Yesterday, traffic police officers stopped my car and demanded that everyone inside write a statement explaining: “WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN MALAKHOVKA TODAY?”
That sounds like the opening scene of a supernatural story or a detective novel. The question itself sounds like some kind of secret code: answer correctly and they let you go; answer wrong and they take you to the police station.
When asked on what grounds they could harass citizens with demands like that, the answer was: “Orders from above.”
Well then, if it was “orders from above,” here is the explanation in writing.
Yesterday in Malakhovka, we were photographing the country house of the daughter of Deputy Prosecutor General Gennady Lopatin. More precisely, two country houses: Lopatin has two daughters and two suburban homes in Malakhovka. The point was to show clearly that Gennady Lopatin—a top-ranking justice official who has spent his entire life in government service and is one of Prosecutor General Chaika’s closest associates—is a vile corrupt official. His family’s spending exceeds its income by dozens of times, and the story we told about the Lopatins in the Chaika film is only a small part of what can be laid at Lopatin’s door.
Let us remind you that the official’s wife, Olga Lopatina—whom he fictitiously divorced in 2012—was a co-owner of a sugar business together with the wives of the leaders of the “Tsapok gang” (a notorious criminal gang from southern Russia).
We will walk through everything with documents and facts, and you will be left with no doubt.
In her latest financial disclosure, Olga Lopatina reported an annual income of 0 rubles.
That did not stop her from becoming a co-investor and co-owner of two Greek hotels worth €25 million and €14 million. The hotels were purchased together with Prosecutor General Chaika’s son, Artyom Chaika.
Apparently, an income of 0 rubles was also enough for Lopatina to buy a rather ostentatious villa on the Halkidiki peninsula.
The fact that Lopatin is still serving as Chaika’s deputy two weeks after the publication of our investigation and the release of the film Chaika is a colossal absurdity and a profound disgrace for the law enforcement system of the Russian Federation.
Let us recall Lopatina’s response to our investigation: she claimed that the company linked to the Tsapoks had somehow been foisted on her, and that she and Gennady Lopatin had absolutely, definitely divorced, no question about it. And if they divorced—well then, nothing to see here. People split up, and each goes off to do whatever they want: Lopatin remains a prosecutor, for example, while Lopatina becomes an investor in Greek real estate. Supposedly Lopatin bears no responsibility at all—after all, how could he control his ex-wife? And really, these things happen all the time: people live together for 30 years, get divorced, and the very next year the ex-wife turns into a dollar millionaire.
That is a brazen lie. We will now prove that while they were still married, the Lopatins were buying up elite real estate—not abroad, but in Moscow.
Let us look at Gennady Lopatin’s latest 2014 financial disclosure.
The disclosure creates the impression that Deputy Prosecutor General Lopatin is an honest, decent, and fairly poor official. To his name, he has only an old Volga car and one-sixth of an apartment. Salary: 4 million rubles.
But the reality is somewhat different. The apartment of which Deputy Prosecutor General Lopatin owns a one-sixth share is located in an elite residential complex on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. This four-room apartment has an area of 168 square meters.
The apartment was purchased in August 2009. The current price of a similar apartment in this building is $2 million, or 60 million rubles at the 2009 exchange rate. The Lopatin family’s income for 2009 was 11 million rubles.
Another one-sixth share belongs to Olga Lopatina. Yet another confirmation that the Lopatins’ divorce is a sham. As usually happens in a genuine divorce, spouses divide property—but they did not, and they continue to jointly own the apartment on Tsvetnoy.
The remaining four shares belong to the Lopatins’ two daughters—Iryna and Marina—their grandson, and their granddaughter. Lopatin’s grandson was 4 years old when his share in the Tsvetnoy apartment was registered in his name. His granddaughter was 5.
There are quite a lot of people involved, and the surnames differ (both daughters are married), so we drew a Lopatin family tree specifically to avoid getting lost in who is related to whom.
Prosecutors’ office officials do not keep insisting for nothing that the property of adult children does not need to be declared. We have always maintained that corrupt officials register their assets precisely in the names of their adult children. Deputy Prosecutor General Lopatin did exactly that.
It did not stop at one apartment. In the same year, 2009, both of the Lopatins’ daughters became owners of two neighboring apartments in the Kutuzovskaya Riviera residential complex. The deputy prosecutor general’s two daughters bought the two 130-square-meter apartments on the same day.
