987 — attaché, third secretary of the USSR Foreign Ministry’s Directorate for the Socialist Countries of Europe. In 1992–1993 — second secretary, first secretary of the Russian Embassy in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic. In 1993–1997 — section head, department head, deputy director of a department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. From April 9, 1997 — aide to the President of the Russian Federation. From September 14, 1998 — deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation. From February 2, 1999 — deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation and head of the President’s foreign policy directorate. From March 26, 2004 — aide to the President of the Russian Federation. From May 21, 2012 — first deputy chief of staff of the Government of the Russian Federation. From May 9, 2013 — acting chief of staff of the Government of the Russian Federation. From May 22, 2013 — deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation and chief of staff of the Government of the Russian Federation. He has spent his whole life in government service. You could say he devoted it to us. A servant of the people.
Let’s look at his income: In 2012 he earned 10.7 million rubles; in 2011 — 6.8 million rubles; in 2010 — 6.2 million rubles; in 2009 — 6.5 million rubles; in 2008 (the year Prikhodko bought the plot and began construction) — 5.3 million rubles.
We take out a microscope and look at those incomes again, and again we find nothing there that would explain the existence of such luxurious real estate.
How much is this plot worth? Not far away, a large plot of land is for sale at a price of $20,000 per sotka (100 square meters). Let’s even ignore the fact that Prikhodko’s plot is right on the riverbank, while the one we’re comparing it to is 300 meters away. At 279.6 sotkas, at $20,000 each, that comes to $5.6 million, or 184.5 million rubles. Even if Prikhodko’s income before 2008 had not grown and remained 5.3 million rubles a year, then just to buy the land alone he would have had to work for 34 years, live on the street, walk everywhere, and eat nothing. And looking at the photograph of “civil servant” Prikhodko, we firmly refuse to believe that he neither ate nor drank for 34 years. And that is without counting the cost of building a 1,500-square-meter house, a huge bathhouse, utilities, and so on.
And, as usual, the Anti-Corruption Foundation cannot resist putting a cherry on top of its investigation.
Today’s cherry on top is the chief ideologue of United Russia, responsible for all domestic policy in the country—Vyacheslav Viktorovich Volodin, first deputy chief of the presidential administration and member of the bureau of United Russia’s supreme council.
I wouldn’t even call this a dacha. This is more like a “park ensemble.” A pond, some sort of galleries. Apparently there’s a bath complex on the pond, so you can leap straight out of the bathhouse shouting, “Oh, how I love Mother Russia,” and scare off the white swans rocking a fallen star.
A landing pad with its big “H” hints to us that while ordinary suckers sit in traffic jams, their rulers fly by helicopter. By the most conservative estimate, all this is worth no less than 155 million rubles, and most likely well over 200 million.
Let me remind you that since 1996, Monsieur Volodin has been strictly in government service. He could not and cannot legally earn enough to buy and maintain such splendor. Obviously, the monthly upkeep here is greater than his salary.
Let’s look at the disclosures: 2012 — 6.7 million rubles, 2011 — 4 million rubles, 2010 — 6.5 million rubles. True, in 2009 there was a mysterious and astonishing income of 350 million rubles from the sale of shares in an oil-and-fat processing plant, but that only raises questions about how, when, why, and for how much he bought those shares in the first place.
In any case, we can see that “civil servant” Volodin owns property whose maintenance costs exceed his official annual income. That apparently worries Volodin himself as well, which is why he too felt shy about declaring the entire land plot.
Plot #2 has an area of 8,320 square meters (about 89,557 sq ft), Plot #1 11,105 square meters (about 119,534 sq ft). Total: 19,425 square meters (about 4.8 acres). The second plot is registered to the “SOSNY Country Non-Commercial Partnership,” which has already been mentioned several times in this post. And it is not in the disclosure. The 8,320-square-meter plot is there, the 744.2-square-meter house is there, but the 11,105-square-meter plot held through the “country partnership” and actually used by him is not. Our chief “domestic policy” man lies and cheats in his property disclosure.
So what exactly is this “SOSNY” partnership? It seems United Russia member Volodin takes his cues from his elders in everything: they are famous for the “Ozero dacha cooperative,” whose members effectively became an organized criminal group robbing the country and turned into legal billionaires.
And these people created their own “Sosny dacha cooperative”:
Here are the founders:
Full extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
The idea is simple: These crafty crooks from United Russia came up with a way not to declare plots that belong to them: they set up a special “country non-commercial partnership” and decided to register part of their land under it. But the cunning plan of the United Russia schemers turned out not to be so cunning after all. The point is that you must declare not only what belongs directly to an individual, but also what is in actual use, regardless of who formally owns it—whether it belongs to a country partnership, a mother-in-law, or an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands. This, incidentally, also explains the different purchase dates of Sergei Prikhodko’s plots: he simply re-registered a plot that belonged to him from the “country partnership” into his own name.
