The “Serdyukov case” is the best proof that Putin’s claims about fighting corruption are a sham. There was so much noise around it: daily TV reports about billions being stolen, and on television they chirped happily, “At last, a real fight against corruption has begun.”
Right now, the only somewhat prominent person in the dock is Vasilyeva. Serdyukov himself supposedly has nothing to do with it: he heads a state-owned defense enterprise and even still rides around in a black Mercedes with a flashing official beacon.
And now I’m going to tell you an absolutely astonishing story, after which you’ll understand just how well things are going for Serdyukov and his family—and how badly they’re going for the rest of us.
The thing is, we discovered—thanks to ACF’s St. Petersburg branch (ACF, the Anti-Corruption Foundation)—that the former defense minister’s son is effortlessly acquiring even those Defense Ministry properties that appeared in episodes of the “Serdyukov case.”
In 2010, the Defense Ministry put up for auction a plot of land outside St. Petersburg, in the settlement of Komarovo. Not just any plot, but one containing a cultural heritage site: the Yukhnevich estate, built at the very beginning of the last century. In Soviet times, this dacha (a country house) served as an “out-of-town” kindergarten for the Defense Ministry.
At auction, the plot and the three buildings on it went to a certain Pyotr Usov. Usov and his brother were the sort of “businessmen” from Serdyukov’s orbit—partners of his son-in-law Puzikov, hanging around the Defense Ministry.
Serdyukov has enough of these “former partners” to fill 56 volumes of a criminal case. Who knows who they all are.
But in our story, time eventually put everything in its proper place.
Just a couple of months ago, right before New Year’s, Ded Moroz (the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus) brought a certain boy a gift with a market value of more than 200 million rubles:
Two hectares of land (about 20,000 square meters, or roughly 5 acres) in the prestigious Kurortny District ended up in the ownership of Anatoly Serdyukov’s 27-year-old son, Sergei.
Five years after Minister Serdyukov so valiantly “defended the interests of the Motherland” by selling off state property, that very property ended up in the hands of his own son.
If ACF could uncover this, then the FSB and the Investigative Committee certainly could have as well—but they ~~didn’t want to~~ somehow failed to.
Since we’ve started talking about Sergei Anatolyevich Serdyukov, let’s say a bit more about him. Let’s get to know him better, so to speak, so we won’t be surprised later when flipping through *Forbes*.
It almost feels awkward to write about what Sergei Serdyukov does. Why, of course he’s a businessman! He wins government contracts! For example, he leases real estate to the Federal Tax Service.
In August, he bought a building; in December, he successfully leased it to the Federal Tax Service for 9.5 million rubles:
But why should an ambitious businessman limit himself to a single 15,000-square-meter building? He could buy an entire industrial block instead. And that is exactly what the younger Serdyukov did this summer. He now owns several warehouses, a dispatch building, a pumping station, a boiler house, and a fuel-oil facility—18 buildings in total.
But those are far from all of Serdyukov’s son’s acquisitions. A year ago, Sergei bought a 10-apartment (18-room) building in St. Petersburg at 5B Panfilova Street.
This purchase cost the young businessman Sergei Serdyukov 47 million rubles. We’re waiting to see whom he will lease this building to.
It’s not even clear which side Sergei Serdyukov inherited his entrepreneurial streak from. Sergei’s mother, Tatyana—Serdyukov’s first wife—also did quite well for herself in real estate acquisitions in 2014.
In January of last year, she bought a 117-square-meter apartment in central St. Petersburg on Zakharievskaya Street. An apartment like that should cost around 10–12 million rubles.
In April 2014, she bought another one, 151 square meters, in an elite residential complex on Shpalernaya Street. Similar apartments in that building are listed for sale at 55 million rubles.
That was quite a lucky year for the Serdyukov family. The elder Serdyukov was amnestied, found a new job, and even drives around with an official flashing beacon. The younger Serdyukov, having only just registered his first sole proprietorship, is buying up St. Petersburg real estate worth hundreds of millions of rubles. Clearly the son of a truly outstanding minister.
Take a guess: will this information interest the “law enforcement agencies” or the state media that proclaimed the dawn of “Putin’s era of fighting corruption”?