This investigation was supposed to be presented to you by Alexei Navalny, but a week ago he was arrested. He is now serving another 30-day jail term. Over the past year, he has spent 90 days in a special detention facility — every fourth day of the year.
But as you know, that cannot stop the work of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. So today, this new investigation will be presented by Georgy Alburov, Kira Yarmysh, and Ruslan Shaveddinov. It concerns a corrupt official who is low-profile and, at first glance, unremarkable. But don’t be fooled. This person not only stole real estate worth billions of rubles from the people of Moscow. She also bears personal responsibility for the political crisis now unfolding in the country. And you’ll soon see why.
Natalya Alexeyevna Sergunina is the First Deputy Mayor of Moscow. Officially, that makes her the second most important and influential person in the city. Maybe even the first — Sobyanin seems increasingly preoccupied with washing facades and going fishing. Sergunina is the capital’s chief administrator. She now heads the Mayor’s Office and the Moscow city government apparatus, but she built her career in the Property Department. From 2011 to 2018, she served as minister and Sobyanin’s deputy for property and land relations. Today she is the head of the Mayor’s Office and his plenipotentiary representative in the Moscow City Duma.
And yet Sergunina is the poorest official in Moscow City Hall. Judging by her asset declaration, she lives only on her salary and, over her entire lifetime, has earned enough for a modest three-room apartment in Yugo-Zapadnaya (a district in southwestern Moscow). In this simple building, just like everyone else:
It says so in black and white on the Moscow City Duma website: she is responsible for all elections at all levels in Moscow. In other words, what is happening now with the Moscow City Duma is her doing. The fight against independent candidates is her personal war. And that is no surprise, because even a single independent deputy could deprive Sergunina of her easy life simply by doing their job — overseeing City Hall and monitoring its spending. After all, Sergunina amassed all her wealth by profiting from city property.
Moscow owns a huge number of properties — from old mansions and architectural landmarks to ordinary apartments and office buildings. Sometimes the government decides that it no longer needs a particular building, and that it would be more profitable to sell it than to maintain it. That is perfectly normal — why not?
And then a complex mechanism kicks in. The Moscow government issues a decree saying that such-and-such building is to be sold; officials assess it, put it up for auction, and publish a notice. This is done in bulletins like these — with new lists appearing every few weeks.
Potential buyers flip through such a bulletin, find something they like, put down a deposit, and take part in the auction. Whoever bids the most gets the building. City Hall receives the money from the buyer and puts it into the city budget.
Now let’s look at a specific example and see how this mechanism works in practice. Here is an issue of the Moscow Auctions bulletin from June 2016.
Take, for example, the lot at 15 Serebryanichesky Lane. It is a historic building from the early 20th century. Until 2016, it belonged to the city, but then the Moscow officials responsible for property — Sergunina and her subordinates — decided to sell it. The auction winner, that is, the buyer, was Mercury LLC. The winning bid was 86 million rubles.
It is rather odd, of course, that a 1,312 sq. m building in the very center of the city was sold for the price of a luxury three-room apartment. Especially since the building clearly has cultural and historical significance. At the beginning of the last century, it housed an almshouse run by the Yauza charity guardianship for the poor. Later it became the Simonovsky District Court — the same court that recently sentenced Navalny to another 30 days in jail.
And now it is the Custos hotel.
In that same issue of the *Moscow Auctions* bulletin, right next to the entry about Mercury’s purchase of the building on Serebryanichesky Lane, there are two more entries about the same Mercury. And once again, the prices are laughable.
Let’s go through them one by one. The next address is 2 Building 2, Tverskaya Zastava Square — the square by Belorussky Station.
Mercury LLC bought a section of this corner building shown in the photo. Area: 1,463 sq. m. Purchase price: 93.5 million rubles. That comes to about 60,000 rubles per square meter — the price of residential property in Syktyvkar, not in one of the busiest locations in Moscow, perhaps in all of Russia.
The building now houses the same kind of hotel as the one on Serebryanichesky Lane: Custos.