In addition to the plots where the United Russia members live, the “country non-commercial partnership” owns about 100,000 square meters of land (about 24.7 acres), including an 11th–12th century burial mound complex, which is a federally protected monument.
At this point I would normally move on to organizational conclusions and moral lessons, but while working through this case we noticed something strange.
Let’s take another look at the satellite image from two years ago and our recent photograph.
We can see two changes.
On the left, the United Russia members have acquired another neighbor. The fences of Neverov, Rudensky, and Ashlapov now run right up to the river. So who is this new neighbor?
This is Nikolai Sergeyevich Shustenko, president of the “Basis” group of companies. His business is as closely tied to budget money as he himself is to his neighbors at the dacha. In just the past couple of years, his companies have won tenders worth more than 5 billion rubles, mostly for urban improvement projects in northern Moscow districts.
Shustenko bought two plots: one for himself, and the other, 23,760 square meters in area (about 255,643 sq ft), for his United Russia neighbors (through Transport Network Construction LLC). Here is the second plot:
From this plot, United Russia member Neverov got 2,140 square meters (about 23,035 sq ft; worth $428,000), United Russia member Rudensky got 4,250 square meters (about 45,747 sq ft; worth $850,000), and United Russia member Ashlapov got 9,600 square meters (about 103,334 sq ft; worth $1,920,000).
Thus, we establish the following fact: Deputy Neverov, Deputy Rudensky, and former deputy Ashlapov received income in kind from businessman Shustenko. He bought land and transferred it for the use and disposal of these crooks. The crooks took the land, stand on it, and fenced it off.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation considers this a bribe paid to senior United Russia figures for unknown services—possibly “help” in winning urban improvement tenders.
If Neverov, Rudensky, and Ashlapov want to prove otherwise, let them produce the documents showing that the land was gifted or sold to them, show that they paid tax on the income (if it was a gift), and explain why the land was not declared.
And now for the moral part: I hope you once again understand why the “United Russia” crowd and the Kremlin are so opposed to introducing “illicit enrichment” into the Criminal Code. If such an article existed, all these miracle dacha-owners would end up in the dock, where they would have to explain what money all this was bought with.
I hope all of you understand how important it is to support the common struggle of all decent people for the ratification of Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption and the introduction of this very concept of “illicit enrichment.”
The practical part: In the course of this investigation, the Anti-Corruption Foundation established the following:
Senior state official Volodin violated current anti-corruption legislation and filed a false property disclosure, omitting most of the land plot on which his estate is located. We demand an official investigation and Volodin’s dismissal from public service. Here is our official letter on the matter. United Russia deputies Neverov and Rudensky, as well as former deputy Ashlapov, violated anti-corruption legislation and provided false information in their property disclosures. We demand official recognition of this fact and the expulsion of these crooks from the State Duma. We expect United Russia to expel these people from the party. We ask the media to submit official inquiries on this matter, since formally we ourselves cannot do so. We accuse deputies Neverov and Rudensky and former deputy Ashlapov of receiving a bribe from businessman Shustenko and demand a criminal investigation. Statement. We believe that the property owned by state official Prikhodko is nowhere near commensurate with his income, and we demand that he explain the origin of the funds.
The part about cooperation and nationwide participation. We would very much like you to help us spread this information. Surely Russian citizens will be curious to look at the country estates of these “servants of the people” and ask with us: “And paid for with what money?”
We made this wonderful website: http://dacha.fbk.info/
It would be great if you shared the link http://dacha.fbk.info/ wherever you can.
All sorts of non-political blogs and communities are especially good. This kind of information is interesting to everyone.
If you have an account on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network popular with older users), please post this there as well—or ask your parents to—and urge everyone to share the link. Odnoklassniki is a social network used by lots of people aged 50+ who use the internet but don’t read LiveJournal or Facebook—let’s try to reach them.
And of course Twitter, VK, Facebook, all of that.
There is no link that won’t do some good. Every link, retweet, and repost is a jab with a sharp stick at the vile toad.
LiveJournal now allows embedded tweets, not just images of them. If you hit “retweet” right here, you’ll be a champ:
We made an online poster that anyone can put on their wall. Please do that.
As usual, for the most active among you, we made a poster for offline distribution. Put it up in your apartment building entrance to stir up hatred and hostility toward the social group known as “brazen United Russia crooks who stole money and built themselves palaces.”
Journalists and media workers, we understand that not everyone is allowed to publish this kind of information, but it would be great if you at least tried.
Thanks in advance to everyone who picks up the sharp stick.
And of course, many thanks to the Anti-Corruption Foundation staff who worked on this investigation. Special thanks to Furious George (he’s incredibly cool) and the brave paraglider pilot @BlackKarlsson.
If you like what the Anti-Corruption Foundation does, you can support us—the Foundation exists on donations from citizens.