At the time of purchase, the elder Lopatin daughter, Marina, was 25, and the younger, Irina, was 23. The price today of one apartment of the same size in that building is $1.5 million (45 million rubles at the time). It is obvious that the parents paid for the apartments. At that age, the daughters were hardly likely to have earned $1.5 million each on their own.
The younger Lopatin daughter has already sold her apartment (and we will certainly find out what she bought instead). The elder daughter, Marina, appears from her social media to still be living in Kutuzovskaya Riviera.
So in 2009, the Lopatins bought three apartments in elite residential complexes in Moscow, with a total value of $5 million. That purchase exceeded their family income for 2009 by a factor of 32.
THAT IS, IN THAT VERY SAME 2009 (sorry for the caps, but I cannot help it), WHEN LOPATINA WAS A CO-FOUNDER OF A COMPANY WITH THE TSAPOKS.
But what does Malakhovka have to do with any of this?
In Malakhovka, a lovely old dacha settlement 10 km (about 6 miles) from the Moscow Ring Road, the deputy prosecutor general’s daughters are building country houses!
Just as with the apartments, so that neither daughter feels left out, the country houses are being built for them simultaneously as well. Those are what the ACF team went to inspect yesterday. The houses are located here and here.
As you approach, everything is in the finest prosecutorial tradition: tall solid fences and so many cameras that it is hard to tell who is filming whom better—we are filming the house, or the house is filming us.
Here are those carefully guarded country houses belonging to the prosecutor’s daughters.
The house of Irina Gennadyevna was completed in August of this year and is still being finished inside. 1,000 square meters.
The house of Marina Gennadyevna is slightly more modest at 730 square meters. It was completed in December 2014.
It is difficult for us to estimate the cost of constructing and finishing properties like these. A completed house of similar size—but with much more modest finishing—is listed for 208 million rubles. Let us even cut that by a factor of FOUR, so no one can accuse us of exaggeration. That would make one daughter’s house worth 50 million rubles, and the other’s 40 million rubles. In reality, it is much, much more—but fine.
The Lopatins have much more property that we have not yet found, but the search has only just begun. From the scale of what we have already uncovered, it is clear that official Lopatin’s family fortune runs into tens of millions of dollars.
Take, for example, this photograph, which nicely captures the Lopatins’ lifestyle. It shows Deputy Prosecutor General Lopatin’s grandson on a business jet. He is 8 years old in the photo.
But never mind the business jet—maybe it was some government social program, and all schoolchildren were being flown like that to Chelyabinsk on field trips.
Let us simply sum up and calculate the total value of the real estate belonging to Deputy Prosecutor General Lopatin’s family that ACF has found so far (and we have clearly found less than actually exists), as well as the official income visible in the disclosures:
1.098 billion rubles. That is the kind of wealth accumulated not by the family of a businessman, but by the family of a deputy prosecutor general—even by the most conservative estimate.
Most importantly, I urge you once again to remember that in 2009, with Lopatin’s state salary and Lopatina’s zero income, the family acquired $5 million worth of property, or 150 million rubles at the 2009 exchange rate.
Do you still need more proof? Who can still say “honest prosecutor” after this?
Is it still unclear to anyone why the Lopatins’ partners—the Tsapoks—were able for years to murder and rape people in Kushchyovskaya with complete impunity?
While I was writing this post, news broke that Lopatina has sued me and all of ACF. She says she is offended:
Strange that Browder is not on the list, along with foreign intelligence services. According to Chaika, they are the evil masterminds behind everything.
Well, fine—we will see them in court. Though really, they should be suing the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, which is what placed their names next to the Tsapoks’ names.
Meanwhile, in response to many requests, we have finally created a tool through which anyone can join the fight against the Chaikas and the Tsapoks.
We have received a huge number of messages: give us the text of a complaint, I want to file one too.
Here it is: https://prokuror.fbk.info/
You can file a complaint with: a) the president (formally, only he can make the necessary decision), b) the Investigative Committee, regarding specific episodes, c) Channel One, demanding that the situation be covered on television.
If some particular part of the investigation especially struck you, you can focus on just that one.
And, as usual: the courts and the prosecutor’s office are on the side of the Chaikas, the Lopatins, and the Tsapoks. On our side are the truth and public opinion. Help spread this post so that everyone in Russia knows the scale of the “earnings” inside the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Tomorrow we will try to release a short video on this topic as well.