“Today they showed us 20-square-meter apartments. It seems funny, but people actually buy housing like this...”
This quote from Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov, uttered while he was inspecting a 20-square-meter apartment in Kazan, instantly spread across the internet and became a trendy meme.
The meme has already worn thin for everyone, but today we have an excellent reason to return to it—to look at it, so to speak, from a new angle.
Everyone probably thought: “Those officials have completely lost touch in their palaces and state dachas, and now they laugh at ordinary apartments.” And that is exactly the case. The deputy prime minister responsible for the economy was amused by the very idea that it is possible to live in 20 square meters. And even to take out a mortgage to buy such an apartment. To him, it is both funny and unimaginable.
So what exactly is funny here? Sure, there are funny things in the news: someone lives in the forest and eats bark and roots—hilarious, people probably really do that. Russians make fancy tank tops out of family underwear. A little girl draws with her grandfather’s ashes, and children in Ivanovo made an image of Russia out of trash. And look, a bearded dwarf in the circus! Ha-ha. But what exactly is wrong with apartments in Kazan?
And now I’ll tell you why Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov found it all so amusing.
At the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation), we have been following Shuvalov for a long time; he is one of our oldest recurring subjects. Over the years we have accumulated a mountain of material, and among it we found a very fitting answer to why Shuvalov finds everything so irresistibly funny.
Here is a building that needs no introduction: the Stalinist high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment. One of the grandest residential buildings in Moscow—five-meter ceilings in the entrance hall, marble, panoramic views of the Kremlin, and a rich history.
More than a year ago, we at the ACF started receiving messages and letters from residents. “Someone important is buying up apartments here!” “Motorcades and the FSO (Federal Protective Service) keep pulling up to the building,” “A construction project of the century is underway, all for some official.”
So we looked into all the large apartments in the building—the ones that, in our view, would suit an official of that scale. We searched and found nothing. All the recent transactions involved anyone but an official. But the messages kept coming. At some point we decided to take a radical step and check every single apartment in the building. And there are 700 of them, just so you know.
And here is what we found. The building really had acquired a powerful landlord. In 2014, a certain gentleman bought the central apartment in the main tower, and then, month after month, began snapping up the neighboring apartments one by one.
In 2014 he bought five apartments. In 2015 he became the owner of four more. And very recently, in May 2016, he bought another one. Total: 10 in two years.
Most importantly, all the apartments are located on the same floor—the 14th—and adjoin one another.
Apartments in a building like this are, as you can imagine, far from cheap. On listing sites, asking prices are around 45 million rubles for one standard 60-square-meter apartment in the building. But some are much more expensive.
Which means that what this mysterious buyer is doing is extremely expensive. You would need a billionaire for this.
The buyer’s name is Sergei Pavlovich Kotlyarenko. So let’s take a look at this rich man and big spender.
Recognize him? Neither do we.
Kotlyarenko is no oligarch and no oil magnate. He is not a governor, not a Rockefeller heir, and not a Hollywood superstar. He is a lawyer.
Let’s take a closer look at his biography.
And now at the biography of one very easily amused official?
Kotlyarenko and Shuvalov were classmates. Since 1999, Kotlyarenko’s career has been inseparably tied to one official—Igor Shuvalov. Shuvalov placed him in jobs everywhere he himself served as an official.
And at the same time, an even more important function was placed on Kotlyarenko’s shoulders.
He oversaw and managed all of the Shuvalov family’s assets (where those assets came from is described in detail here). This was even before the deputy prime minister supposedly transferred them to Russia. The shares of the famous offshore company Severin, owned by housewife Olga Shuvalova, bear the signature of this very Kotlyarenko.
And do you remember the “blind trust” into which Shuvalov supposedly transferred all his assets in order to avoid the conflict of interest prohibited for public officials? Let me remind you that the concept of a “blind trust” means that one person hands over their assets to a third party who is completely independent, has no ties to them, and gives up any ability to control those assets at all.
Well, that “independent” manager of Shuvalov’s assets is also Kotlyarenko.
