Well then, congratulations. The property of officials’ children has finally been turned into a state secret. Special ciphers and all that.
You may remember how a record disappeared from Rosreestr (Russia’s state property registry) showing that the fairy-tale pagoda on Rublyovka (an elite suburban area outside Moscow) was registered to Shoigu’s daughter. It just vanished, that was it. They erased a piece of history and pretended it had never been there at all. Or how, instead of the owner’s name, Rogozin’s huge apartment listed someone called “value missing.”
This is completely illegal; under no circumstances should anything like this be possible. But the apparent excuse was that the enemy never sleeps and is just about to find the defense minister’s or deputy prime minister’s real estate on the cadastral map. The Pentagon will sign up on Rosreestr, pay the fee, order an extract, and immediately launch ultra-precise ballistic missiles straight from Washington to Barvikha (an upscale area on Rublyovka).
Then a Rosreestr record disappeared for property belonging to Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov. Also illegal, but also explainable, apparently, by the idea that the serfs are not supposed to know how lavishly the tsar’s relative lives after recently becoming Russia’s youngest billionaire. Security, you understand.
But what has happened now has no logical explanation at all.
Rosreestr has erased property records for Artyom and Igor Chaika, the dear sons of Prosecutor General Chaika.
And they were not simply erased. Their names were replaced with special universal codes.
Look. This 2,000 sq. m house was previously registered to Artyom Chaika.
Here is an extract from October 2015, in black and white: Artyom Yuryevich Chaika:
We checked yesterday, and it turns out Artyom Chaika is no longer there. The owner is now someone called LSDU3.
Could this be some kind of technical database error? No: LSDU3 also turns out to own the land the house stands on, as well as the garage and utility building on the property.
In other words, in the official real estate ownership registry, Artyom Chaika no longer exists. There is no such person. In his place now stands LSDU3.
That is not all. It turns out Artyom Yuryevich is not the only one this happened to. His brother, a former official and now a mushroom-investor, so to speak, mushroom entrepreneur, has also been renamed everywhere. And despite the family connection, he was assigned his own unique code—an even cooler one than his brother’s, if you ask me. Igor Chaika is now officially YFYAU9!
On the plot next to his brother’s, he had a 570 sq. m guest house registered in his name. We ordered the extract almost a year ago:
And now we look:
Hello there, old YFYAU9!
And the 60 sotkas of land under the house (about 0.6 hectares) and the guest house there now belong not to Igor Yuryevich, but to the mysterious (yet very wealthy) YFYAU9.
So the entire Chaika family nest in the village of Uspenskoye on Rublyovka has ended up divided between LSDU3 and YFYAU9.
Who are these Chaika brothers? Special persons under state protection? People with access to state secrets? Military commanders? Secret agents? No—just a pair of rich louts. They are not even civil servants.
Ordinary parasites living off state contracts. But now they are protected by the state as if they were a great secret.
Daddy Chaika, who is about to be reappointed prosecutor general, apparently believes that his sons’ property is a secret that must be protected at the state level. No one should know what these “businessmen” actually own.
So they profit off us, make money from the state budget, but we are forbidden from knowing about the palaces they build with that money.
ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation) categorically rejects this approach. We believe Rosreestr officials are criminals, that what they are doing is completely illegal, and that they must be held accountable for it. It is obvious they are acting on instructions from the Kremlin, but that changes nothing. We are suing Rosreestr over every case in which officials and their children are classified or erased from the records.
In the meantime, here is the full list of the Chaika brothers’ real estate known to us, including properties not previously published. We are not blacking out house and apartment numbers. If this can no longer be found in Rosreestr, it will at least remain with us.
Igor Chaika’s townhouse on Rublyovka, purchased when he was 18 (!!!). It is worth around $2 million and has an area of 348 sq. m.
Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Another of Igor Chaika’s townhouses in the same Gorki-8 settlement, bought at the same time, when he was 18. Slightly larger in area, it is also worth more than $2 million.
Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
The land under these townhouses, owned by Igor Chaika.
Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
An apartment in Krasnogorsk, 59 sq. m. Bought at age 19.
Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Another apartment in Krasnogorsk, also purchased when he was 19.
Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Why Igor Chaika needs small apartments in Krasnogorsk is anyone’s guess. Perhaps he houses his front lawyers and nominee directors there, or perhaps he grows button mushrooms there for export.
Igor’s land in Uspenskoye on Rublyovka, 60 sotkas (about 0.6 hectares). Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Guest house in Uspenskoye. 572 sq. m. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Country house, same location. 300 sq. m. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Main house in Uspenskoye, 1,953 sq. m. It was registered to Artyom Chaika. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Utility building, 131 sq. m. Property of Artyom. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
Garage for a great many cars, 204 sq. m. Artyom Chaika. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
The 43 sotkas of land (about 0.43 hectares) on which all this stands also belong to Artyom Chaika, not some so-called LSDU3. Set of extracts from before and after the name was encoded.
We compiled this list over several years of studying the Chaikas’ assets, and it is absolutely not complete. If you know anything else, write to us via Black Box. Letters about Chaika are our favorite kind.
Let me remind you that the lion’s share of the Chaikas’ assets can be found in our film. And the best response to the Chaikas’ attempts to hide their criminal dealings from us is to reread our investigation from last year. There, YFYAU9 and LSDU3 still appear under their real names.
P.S. The Chaikas forgot to encode Igor in the extract for an apartment in the departmental building on Rochdelskaya (a government-affiliated residential building). We are drawing the responsible parties’ attention to this and timing how long it takes before Igor Chaika is replaced there by YFYAU9.
P.S. 2 Please share this post. We want more people to learn about these new priorities in the realm of state secrecy.