And the third address from the same bulletin: Mercury buys part of a building on Sadovaya-Samotechnaya Street. Once again, historic Moscow architecture. 610 sq. m in central Moscow for 31 million rubles. You can probably guess what is located there now: the Custos hotel.
Here is another interesting observation. There was effectively no real bidding or auction at all. Look closely at the comparison between the minimum price City Hall asked for the buildings and the price it actually received.
In every case, the purchase price differs from the minimum price requested by City Hall by EXACTLY 466,150 rubles. Not one ruble more or less. Why exactly that amount? We have no idea.
Of course, we are not showing you all these photos and telling you about these auctions and this mysterious Mercury for no reason. By now it is probably obvious where this is going, so let’s not drag it out.
All three of these buildings, owned by the city of Moscow, were sold for next to nothing by official Sergunina to her own family. Not to friends, not to proxies, not to acquaintances — but directly to her closest relatives.
And the way she did it was almost the perfect crime. The scheme was planned and organized so carefully that exposing it would have been nearly impossible if not for a chance set of circumstances. But we managed to crack it. Let us show you how.
First of all, we need to meet a few people.
In the photo above, on the left is official Natalya Sergunina, and on the right is her younger sister Irina. Irina is an interior designer, a creative person, with no serious business to her name. Sergunina’s sister now has the surname Safanieva. She is married to Lazar Telmitovich Safaniev — here he is.
A few words about Lazar. He is the founder of a bankrupt insurance company and now a co-owner of the Genome venture fund, which invests in tech startups. We would tell you which ones, but the “our companies” section of their website is empty.
The “About Us” section, however, is interesting. It includes former presidential administration chief Voloshin and an adviser to Natalya Sergunina at City Hall.
Further searches for any official traces of Mr. Safaniev turned up nothing. Apart from the fund, only a couple of now-defunct companies are registered in his name, dealing with such important matters as creating a messenger app for officials.
Now let’s draw up the scheme. We start with the Sergunina family. From Natalya, a line goes down to Moscow’s property and land complex, which she headed. From there, arrows lead to the three historic mansions we showed above. And there too is the mansions’ new owner, Mercury LLC.
To go further, we need to understand who owns Mercury. First we look in the Russian corporate registry. There we see an offshore company called FLORESTAR.
Then we order records in Cyprus and see that FLORESTAR is itself owned by two more offshore companies from the British Virgin Islands. One of them, UPINGTON INTERNATIONAL LIMITED, we are writing in big bold letters on purpose — you need to remember it.
So the scheme looks like this.
Normally, a BVI offshore company is basically a dead end — investigation over. It is one of the worst jurisdictions for this, and finding the owners is impossible. But not today. Let’s take a closer look at Sergunina’s brother-in-law, Lazar.
If you google photos of him, you mostly find him at various Jewish religious events. Here, together with Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he is presenting a Torah scroll to the Jewish community of Oryol.
Look at the backdrop. What does it say? “Torah scroll dedication ceremony. Donor: Safaniev Aaron-Eliezer ben Telmit.”
Who is this Aaron-Eliezer? Obviously, it is our Lazar. But why does he have such a strange name? Most likely because people often change their name when obtaining an Israeli passport. In fact, not just their first name — sometimes their full name. From this ceremony, we learn Lazar’s new name: Aaron-Eliezer. The surname remains Safaniev — a kind of hybrid. But what if his surname changed too? We decided to check and try to guess it.
There is another useful clue in the photos we showed. He dedicated the gift to his grandmother and grandfather. And we take note of the surname: Aronov.
From there, it was just a matter of trying different combinations of the names Aaron, Eliezer, Safaniev, Aronov, and without much difficulty we found a real, living person: Aaron Eliezer Aronov. And a company. Registered to him and... to Irina Safanieva, the sister of today’s main character. Bingo.
Later, we went all in and ordered all the documents on this company. And we found completely unambiguous confirmation:
So we learned his name, but what does he have to do with Sergunina’s corruption scheme? One link was still missing — the very link that was never supposed to be discovered. But we found it anyway.
