The secret allocation of apartments to officials, with permission for immediate privatization, has made any income disclosure completely meaningless. In reality, once you factor in the market value of these apartments, their actual income is an order of magnitude higher than the declared amounts. That is why our top officials, whose formal incomes can already compete with those of Western officials, are in fact the highest-paid in the world.
Take a look: Alburov published an investigation today about Rogozin’s apartment. Transparency International wrote about it last week, which somewhat stole Zhora’s thunder, but he provides documents proving that the “alleged deputy prime minister’s apartment” does in fact belong to him. More interestingly, he traces the history of how this apartment was swapped with a certain Dagestani man named Livi Khanukhovich Isaev. Isaev gave up an apartment worth 500 million rubles in exchange for one worth 275 million rubles.
And I want to write specifically about the “old” 225-square-meter apartment (about 2,420 square feet) that he received from the state.
And this is not really about Rogozin personally; we are simply using his case to examine a scheme that is applied across the board.
Dmitry Rogozin was appointed deputy prime minister in December 2011. Before that he was Russia’s representative to NATO, and before that he had spent many years as a member of parliament — in other words, he was clearly not lacking housing.
In March 2013, Rogozin received this 225-square-meter apartment (about 2,420 square feet) in Tishinsky Lane. A great new building, right in the city center.
Rogozin registered his wife, his son — the very one who has now been appointed to replace Vasilyeva at the Defense Ministry — and his son’s children at the apartment. Five people. That comes to 45 square meters per person (about 484 square feet each).
And by December 2013, they had already privatized the apartment and registered it as private property. Alburov writes that four apartments in this building are currently for sale. Based on their prices, we can estimate Rogozin’s apartment to be worth 275 million rubles. In 2013, moreover, its value in U.S. dollar terms was significantly higher.
So Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin received income in kind from the state. No taxes, no disclosure. It appears nowhere, because formally there is no income. He simply privatized official housing.
But we are not looking at paperwork — we are looking at facts. And the fact is that the family became 275 million rubles richer, and it received those 275 million rubles from us, through the state.
In the 2013 income declaration, we see reported income of 8 million rubles.
But in substance, it should be not 8 million, but 283 million rubles.
Changes things a bit, doesn’t it?
Even if we spread that amount over five years as deputy prime minister, the “apartment bonus” still comes to 55 million rubles a year.
In other words, the real salary of a deputy prime minister of the Russian government was about 60 million rubles a year, or 5 million rubles a month.
Please find me a Western official, from even the richest country, with a salary like that. The U.S. president earns less.
The official salary figures for top officials — already far from small — are simply a lie concealed by legal trickery.
That is why I will never tire of repeating: Russian officials are the richest in the world, even if they are also among the most inept.
That is why I will never tire of repeating: this regime must be fought, because it is anti-people and anti-state.
PS By the way, register as a voter in the primaries to form the Democratic Coalition’s electoral list. Vote for those who will not be afraid to raise these issues in the Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament).
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