Here is the company “Profdir,” 100% owned by Kotlyarenko:
And here is the list of companies managed by “Profdir.” All three are directly owned by Shuvalov or members of his family.
Let’s return to Kotelnicheskaya. Here is what the row of apartments bought by Kotlyarenko looks like now.
A bit of background, so you can really feel it.
It all started with the largest apartment in the center. It was bought in April 2014. Crimea had just been annexed by Russia, and war was beginning in eastern Ukraine. The ruble was collapsing before everyone’s eyes, and people were lining up to buy televisions and microwave ovens. But none of that affected certain people. The first apartment was a respectable size—142 square meters—but still not truly state-official scale, of course. The next month, a small apartment on the right was bought, and the month after that, the neighboring one. In both cases, the previous residents moved to apartments on other floors of the same building. In October 2014, they bought the apartment to the left of the largest one. In 2015, they bought three more apartments in the same wing and the missing one on the right. Thus, by the end of 2015, the entire central section of the building and the adjacent apartments had been bought out.
We thought that was it—the full set, ready to be combined. But no. Quite recently, in May 2016, Kotlyarenko bought yet another apartment on the same floor, but by a different elevator landing (the far-left one in the diagram). Apparently, the buying spree is not over, and soon the buyers may manage to assemble a royal flush of 17 apartments on the floor.
In almost every case (8 out of 10), the former residents simply moved into similar apartments on other floors of the high-rise. As residents and neighbors themselves wrote to us, everyone moved more than willingly. The new apartments were offered renovated and with extra cash on top. No bargaining was required—the buyer agreed to any terms.
Those whose apartments caught Shuvalov’s eye undoubtedly got very lucky. It is like winning the lottery. You live in an apartment that is already worth a great deal, and then some lawyer shows up and offers you “any amount of money” for it.
It appears that the 10 apartments will be combined into one enormous residence. Or more than ten—the buying process is clearly not finished yet. A combined apartment approaching 1,000 square meters, given the building’s history, panoramic views, marble entrance halls, and the recent renovation of the entire building, will probably become the most expensive and impressive apartment in the capital.
We have no doubt whatsoever that Kotlyarenko is buying up apartments in the high-rise without bargaining specifically for Shuvalov. With Shuvalov’s money.
Our “most honest and transparent official” was too embarrassed to openly buy ten apartments totaling 720 square meters. It would not do for a deputy prime minister to say, “I’ll buy it for any price.” The manager does the legwork, and later only a single super-apartment will be transferred over.
Why are we sure that this is exactly what will happen? Look at another building: 8 Kosygin Street, Moscow.
The building stands right at the beginning of Kosygin Street, is fairly well known, and is called the “Kosygin House” because Alexei Kosygin (a Soviet premier) himself lived there. Some of his relatives, incidentally, still live there. So it is another building with provenance, in other words.
The same story almost copy-pasted, only three years earlier. In a single month, three apartments were bought: two neighboring ones with a combined area of 322 square meters, and one several floors below measuring 152 square meters.
Here is an apartment first owned by Kotlyarenko, and here it is transferred into the ownership of the Shuvalov family company “Sova Real Estate” (the London apartment is also registered to it).
One of the apartments (151 square meters) was re-registered in Kotlyarenko’s name, which gave him the right to head the local homeowners’ association. We asked local residents about it, and they say that it is not Kotlyarenko living there at all, but “the servants.” We do not know whether the Shuvalovs really housed servants there, or whether that is simply how they refer to Kotlyarenko.
So that is the real-estate story. Let me remind you that Shuvalov loudly proclaims at every turn that he is the most honest and transparent official and that he has declared everything. He even boasts about it—just look:
After a relatively short search, the Anti-Corruption Foundation found 13 (!!!) apartments in Moscow with a total area of 1,200 square meters (!!!) that Shuvalov did not mention with a single word in his disclosure. In Shuvalov’s view, apparently, we are not supposed to know about them. See for yourself in the declaration: there is an endless list of real estate, but these 13 apartments are not there. And they should be—Shuvalov may be able to avoid declaring his Rolls-Royce by registering it to a legal entity, but real estate he is required to declare.