We google Aaron Aronov (aka Lazar). The first result mentions him as the beneficial owner of the London company BALKAN CONSULTING LIMITED.
This is a relatively new feature in the UK corporate registry. They are trying to combat nominees and anonymous offshore structures. And they now require companies to disclose both owners and beneficial owners. The listed owners may be 150 different offshore companies from the most exotic islands, but the beneficial owner is always a person. If you want to have a company in England, you have to disclose a real name.
And here, watch what happens next. The beneficial owner of the English company, as we have already seen, is Aaron Aronov (aka Lazar Safaniev). And the owners of the company — that is, the shareholders — are two offshore companies: CANDEE INVESTMENTS and... our old acquaintance, UPINGTON INTERNATIONAL LIMITED!
Let us remind you that through a chain of offshore companies and Mercury LLC, it is he who owns the Moscow mansions we showed you — the ones bought from the city at auction. In other words, both of these offshore companies belong to Lazar; he is their beneficial owner. And that means that Sergunina, while heading Moscow’s property complex, sold city property to her own sister’s husband.
Let’s go back to the Moscow Auctions bulletin. Earlier we showed you three buildings from the June issue that Mercury LLC, controlled by Sergunina’s brother-in-law, bought at auction. Now let’s look at the July issue. Just one month after the first batch of buildings, the scheme was repeated a second time. Exactly the same way. Here we see the now-familiar Mercury buying a 2,300 sq. m building on Lubyansky Passage. Naturally, it houses a Custos hotel — no need to waste time guessing.
The purchase price was 136 million rubles. Again, 60,000 rubles per square meter. Nearby buildings sell for 350,000 rubles per square meter. And once again, it is a historic building: in the late 19th century, it housed the Blandov Trading House, a major dairy business in the Russian Empire. This particular building was used as a cheese warehouse — a storage facility for cheese. Now it stores little besides Sergunina’s money.
The next building is 9/1 Petrovsky Boulevard. Once again, a historic mansion, and once again a Custos hotel. Moscow City Hall sold this building, with a total area of 800 sq. m, to Lazar Safaniev’s company for 45 million rubles.
We do not have to look far for the next building — it is next door, at 5/1 Petrovsky Boulevard. Area: 1,500 sq. m. It also belongs to Mercury LLC. Behind this building, in the courtyard, there is another one — 5/2 Petrovsky Boulevard. Its area is 650 sq. m. And — you have probably guessed where this is going — that building is also owned by Mercury.
But where did it come from? It is not in our bulletin. And now, attention — an unexpected twist. This building was traded with the city.
In 2016, using the scheme we already know, Mercury LLC bought premises totaling 1,300 sq. m in a building on Volkhonka Street. The purchase price was 72 million rubles. Not only was the amount laughable, the building was also bought from the city on a mortgage plan. Nothing was built there. Because in 2018 it was officially RETURNED to the city and EXCHANGED. For two(!) buildings — one on Petrovsky Boulevard, almost twice the size, and the other on Karetny Ryad.
Just imagine yourself in City Hall’s place. Some obscure offshore company comes to you and says: “So, we bought a building from you two years ago. We’d like to return it and swap it. For two buildings three times larger. If you’d be so kind.” And City Hall replies: “No problem, dear friends from the British Virgin Islands! We’ll take back the 1,300 square meters we already sold you, and in exchange give you 5,000 new ones. Deal!” This is no longer merely absurd — it is outright mockery. Not only does Sergunina sell historic buildings to her relatives for pennies, they even haggle! They settle their little issues, swap one property for another. And all of it is done at the city’s expense, at the expense of Muscovites.
But as you understand, that is not all. In the same July issue of the *Moscow Auctions* bulletin, we find two more listings. The Bronnaya Plaza business center on the Garden Ring,
and a small building in Zamoskvorechye, were bought from City Hall using the same scheme we already know.
But this time the company was not Mercury — it was Dita Plaza. So where did that come from?
We look at who owns Dita Plaza. Naturally, there is a Cypriot offshore company there.
