The elections are the day after tomorrow. For the past two weeks, just as we promised, we’ve been publishing investigations for you every single day. Over the last month, we’ve published 15 stories, telling you about Moscow crooks—and not just Moscow crooks—of every kind and variety.
And we decided to wrap up this crazy marathon with the same topic we started with.
Natalya Sergunina. The person who set in motion all the lawlessness that took place in Moscow this summer, and the one responsible for it. The capital’s top administrator, the official who decided not to allow a single independent candidate onto the ballot, authorizing unprecedented political repression out of nowhere. And, no less importantly, in the month since our first investigation into her and her billions, Sergunina still has not found the time to respond to our accusations. We are not going to let that slide. So now we’re going to tell you how the Sergunina family got another 1 billion rubles from the city. It’s a great story—you’ll like it. And to Natalya Sergunina herself, we want to promise this: staying silent won’t work.
Now let’s pause for just a minute: we need to briefly recap the previous episode and refresh your memory on the key players. Official Sergunina has spent her whole career in charge of Moscow city property. And wherever she was in charge, that’s where she stole. They came up with a cunning scheme, which we exposed. Her sister’s husband changed his name from Lazar Safaniev to Aaron Aronov.
Using his new identity documents, he registered offshore companies. Then came a whole chain of firms. And then his Russian LLC started buying up tens of thousands of square meters of historic buildings in Moscow for next to nothing. All of them were sold off by Sergunina’s personal order for laughably low sums. Those buildings are now hotels, and with the proceeds Sergunina’s sister bought a mansion in Vienna and started a business there as well.
Our first investigation featured an offshore company belonging to Sergunina’s sister’s brother—Candee. Through it, for example, the Sergunina family owns 40% of the Oktyabr cinema.
And that same offshore company led us to a new discovery—far bigger than anything we told you about before.
The company is called Aviapark LLC. And it belongs, through an absolutely identical chain, to Lazar Safaniev’s offshore structure. The Russian company is registered to a Cypriot one (Cossman Ltd.), which in turn is owned by two offshore companies. One of them is that same Sergunina-linked Candee, which holds 33% of the shares. The remaining 66% belongs to another BVI (British Virgin Islands) offshore company whose owner we still do not know. That’s how the diagram can now be completed.
But that’s now.
Before that, up until June 2014, Aviapark was controlled by the Moscow City Department of Municipal Property.
In 1996, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov launched a gigantic project. On Khodynka Field, the site of Moscow’s first airfield, they decided to create what was literally envisioned as a garden city. Just look at the architectural design. The abandoned field was supposed to be turned into an elegant landscaped park, with a stunning aviation and cosmonautics museum built on the vacant lot, along with a school, housing, and an exhibition center.
They decided to build it under an investment contract. A commercial company—naturally, one owned by Luzhkov’s wife—was supposed to build all of it and then hand over part of what was built to the city (30%). It was also supposed to fulfill the so-called “social obligations” by constructing all those public spaces, parks, and the school.
Luzhkov left, and Sergei Sobyanin was appointed to run Moscow. Sergunina became specifically responsible for this Khodynka Field project. Here is the decree with the amendments; in the final clause, the responsible official is Sergunina.
The official client for the entire construction project is Aviapark, a subsidiary of the Department of Municipal Property. The company’s reporting states that Aviapark’s “strategic goal” is the construction of the museum and the park.
The project is worth enormous sums; according to the financial statements, the city’s share alone amounts to 4.3 billion rubles.
And then comes the kind of miracle we know all too well. The city decides to get rid of this asset entirely. And through several intermediaries, it transfers its company, Aviapark... to a Cypriot offshore company, one-third of which in turn belongs to Lazar Safaniev’s firm—the husband of the sister of the official overseeing this project on behalf of City Hall. The city—meaning all of us—had 4 billion rubles, and then suddenly that money was in the hands of an offshore company in Cyprus. And 33% of those 4 billion—nearly 1.5 billion—went directly to the family of Sobyanin’s deputy.
That is an enormous sum. And there is no official explanation whatsoever for why the city suddenly decided to give up its share of the profits from developing Khodynka. But that’s not even the worst part. You know, there’s a common view that, yes, they steal and they’ve always stolen, but at least look how beautiful Moscow has become, look at all the great places they’ve built. Not this time. Nothing you see in these images was ever built. Absolutely, outrageously nothing.
On the site where the aviation and cosmonautics museum was supposed to stand—with a huge rocket-like tower, aircraft on display, exhibits of rocket-engineering achievements, beautiful glass pavilions, and gardens—there is only a barren concrete lot.
Behind the gigantic Aviapark shopping mall. You can find anything here—any store for any taste. But there is no museum.
And on the site where, according to the investment contract, a city school for 550 students was supposed to be built, there is also just an empty lot.
And where the park—or, as people now like to say, the public space—was supposed to be, there is only a huge residential building. An identical twin building has been put up on the other side of the shopping mall as well.
So instead of a garden city, what stands there now is a gigantic and very ugly shopping mall, with two residential buildings on either side. But fine—we’re not even talking about aesthetics here. We need to go back to the investment contract we started with.
Let me remind you of the terms. The developer builds residential buildings for sale, but gives 30% of the floor space to the city. And the museum and school are also supposed to go to the city—let’s not forget that. Instead of a school, there’s an empty lot. Instead of the museum and exhibition complex, there’s a concrete slab. But the developer really did hand over the 30% of floor space—to the same company, Aviapark, because that part of the investment contract never changed. The only difference is that Aviapark now belongs not to the city, but to offshore companies, one of which is the family offshore of Sobyanin’s deputy, Sergunina.
All this land—93,000 square meters—remains leased to the offshore-owned Aviapark until 2046. They rent it out, they rent out apartments in the buildings that were constructed, and they collect their guaranteed 150–200 million rubles a year. And the museum and school that were never built? Sergunina will take care of that from the City Hall side. She’ll bury it, pass a little amendment, and there will be no questions.
That’s what corruption looks like when it passes from one decade to the next. Instead of the crook Luzhkov, who handed half of Moscow’s construction projects to his wife Baturina, we got Sobyanin—our “European” mayor and urban innovator. The only change is that they’ve gotten a little better at hiding their relatives and their offshore companies. But in essence, nothing has changed. Moscow should be governed by honest, competent people, but they will never appear if we stay sitting on the couch. Sobyanin, Putin, and Sergunina simply will not let them in—just as they did not allow independent candidates onto the ballot. But we still have no right to voluntarily hand over the Moscow City Duma, St. Petersburg’s municipal councils, or any other body of government to these people.
We have to show them that they will not be able to push through their candidates. That is exactly why, on September 8, you need to go vote and take part in “Smart Voting”. If you stay home, you will be helping Sergunina steal. And that’s not what you want.