Stories like this honestly fill me with rage. Just think: this man has been in public service since 1998. Before that, he was a lawyer for oligarchs who ran wild in the 1990s. He feeds people fairy tales about money earned from an “option on Sibneft” from Abramovich. For 18 years Shuvalov has been “serving the people.” And in those 18 years as an official, he has come to imagine himself a full-fledged aristocrat. He is not some drab clerk with a dusty office in the Government House.
He is an imposing gentleman in a Rolls-Royce, the owner of nothing but exclusive properties, each one seemingly with historical figures having lived there before him. The economic crisis that Shuvalov so earnestly discusses on television has not touched his family. A London apartment worth £12 million (the building, incidentally, once housed MI6 headquarters), a castle in Austria, Suslov’s party dacha in Zarechye, Kosygin’s apartment, and now the jewel of his aristocratic collection—a Stalinist high-rise apartment approaching 1,000 square meters.
Excess and luxury beyond any bounds of decency—that is what Igor Ivanovich is all about. Family coats of arms, family nests all over the world, dozens of servants—Igor Ivanovich loves all of that! A winter garden with exotic plants costing €2 million, collectible cars—Igor Ivanovich likes all of that too!
Looking at those owls on the coat of arms, I would not be surprised if Shuvalov soon adds a hard sign to his surname for extra aristocratic effect.
I can just picture a Shuvalov evening at his estate in Zarechye. In the three-story servants’ house, work is in full swing—the cook serves pheasant stuffed with venison, the children in neighboring halls paint Alpine landscapes or play a mazurka; ah, what a life! Then his daughter runs up and says, “Papa, Papa, those nationalist loudmouths on the internet are saying you’re a shameless thief and that your option story is made up!” And he replies, “Don’t trouble your head over it, ma chérie, I’m a liberal and a free-marketeer, everything will be fine.”
So there he is, pinning medals on himself, dressing in a frock coat, reading documents on embossed paper, and relaxing. As he drifts off, he mutters, “federal program,” “subsidized mortgage rate,” “affordable housing,” and then suddenly bursts into loud, ringing laughter so hard he wakes himself up—that is him remembering your 20-square-meter apartment, and cheese substitute, and the economic crisis.
Hang in there.
P.S.
They will not tell you about this on television. And yet we really want more Russian citizens to learn about the lifestyle of their government’s deputy prime minister, right? So please do not be lazy, friends—click “like,” “share,” “repost,” “thumbs up,” and of course “great.”
Do you like our investigations? Want more major exposés? You can support the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation here.
P.P.S.
Sorry, but I want you to look once more at the floor plan of Shuvalov’s tsar-apartment. It is simply unbelievable. With the money spent just on buying up apartments in the Kotelnicheskaya high-rise alone (without renovation, finishing, etc.), one could have bought 600 (!!!) 20-square-meter apartments—the very kind Shuvalov laughed at so much in Kazan. And this is the life of a government official and his purchases.
P.P.P.S.
Sorry again, but after finishing this post, an important thought came to mind that I want to share. You know the Russian proverb: for some, war is misery; for others, it is a dear mother? It fits our hero perfectly.
The purchases began right after the start of the conflict with Ukraine and the sanctions. They continued actively against the backdrop of the economic crisis. Real incomes are falling, food prices are rising, there is no money to index pensions, and one of the country’s top government officials is buying up elite real estate floor by floor.
So for us, it is patriotic frenzy, St. George ribbons (a Russian military remembrance symbol), and “we must rally around the leader, the party, and the government,” while they themselves are pulling goldfish out of these murky waters.
According to Shuvalov, the population is ready to eat less and use electricity less often for the sake of supporting the Kremlin. And what has he himself given up? What price is he paying for the war and the crisis? Is he risking his life by slipping on the marble floor of his new apartment?
Once again—sharing is encouraged. And supporting the ACF is very easy: just follow this link.