And who owns that in turn? We open the Cypriot corporate registry and see the next owner — a British Virgin Islands offshore company, CANDEE INVESTMENTS. The same one we already mentioned, and which belongs to Lazar Safaniev.
But that same Cypriot offshore company also has another Russian subsidiary — Alfa Capital (already shown in the diagram above).
Just don’t confuse it with the Alfa Capital connected to Alfa Group and the bank. This is simply a company with the same name, registered to one Alexander Dobrynin, born in 1980, whose listed education is secondary school.
And what does it own? This:
The Oktyabr cinema. Not all of it, true — but 40%.
Surprising, isn’t it? Almost every Muscovite has probably been here, watched movies, eaten popcorn. Oktyabr is undoubtedly Moscow’s most famous cinema, and one of its largest as well. But for some reason, no one ever asked who owned it. People simply assumed it belonged to the Gazprom-Media group, end of story. That is true, but only partly: they own 60%. The remaining 40% of the cinema’s shares had always belonged to the city of Moscow. Then, in 2013, the Department of City Property decided to sell those shares at auction. First for 700 million rubles — no buyer was found. Then for 430 million.
Where the obscure, nobody-knows-where-it-came-from-or-who-it-really-belongs-to company Alfa Capital got half a billion rubles to buy the city’s stake in the country’s main cinema is unclear. But apparently it still owns it to this day.
Let’s sum up the interim results. We have already found that Sergunina and her family own
14,000 sq. m of premises alone. And let us remind you: all of it was bought from the city at laughable prices.
Now let’s move on to the next properties. They are located in one of Moscow’s most recognizable places.
If for some reason you decide to google Natalya Sergunina (just in case?), you will notice something curious. Although she has spent almost ten years dealing with Moscow property, she appears in the news mostly for one reason — VDNKh (the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, a major Moscow exhibition park). Natalya Sergunina promised this at VDNKh, Natalya Sergunina opened that at VDNKh. A festival, a celebration, a new exhibition — it feels as though VDNKh holds a special place in her heart.
And perhaps it does. Because it is here that two pavilions — Sericulture and Glavkonditer (Main Confectionery) — somehow magically ended up under the control of Natalya’s sister, the already familiar Irina Safanieva. The pavilions now house the restaurants Ottepel and Moscow Sky.
In both restaurants, customers are served by the same legal entity — RBP Ladim-N LLC.
The lease for the pavilions is registered to the same Ladim-N and to another company as well — Taurus LLC.
These restaurant companies are inseparably linked to the firms that won City Hall’s auctions — Mercury and Dita Plaza. The same people, the same directors, just switching places. Here are a couple of examples:
1) Dobrynin, whose company bought the Oktyabr cinema, was also the director and owner of Taurus LLC, which runs a restaurant at VDNKh
2) Chalova, who was the owner of the restaurant company Ladim-N, still owns a stake in Dita Plaza (the Bronnaya Plaza business center and the building in Zamoskvorechye).
But here is something much more entertaining than digging through the boring corporate registry.
Take a look — this is the portfolio website of designer Irina Sergunina-Safanieva.
Here we see a list of her projects: both the Ottepel restaurant and Moscow Sky are there.
And here is the publication Russia. Heritage (edited, by the way, by Alexander Beglov), which devotes two full spreads to the creative genius of Irina Safanieva, an interior designer who, before the VDNKh restaurants, had designed nothing except her own apartments and those of her friends.
In the same portfolio, you can find another venue designed by Irina Safanieva: the Wine Time restaurant in the Legends of Tsvetnoy residential complex.
In this case, the restaurant business did not work out, and Wine Time was closed. But the premises where the restaurant was located are personally owned by Sergunina’s sister. 326 sq. m.
Such a property is worth 470 million rubles. It remains a mystery where the then-32-year-old sister of Sobyanin’s deputy, who had never been noticed in any business activity, got half a billion rubles for such an investment. A question worth asking.
