Last Friday, opera singer and United Russia lawmaker Maria Maksakova married Communist Party (KPRF) deputy Denis Voronenkov. She tied the knot with an opposition politician.
Few people had heard of this Voronenkov before the wedding, but he is unquestionably someone who deserves special attention.
Communist deputy Voronenkov has had an outstanding political career: he has been in public service since 1995, working in the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the Supreme Court, serving for five years as deputy mayor of Naryan-Mar, then as deputy head of the administration of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, and now as a lawmaker. A member of the State Duma committee on combating corruption.
Denis Voronenkov is one of the poorest deputies in the State Duma, and by good tradition he becomes the latest subject of our #20 series.
Last year, Voronenkov earned less than 2.5 million rubles. And that was actually a good year. In 2012, he earned 2 million rubles, and in 2011 only 300,000 rubles in total—that’s 25,000 rubles a month. The income of his wife (now ex-wife) never exceeded 1 million rubles.
All in all, when you look at the “income” section of Communist deputy Voronenkov’s disclosure, it’s a sight for sore eyes: the lawmaker lives exclusively on his parliamentary salary, his wife is no billionaire, and there are no options or blind trusts lurking anywhere.
But that feeling doesn’t last long—specifically, only until you look at the “real estate” and “vehicles” sections.
Here is the real estate portfolio of a member of the State Duma committee on combating corruption, a public official with 20 years of service:
5 apartments with a total area of 1,088 sq. m, 2 garages, and a dacha (country house) of 887 sq. m with a 189 sq. m non-residential building.
Communist deputy Voronenkov’s car collection looks especially fitting for a parliamentarian. Once again, Voronenkov is not some “businessman-turned-official”; his entire life he has worked either in public service or in academia:
As part of the #20 campaign, we identified several of Voronenkov’s apartments. At first we thought maybe they were in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and had practically fallen into his hands for free—but no.
The largest apartment, 446.4 sq. m, is located not in some place like Naryan-Mar, but on Tverskaya Street in Moscow.
The apartment occupies the top two floors of this building near Mayakovskaya metro station. The property is registered jointly, half to his son and half to a certain Alexander Nikolaevich Plotnikov.
Judging by the listings, the average price per square meter in this building is about 653,000 rubles. That means Voronenkov’s apartment is worth more than 291 million rubles.
Another, slightly more modest apartment of 226.6 sq. m is located at the intersection of Rublyovskoye and Mozhayskoye highways (again, not in Naryan-Mar), in a luxury residential complex.
This apartment is registered to Yulia Alexandrovna Voronenkova, the now ex-wife of Communist deputy Voronenkov. The price tag for an apartment of the same size in this building ranges from 92 to 120 million rubles.
The value of the Voronenkov family’s assets is approaching 1 billion rubles—his two apartments alone are worth nearly 400 million. Then there is the dacha, 3 other not-at-all-small apartments (70.6 sq. m, 170.3 sq. m, and 174 sq. m), and 5 very expensive cars. At the same time, this public official claims to earn 2 million rubles a year. At that level of family income, Voronenkov would need 500 years (!) of uninterrupted work to afford what he has declared.
Cases exactly like this are why we launched our campaign against illicit enrichment. If our initiative had been adopted, Voronenkov would have had to explain in long and painstaking detail where he got the money for all this real estate and these cars.
And of course one could assume that Voronenkov would lie and squirm, spinning stories about gifts, his mother-in-law, his son-in-law, or a two-room apartment in Novokuznetsk**™**, but in Voronenkov’s case we know a bit more than that:
Here is yet another argument in favor of adopting our bill against illicit enrichment. This is exactly how crooked officials are handed money—in cash, in a suitcase—which they then use to buy luxury real estate and cars. And that is precisely why they will fight to the very end to ensure that Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption is never ratified.
We congratulate Voronenkov—the raider deputy from the State Duma committee on combating corruption—on his personal celebration.
State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin performs a creative gift at the wedding of a deputy accused by the Investigative Committee of raiding a building and taking a $100,000 bribe.
ACF will officially appeal to the Communist Party faction with a proposal to expel Voronenkov, since the faction supports ratification of Article 20 and the deputy’s income is so impossible to explain.
Update.
As it turns out, this Voronenkov also stole his dissertation.