I had a good laugh when I saw a New York Times article about how the Clintons accumulated property. The headline was especially funny.
From Modest to Grand: A Look at How Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Homes Changed Over Time.
Seriously, “grand”? Somebody should take the New York Times reporters to Barvikha (an elite luxury suburb outside Moscow) so they can see what kind of houses Russian officials have.
This is what Bill and Hillary’s home looked like in 1975–1976:
It cost $17,200.
This is the kind of house they lived in from 1976 to 1978:
By then, Bill Clinton was already the state attorney general. Compare that with the dacha of any regional prosecutor in Russia.
From 1980 to 1982, the Clintons lived here (the house cost $112,000), and Bill Clinton was already governor:
Today, the home of a former U.S. president and a presidential candidate looks like this:
It costs $1.75 million. And, by the standards of our officials, this tiny shack caused a huge scandal. The Clintons were accused of not being able to afford it and of having received a loan from one of their political donors.
In 2000, the Clintons bought another house in Washington for $2.8 million:
So those last two pictures show the homes of the president of the United States—or, more likely, two U.S. presidents—from the richest country on Earth.
Now let’s compare that with our own. And not even with presidents, but with some nobodies in supporting roles who have never seriously been involved in either business or public politics. Just ordinary officials.
Vyacheslav Volodin.
First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration. He has been a State Duma deputy since 1999 and is legally barred from doing business. For years he has been feeding gullible people stories about how he sold shares in a fats-and-oils plant in Saratov ten years ago and has supposedly been living like an Arab sheikh off that money ever since.
House area: 744.2 sq. m. Estimated value: at least $4 million.
Igor Shuvalov.
Deputy prime minister. He too has spent more than ten years in government service. He lies about some alleged Sibneft stock option he supposedly received many years ago. No one has ever seen this option, but Shuvalov flies on a super-expensive private jet and owns real estate all over the world. His house in Skolkovo looks like this:
House area: 4,174 sq. m. Estimated value: at least $10 million.
Andrei Belyaninov, former head of the Federal Customs Service.
Many people only learned who he was after news broke of a search of his home—so much for public politics.
House area: 1,500 sq. m. Estimated value: about $3.1 million.
Dmitry Peskov.
The president’s press secretary. He has been in government service for 27 years. He is married to figure skater Tatyana Navka and claims, falsely, that he owes his luxurious lifestyle to her salary. The ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) caught him with a watch worth 37 million rubles, a vacation on a yacht whose weekly charter costs 26 million rubles, and this house:
House area: 779.2 sq. m; value: 1 billion rubles.
See the difference?
Now let’s compare a few more figures:
GDP per capita in the United States: $55,805.
GDP per capita in Russia: $25,411.
The average pension in the United States in 2015 was $1,336 per month (85,800 rubles).
The average pension in Russia in 2015 was 12,852 rubles per month (which inevitably brings to mind Pension Fund chief Anton Drozdov’s seven-room apartment worth $3.7 million).
So yes, those devious Americans may stop our athletes from winning more medals in Rio, but in the most important sport—personal enrichment—they can’t hold a candle to Putin’s elite. With meldonium or without it, Russian officials sweep the medals in both the individual and team events.