For the past week, the Anti-Corruption Foundation has been releasing a new investigation every day. As a sign of protest, and out of a desire to get back at the crooks for stealing our elections and trampling on the rights of thousands of citizens. And most importantly, we want to persuade all of you to take part in Smart Voting.
This week, we released four investigations:
And for our Friday investigation, we’re handing things over to Lyubov Sobol. She’ll tell us about Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission. And about how dramatically his life changed (~~how he got rich~~) after he joined United Russia.
Today’s subject is Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission. He may not be very visible, but he is a very important cog in Putin’s system. These are exactly the kind of people who legitimize the decisions the authorities want, justify all sorts of manipulations, and publicly declare that “everything was done according to the law.”
For example, in December 2017, while justifying the refusal to register Alexei Navalny for the presidential election, Bulaev spoke about the “deception of young people” and “immoral” methods of working with children.
During the Central Election Commission’s review of Sobol’s complaint, Bulaev suggested calling security to throw out lawyer Alexander Pomazuev, who was defending the signatures of Moscow residents.
And later he even claimed that the Moscow City Duma campaign had been used to create problems in society.
Usually, hardly anyone knows functionaries like Bulaev. Who cares about some deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission? But that’s wrong. If Bulaev took it upon himself this summer to decide whom Muscovites would be allowed to vote for and whom they would not, then we’re taking him on.
Let’s think about this logically. Nikolai Bulaev is no fool; he is educated, a doctor of sciences. He has been a member of parliament, a member of the Federation Council, and head of Rosobrazovanie (the former federal education agency). I have not the slightest doubt that Bulaev fully understands what he is doing. That he is personally falsifying and destroying an important democratic institution: elections. The question is: why?
Because the quality of his life—quite literally—his standard of living, his wealth, depends directly on the current government. On United Russia, Putin, the presidential administration, and so on. If power changes hands through fair elections, Bulaev personally loses. If the same crooked regime stays in place, he gains. It’s all very simple and very pragmatic.
Now for some concrete examples. In the mid-2000s, Bulaev moved from Ryazan Region to Moscow. We open his 2006 asset declaration and see that he had nothing in Moscow. Not a single square meter. All his property was in Ryazan Region, plus an old Nissan.
Just three years later, in 2009, luck struck. The Presidential Property Management Department allocated him a very nice 100-square-meter apartment on Starovolynskaya Street, in the “Blizhnyaya Dacha” residential complex. One like that is now worth about 50 million rubles. Not bad, you’d agree.
Then, one after another, expensive cars, ATVs, snowmobiles, and motorcycles appear. Soon, instead of that old Nissan, Bulaev is driving a new Audi A6, and his wife an Audi A7. Life really does improve in Moscow civil service! You’d very much want it to go on like this forever.
And it will keep going like this forever if United Russia stays in power! Look: in 2018, Bulaev gets another apartment, this time from the city of Moscow (and the Ministry of Defense).
And this is no longer some far-flung part of western Moscow, like in 2009. This is the very center. Smolensky Boulevard right outside the windows. And the building is a prestigious one too—with the view, the Garden Ring a minute’s walk away, and the embankment just a couple hundred meters away. Market value: 105 million rubles.
And yet they say lightning never strikes twice. If you’re with United Russia, it absolutely does—the state gives you one apartment for free, and then subsidizes a second, better one. So you arrive in Moscow to work as an official with nothing, and end up with 150 million rubles’ worth of real estate. Even a bit more, actually. Bulaev’s daughter, who works as a notary, also bought herself a 133-square-meter apartment in 2019 in the building next door to her parents. That’s 66 million rubles.
See how simple it is? As long as there is United Russia, Bulaev has hundreds of square meters of elite real estate. No United Russia, no such property. That is your explanation for why officials, from the highest-ranking to the lowest, will each in their own way defend this criminal, thieving regime to the very end. Personal financial interest, nothing more.
Our own personal interest is in putting an end to this outrage as quickly as possible. Register on the Smart Voting website, come to the polls on September 8, and vote for the candidates with the best chance of defeating the United Russia nominee.