I’m writing this post from the hallway, and I can hear 15 special forces officers tearing something up in our office. Judging by the sounds, they’re smashing dishes and wrecking furniture.
This post and this video were supposed to be published today at 1:00 p.m., but at 12:00 p.m. people in black caps started sawing through the door.
The formal pretext for this latest raid is our refusal to delete the investigation “He Is Not Dimon to You”. Medvedev and Usmanov ordered a criminal case opened against ACF director Ivan Zhdanov, and as part of that case a so-called “search” is now underway at the offices of ACF and Navalny LIVE.
This time, however, we have strong grounds to believe that this raid has a specific заказчик (someone who commissioned it). It pleases the Kremlin, and it serves that person’s private interests too. Exactly as in the case of Svetlana Medvedeva’s plane.
A very important state banker—the head of VTB, Andrei Kostin—would very much prefer that you never saw him. While working on this investigation, we called Kostin’s chief of staff, who also oversees security. And I think you understand what VTB’s security service is: the most corrupt and most easily bought part of the FSB (Russia’s main security service).
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And to answer the question right away: today’s broadcast will go ahead at 8:00 p.m.
I don’t want to carry unfinished business over into next year. So right now, you and I are going to give the crooks and thieves at the state-owned bank VTB a sharp slap on the nose. They clearly think they’re very clever crooks—the kind nobody ever catches.
As a reminder, our last investigation was about the beautiful love story between VTB head Andrei Kostin and Naila Asker-zade, a presenter on the state TV channel Rossiya-1. We showed that Kostin is stealing billions from the state bank—that is, out of our pockets—to shower his mistress with some of the most expensive gifts in the world: apartments, country houses, a plane, and a yacht. The total value of the assets we uncovered exceeds 11 billion rubles.
The most interesting part involved Naila’s plane. We first found it by mechanically comparing where she was and which planes were arriving there at the same time. Then we uncovered an entire scheme through which several private jets were stolen from VTB’s balance sheet and transferred to an offshore company in Belize. One of those planes is now used, in particular, by Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister at the time and leader of the United Russia party. As we later discovered, other officials fly on the others. Even the Patriarch (the head of the Russian Orthodox Church).
The information was explosive, and we were all waiting to see how Kostin, Asker-zade, and Medvedev would respond—Medvedev, in particular, was bombarded with questions about his wife’s plane during a press conference.
In public, nothing of substance was said in response. Even so, we immediately noticed some retaliatory moves.
Our lovebirds did what they do best: they CLASSIFIED the movement data for their plane. And for Svetlana Medvedeva’s plane too. And for all the other planes spirited away offshore as well.
We don’t know how they did it—whether they paid off the websites that publish this kind of information or intimidated them—but see for yourself: here is a popular flight-tracking service. This is exactly where we got the screenshots for our investigations. We try to find Naila’s plane—error. We try to find Svetlana’s plane—no such aircraft.
Don’t get the wrong idea: the planes are still flying, still broadcasting signals with their coordinates. We’re just apparently no longer supposed to know about them.
At the same time, the state-owned bank VTB issued a statement saying that all these planes had long since been sold to “third parties” and now had absolutely nothing to do with either the bank or anyone connected to it. To quote: “VTB Leasing has no involvement in their further operation, leasing, or anything else.”
So, supposedly, some Medvedevs and some Asker-zades are flying around somewhere. Somehow paying €7,000 per flight hour. Paying the crew’s salaries. Maintenance. Insurance. And VTB has nothing to do with it.
And now we’re going to prove the opposite.
So, VTB Leasing once bought several dozen passenger aircraft. As the name suggests, the idea was to lease them out long-term to major airlines: Aeroflot, Rossiya, Pobeda, and others. Along with these “big” planes, VTB Leasing also acquired several private jets. As we now understand, those aircraft were never meant for genuine leasing. They were needed to serve various crooks who weren’t entitled to private planes but badly wanted them. So VTB Leasing bought them in its own name and operated them itself.
When the planes belonged to VTB, they were serviced by a company called Business Aero Aviation Enterprise. It organized the flights, hired pilots, handled logistics, bookings, and so on. Traces of this can be found in public procurement documents. Here, for example, they are fulfilling a contract to arrange flights for Finance Ministry officials.
And a few years ago, the email account of one of VTB’s secretaries was hacked; it is publicly available and posted on an investigative journalists’ website. There you can see Business Aero arranging flights on several different Bombardier aircraft. Here, for example, a plane is being booked for opera singer Anna Netrebko:
And here is another one—for former Deputy Prime Minister Dvorkovich. This is the very plane that would later be stolen and handed over for Svetlana Medvedeva’s use:
Business Aero is owned by two people.
The first, Bukov, is easy to identify. He is a VTB contractor and received half a billion rubles from the bank for security services.
Bukov is also a member of VTB’s amateur hockey team.
But the second man is a mystery. His name is Alexander Yuryevich Vorontsov. And he is hidden even better than Naila’s planes and yachts. No matter how much you google or dig, it’s completely unclear who this person is. So who is this ultra-close, ultra-trusted figure who owns an air carrier trusted with secrets like the passenger lists for every flight?
This wasn’t an investigation—it was a chase! First we found his photograph. Here he is, labeled “Alexander Vorontsov,” standing next to Kostin at the “Russia Calling!” forum.
We tried to buy this photo so we could make out what was written on the badge, but first we were refused, and then RIA Novosti removed the image from its photo archives altogether.
Then we identified his phone number and found a very similar-looking man on a tractor in WhatsApp. We asked—and got nothing.
And then he deleted that wonderful picture too.
We found the cars he parks—and they are VTB company vehicles.
The answer was so close. Then we simply called Kostin’s office and bluntly asked what Vorontsov’s position was. And they told us!
So, Alexander Yuryevich Vorontsov is the chief of staff to VTB head Andrei Kostin. He is Kostin’s most trusted employee and closest confidant. He handled the ordering of flights on VTB’s behalf and, on the other side, their direct organization as a founder of Business Aero.
But that was the old scheme. Now, as we know, the planes no longer belong to VTB. They have been sold off, and at least three of them belong to the same anonymous offshore company in Belize. These are the plane used by Svetlana Medvedeva, Naila’s plane, and another aircraft used as a backup—for example, when Asker-zade’s main plane is in maintenance.
According to data from the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, the planes we are interested in are all operated by the same company: Skyline Aviation.
A completely unknown company, registered in San Marino apparently for the specific purpose of servicing the aircraft stolen from VTB. We obtained corporate records from San Marino and learned that it is run by a Russian director named Oleg Gurov.
That same Gurov is also the director of Business Aero, which belongs to Kostin’s chief of staff.
What’s more, both companies—the Russian one and the San Marino one—use the same mail server, which is registered to Business Aero.
In other words, the new Skyline company, which supposedly “has nothing to do with VTB,” is simply the foreign twin of the Russian company owned by the chief of staff to the head of VTB.
It’s very simple. VTB had planes, and they were managed by Kostin’s chief of staff. The planes were stolen, and they are still being managed by Kostin’s chief of staff.
They steal. They hide. And they lie. They lie to our faces endlessly. They pretend to be a modern, cutting-edge bank, but in reality it’s just a bottomless state cashbox, with a talentless idiot—Putin’s crony—put in charge so he can provide everyone with a luxurious life and not forget himself in the process. And it will stay that way until we finally throw all these Putins, Sechins, Kostins, and Asker-zades off our backs.