As we promised, our investigative machine is up and running at full power. We set ourselves the goal of proving to you, with concrete examples, that there are simply no decent, uncorrupt officials in the Moscow City Duma / mayor’s office / government. And we are moving steadily toward that goal. You can refresh your memory with our recent investigations into:
We invite you to take a look at the second installment in our mini-investigation series. Today’s subject is Vladimir Platonov, a Moscow City Duma deputy with 26 years in office. And his son, Ilya Platonov, who has somehow—miraculously!—turned out to be a billionaire.
First, a few words about Deputy Platonov himself. He planted himself in a deputy’s chair back in 1993. Many readers of this blog probably hadn’t even been born yet.
A deputy for six convocations, he had previously spent eight years working in the prosecutor’s office. He served as chairman of the Moscow City Duma—the top deputy there—for 20 years, a full third of his life. At the same time, he was also a member of the Federation Council for five years. He used to be a democrat and belonged to the Union of Right Forces (SPS, a liberal political party), but when his finely tuned bureaucratic nose caught the right political wind, Platonov switched to United Russia.
Platonov has a big family and many children from two marriages. We won’t get into that now—you can read this interview on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station), where they are all listed by name.
And here, in fact, is Ilya himself. There are plenty of photos of him in the public domain, since he dated a singer from the pop group Blestyashchiye for a while.
But what interests us now is not his social life, but what he was doing on July 1 of this year. What were you doing that day, for example? Do you remember?
We remember exactly what was happening on our end. That was the day our investigation into Deputy Metelsky came out. We also remember very well what Navalny was doing: that was the day he was jailed for 10 days (for taking part in a rally supporting journalist Golunov).
July 1 was also an important day for Ilya Platonov. That was the day he bought a 372 sq. m apartment on Moscow’s so-called “Golden Mile”! Prechistenskaya Embankment, a couple hundred meters from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Lovely.
Its market value is 600 million rubles. Sounds like a bit much for an apartment? Well, take a look: a smaller apartment in the same building is on the market right now for 515 million rubles.
And here is the property record.
We were helped in locating this apartment by Ilya Platonov’s new girlfriend—Instagram star Sofia Shlyaga.
She posts lots of photos with Ilya and of the place where she lives.
If you look closely at the photo on the right and what can be seen through the window, it is easy to determine, down to the meter, exactly where it was taken—and from the window of which apartment.
Spending 600 million rubles on an apartment is genuinely impressive. But we know our regular readers are hard to shock with that alone, so we have something else in reserve.
How about a house worth 4 billion rubles? That is the price of a home in “Mayendorf Gardens,” the most expensive gated community on Rublyovka (the elite residential area west of Moscow).
Ilya Platonov became its official owner last year.
Just read the listing: 4,000 sq. m, 4 floors, a spa and a swimming pool, underground parking for 12 cars. The plot is more than a hectare (over 10,000 sq. m).
In fact, Platonov moved there long ago, at the age of 25—it was just previously registered in the name of his former mother-in-law.
And just for the record, here are recent listings for comparable houses in this Rublyovka community. Along with the going prices.
This is how the children of Moscow City Duma deputies live.
We regret to add that just the other day, the younger Platonov sold this house. It will now be occupied by a new owner—also a well-known one. Good thing Ilya Platonov still has his 372 sq. m apartment on Prechistenskaya Embankment, otherwise the poor fellow might have ended up on the street.
By the way, a clarification is in order. We spent many hours looking into an important question: could Ilya Platonov have earned enough to buy this real estate himself? He is an adult, after all. We are convinced that he could not. At present, he owns only one company, and it earns next to nothing.
According to Ilya Platonov’s own LinkedIn profile, his last place of employment was the Kizlyar Cognac Factory. He worked there as deputy general director. The factory, for the record, belongs to Rosimushchestvo (Russia’s federal state property agency), which means it is state-owned. They could not have been paying him any serious money there.
Maybe that is where he made his fortune? By advising his dad?
To be clear, Ilya Platonov did have some business activity. He worked at Mirax under Polonsky, and he opened a fitness club with Timati, but there is no way we are talking about billions. Not even remotely. We are not even talking about hundreds of millions. And all of that was quite a long time ago.
So that you do not think wealth only falls selectively on the younger Platonov, let us note that Deputy Platonov himself is not exactly struggling either.
He has a new wife, Nadezhda Platonova.
And Nadezhda owns a 173 sq. m apartment on Leninsky Prospekt.
In addition, in 2008, at the age of 33, while working as Deputy Platonov’s assistant, she bought a 187 sq. m apartment in the Golden Keys-2 residential complex. That is another 50 million rubles at a minimum.
We will try to be objective and say this: of course, we cannot claim that Ilya’s father, Moscow City Duma deputy Platonov, personally gave him the billions of rubles needed for the Rublyovka mansion and the apartment.
But WHERE did the son of an influential Moscow politician get a 4-billion-ruble house at the age of 25? WHERE did he get 600 million rubles for an apartment now? Do you know many people who have an extra 600 million lying around? To make purchases like that, you need a genuinely very large and visible business. To paraphrase the younger Platonov’s former employer, Sergei Polonsky: you cannot do this without a billion.
But even the much more modest 100 million rubles’ worth of real estate owned by Deputy Vladimir Platonov’s wife raises questions. Where did it come from? She was just a deputy’s assistant.
At the very least, all of this raises questions. If there were an independent deputy in the Moscow City Duma, that person would ask them.
Do we need deputies like Platonov in the Moscow City Duma? Of course not, no thank you. If we want different people in the capital’s parliament, we need to take part in Smart Voting. Every one of you can help make sure a United Russia candidate does not win in your district. Here is the link—sign up, and we will send you the name of the non-United Russia candidate with the best chance of winning in your constituency. It could not be simpler.