Or here is another excellent question: where did the Sergunina sisters’ father — a pensioner and former military prosecutor — get 215 million rubles to buy 350 sq. m in the City of Capitals tower in Moscow City?
The Sergunina family is doing quite well with residential real estate too. True, lately they have started re-registering it from themselves to close friends and familiar proxies — to the aforementioned Chalova, for example. But that will not stop us from telling you about this property.
In 2011 alone, the Serguninas bought a 136 sq. m apartment in the Neskuchny Sad residential complex for 68 million rubles. And a couple of months earlier, they had also bought a penthouse of 289 sq. m. Price: 180 million.
Their car fleet is doing just fine as well. Two Mercedes for the mother, one for the father, two for the sister, and three for the sister’s husband. The Sergunina family drives nothing but Mercedes; we found no cars of any other brand.
But they hide the most expensive assets abroad. According to the accounts of Lazar Safaniev’s English company, he owns a tangible asset — real estate worth £10.5 million, or 826 million rubles.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find out exactly what it is or where it is located. If you happen to know, you know what to do — write to us.
And of course, what Moscow official would be complete without European real estate? The Serguninas have that too, and it was very easy to find. We already mentioned the company of Lazar and Irina Safaniev; it is in Austria, by the way. The documents list its legal address as Gregor-Mendel-Straße 34, Vienna.
We immediately decided to see what was there. And there... a private house purchased in 2015. Area: about 700 sq. m. Cost: €2 million (before renovation and reconstruction).
Besides this house, the Serguninas have a couple of other places in Vienna worth visiting. In addition to the company that owns the €2 million house, there is another company called Lazar Multimedia Technology.
Through this company, the Sergunina-Safaniev family owns an “interactive children’s show, *Alice in Wonderland*,” in one of Vienna’s shopping centers. It is something like a children’s amusement park. A restaurant called Happy Rabbit is opening there as well.
Here is the website of the show. Amusingly, even the reviews were copied from its Moscow counterpart. By the way, the people managing Alice’s Facebook page are the same people who run the online pages for Sergunina’s restaurants at VDNKh — Moscow Sky and Ottepel.
So, let’s sum up.
Brazenly lies, shamelessly steals, treats us like idiots. You could leave a blank at the start of that sentence and just keep inserting surnames. Putin, Sobyanin, Volodin, Gorbunov, Metelsky... and now Sergunina.
A young woman entrusted with managing our city and our property stole it from us just as crudely and brazenly as all those other veteran Moscow crooks. She tells us about fairs and festivals, while her relatives in the British Virgin Islands set up offshore companies to snap up Moscow property for next to nothing. She sings Sobyanin’s praises, while square meters in Moscow City and Tsvetnoy, penthouses, Mercedes cars, and houses in Austria simply FALL into the laps of her sister and father.
In total, property worth 6.5 billion rubles has fallen into Natalya Sergunina’s family’s hands.
And now she has stolen the elections from us too. Any independent court could return to the city the tens of thousands of square meters of historic mansions that came into the Sergunina family’s hands through dishonest means. The Austrian real estate bought with unexplained income will one day be seized. But for elections, for freedom, for the chance to see not crooks from United Russia on the ballot but decent people — that is something we will have to fight for. That is what the candidates are doing, what tens of thousands of people at rallies are doing, and what we are doing with our investigations.
You can contribute too. It is very simple.
This year, elections will be held not only in Moscow but in more than 20 other regions as well. And we must do everything we can to break United Russia’s monopoly in them. Smart Voting is our strategy for these elections. We, the voters, must unite and vote for the candidate with the best chance of defeating the United Russia nominee. Which candidate? Register on the website, and based on your address we will determine your polling station and send you, in September, the name of the candidate most likely to beat the United Russia candidate. All you will need to do is go to your polling station and cast your vote for that person. By uniting, we can get revenge on United Russia and throw it out of its well-worn parliamentary seats.
And if you are in Moscow, follow the independent candidates. Right now, only Lyubov Sobol remains free, and she is calling on everyone to come to the rally on August 3. Here is the Facebook group, and here is the VK group. Join in.
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