Here at ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation), we’re laughing our heads off. You’re welcome to join us.
Volodin has RESPONDED to our investigation into the apartment owned by his 82-year-old mother. A reminder: this retiree from Saratov bought herself a 400-square-meter apartment in a luxury residential complex in Moscow. Estimated value: 230 million rubles (about $3.7 million at the time). You can rewatch the video here.
Let’s take a look:
In short: the then-72-year-old mother of a top United Russia official had apparently always been a multimillionaire in U.S. dollar terms and BOUGHT THE APARTMENT WITH HER OWN MONEY.
Let’s really savor this together. It’s 1999, the wild—sorry, the “dashing”—’90s. As television now tells it, there was gunfire in the streets, ruined buildings, and gaunt elderly people begging outside metro stations. And at that very time, Volodin’s already-retired mother was holding shares in a promising fats-and-oils processing plant in her investment portfolio.
And just seven years later, the retiree sells her stake, becomes a dollar millionaire, and among other things buys a 400-square-meter apartment in central Moscow.
Ha ha ha, Vyacheslav Viktorovich.
All right, enough lyricism. Let’s stick to the facts.
From the screenshot above, we can see that Volodin himself put his own—and his mother’s—proceeds from the share sale at $200 million. In other words, $100 million each.
And yet it was none other than the state news agency TASS that, just a year ago, gave completely different figures. It said the deal was worth 592.4 million rubles—at the exchange rate back then, $24.1 million. That’s four times less than what Volodin is claiming today.
There’s more. Oleg Plokhoi, then head of the Kremlin’s ANTI-CORRUPTION DIRECTORATE, personally told us about Volodin’s income right after that deal. Take a look at the screenshot:
And once again: 592 million. This wasn’t some whisper from a source—the head of the oversight body himself checked it and signed off on it.
Pretty neat, right? When it suits Volodin, his income from the shares is $24 million. When that no longer goes very far in explaining his vast assets—just write $100 million. What’s the problem?
And here’s one more small detail to round out the portrait of Volodin’s mother. Let’s jump back to 2002, with the help of this interview she gave to the newspaper Zemskoye Obozrenie. Keep in mind that the person giving this interview would very soon come into possession of a $100 million fortune—half of the total stake shared with Volodin himself.
First, the interior of her home:
Doilies on the shelf unit (we hope there are some on top of the TV too!), cookies, a poster with a loaf of bread. There’s probably a rug or a tapestry in there somewhere—in short, we all know exactly the kind of place we’re talking about.
Now, as for her lifestyle:
We all know those benches. A few elderly women in headscarves sitting around gossiping—and one of them has 2.5 billion rubles in her savings account.
We’re left with one question. A TV Rain article said that Volodin told this miracle story about his mother to “journalists.” So there was obviously some kind of meeting, some kind of conversation... Why didn’t the journalists ask him about it right then and there? This fats-and-oils plant story is ancient, all the figures are easily searchable, and none of the old reports have disappeared. It’s impossible not to notice that this whole explanation is transparently stitched together with white thread—so why didn’t you ask?
And as long as no one presses Volodin with questions, as long as people keep nodding respectfully and thanking him, he’ll go on lying through his teeth. And five years from now, you’ll see, it may turn out that he got $1 billion for his stake in the fats-and-oils plant. Or $2 billion. And that it was with this “long-ago and honestly earned money” that he bought himself a new yacht, plane, or vineyard.
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