As is well known, Russian officials have very talented wives. Their talent usually lies in business. And it always seems to emerge at exactly the moment their husbands land senior posts with access to state money and signing authority.
The asset declarations of yesterday’s homemakers, schoolteachers, and modest bookkeepers suddenly start showing nine-digit sums. And when asked where the money came from, we are told: she is in business. What kind of business? That, we are not told. This has already become the gold standard of Russian corruption. Wives legalize the bribes and kickbacks received by their official husbands through some mysterious “business” about which nothing is known.
Russia’s newly appointed prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is one of those husbands whose wives turn out to be extraordinarily successful entrepreneurs. Millionaires in U.S. dollar terms.
Mikhail Mishustin became a government official in 1998. First he was an adviser to the head of the tax service, and later that same year, a deputy head.
With the exception of a brief break from 2008 to 2010, Mishustin served as a senior official in positions incompatible with doing business.
For 20 of the past 22 years, Mikhail Vladimirovich Mishustin has been a “servant of the people.”
So why, then, is he so damn rich?
It is all thanks to a very talented wife.
In 2010, Mishustin became head of the Federal Tax Service and was required to publish asset declarations. It immediately became impossible not to notice his wife, Vladlena Yuryevna Mishustina. She was doing spectacularly well. She seemed like a female Atlas Shrugged heroine, carrying the world on her shoulders.
Over the past nine years, she alone—excluding the income of her husband, the official—has earned nearly 800 million rubles.
2010: 72 million rubles
2011: 61 million rubles
2012: 73 million rubles
2013: 149 million rubles
2014 (a crisis year, though not for everyone): 160 million rubles
2015: 81 million rubles
2016: 77 million rubles
2017: 68 million rubles
2018: 48 million rubles
Total: 789 million rubles.
And she somehow managed to do all this while raising three children. It would make a fine story about the achievements of a strong woman, but unfortunately you will find no real evidence of any successful business.
Not a single active legal entity is registered to Vladlena Mishustina. It is impossible to find anything about her online. Yet every year she reliably earns one million dollars, or two, or four. From what? How? It is a mystery shrouded in darkness, as is so often the case with our officials.
It is obvious to anyone that if someone honestly earned nearly a billion rubles through business, traces of that business should be easy to find. Officials often lie by saying there are no traces of their family business because it is tied to investments rather than the real economy. But to make a billion through investments, you first need to invest several billion. And the Mishustin family simply could not have had that kind of money.
And yet right now—just look for yourself—Telegram channels and Kremlin media are bursting with posts about what a progressive, modern official Mishustin is. With Mishustin, it is all about transparency, digitalization, precise accounting. Mishustin will count and record every last kopeck from every sole proprietor, every stall and kiosk.
That is why I believe the same degree of transparency must be demanded from Mishustin himself. He decided to become the second most powerful person in the country—no one forced him to—so he should kindly explain what sort of business his family uses to earn hundreds of millions.
All the more so because there are plenty of aggravating circumstances. Since 1998, with only a short break, Mishustin has been in government service. And his agency, the tax service, is one of the most corruption-prone institutions there is. The tax service is not just about digitalization and electronic signatures. It is also about billions of rubles in murky VAT refund schemes, cash-out operations, tax deductions, offshore schemes, and so on. If you deal with trillions of budget rubles, then once again, be so kind as to account for your own personal billion.
So until Mishustin provides details about his wife’s mysterious and astonishingly successful business, we can assume only one thing: that this business is a fake used to conceal ordinary kickback schemes. A suitcase full of cash is simply replaced by a sham contract with a company owned by an official’s wife.
Especially since today we can see that information about Mishustin’s real estate has started to be classified.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation calls on Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to immediately disclose all details of exactly how, and in partnership with which organizations, his wife earned hundreds of millions of rubles.
This is a matter of basic ethics and respect for the citizens of the country Mishustin intends to govern. Mishustin owes an explanation to people who, after working for decades, earn half a million rubles a year at best, as to how his wife makes 320 times more. What does she do? Does she go to work? Did she invest? In what? Where does she keep this accumulated billion, and in what currency?
We are ready to accept an answer in any form. He can even post it on his Telegram channel.
And in case Mishustin lies to us, I urge anyone who knows anything interesting about Mishustin’s dealings and schemes in the Federal Tax Service (or anywhere else) to write to our Black Box https://blackbox.fbk.info/. Do not forget that it is completely anonymous: we ourselves cannot see who is writing to us, so we cannot reply. If you want a response, leave your contact details in the message itself.