You’ve seen roughly this kind of thing in wildlife TV shows. A plump little pig is running through the jungle, hunters are chasing it, and the pig runs in the direction that seems safest to it. And then—bam, a trap!—and before long our crafty little pig is roasting on a spit.
In our case, of course, it’s still a long way to the spit, because this little pig has a deputy’s ID, a daddy on the judicial qualifications commission, lots and lots of money, and in general—together with Sobyanin, it helps run the city of Moscow and is one of the country’s top United Russia figures. But we’ve driven it into a trap.
Before I continue, I’d like to invite everyone to take part in a campaign. Like in the good old days. We’ve seen time and again that a leaflet you print out yourself and hang up in your elevator or apartment building entrance is an incredibly powerful campaigning tool. TV can’t compete with it. My feelings toward the hero of today’s video are so deep, I understand him so well, that I took the liberty of writing an appeal to Muscovites on his behalf and on behalf of the mayor of Moscow. It is absolutely truthful. Don’t be lazy—download it here and show it to your neighbors. If they tear it down, no matter. One minute, and you can put up a new one. But after three days, everyone in your building will know the most important thing about United Russia:
A sensational document has been published on the Moscow City Duma website. Its chairman—Alexei Shaposhnikov—has reported his income. It came to a modest 2 billion rubles.
Roughly five times more than all the other deputies combined. And there are some quite wealthy deputies there.
An income like that puts Shaposhnikov among the richest officials in the country, and despite the fact that he is a Moscow deputy, every citizen of Russia should be paying attention to him.
You probably all remember the recurring hero of our investigations, former Deputy Prime Minister Shuvalov, who lives in palaces, rides in Rolls-Royces, and whose little dogs fly to shows on a private jet. Even he declared 10 times less.
And the most interesting thing is not even that Shaposhnikov is a billionaire, but that his wealth appeared suddenly, out of nowhere. Let’s look at his declarations from previous years. 3 million rubles. 5 million rubles. 22 million. 5.5. 24 million and... 2 billion. Eighty times more than the year before.
Interesting, you’ll say, but what does that have to do with the pig running through the jungle? Well, the thing is that we’ve been chasing Alexei Shaposhnikov for a long time, waving this piece of paper.
It says that in 2018, deputy Alexei Shaposhnikov contributed 870 million rubles to the charter capital of his company, Your Consulting LLC. Actual cash—not shares, not property, but simply transferred the money into the company’s account. And this was his own shell company. Your Consulting does who-knows-what, registers some websites, “provides management consulting.” But all that is basically completely unimportant and uninteresting, because there was never any money in this company at all. In most years it had no revenue whatsoever, and when it did, it was around 50,000 rubles for the whole year.
And when there were elections last summer, we made life very difficult for deputy Shaposhnikov by going to his meetings with voters and asking him questions about his 270-square-meter penthouse in central Moscow and where he got the 870 million.
Shaposhnikov has headed the Moscow City Duma for the last six years, and he has held public office since 2003. He worked in the State Duma apparatus, ran the Young Guard of United Russia, and sat on the presidium of United Russia’s Moscow branch. Where did he get 870 million? That is exactly what we tried to ask him at a meeting with voters. He refused to talk then. And our correspondent was driven away by security guards.
Even so, back then we almost threw him out of parliament with the help of Smart Voting. We urged everyone to vote not for Shaposhnikov, but for Alexander Borisovich Yefimov. People went and voted for him, but the crafty little pig from the jungle fooled everyone that time. Shaposhnikov registered a spoiler candidate with the same surname—Maxim Vladimirovich Yefimov. So although most people voted against Shaposhnikov and for Yefimov, their votes were split between one Yefimov and the other. The “real” Yefimov got 37.5%, the “fake” Yefimov got 7.5%—45% together. Shaposhnikov got 40.8%. He slipped through by a hair, basically.
But our story about the 870 million did not die. And quite recently, on his program on Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station), journalist and politician Yegor Zhukov—thanks to him—repeated our question.
It’s better to watch it than to retell it, of course. The entire broadcast is basically a manifesto of an arrogant United Russia politician. When Zhukov asked this question, Shaposhnikov, who lives off our taxes, started saying that he was not obliged to prove anything. “Look at the declaration, everything will be there.”
Excellent. That is exactly what we were aiming for. That’s where we were driving our little pig.
Awkward questions forced Shaposhnikov to reveal his wealth. Or at least part of it.
There is now a declaration. In it we see 2 billion, which, according to this United Russia politician’s cunning plan, is supposed to settle the question of where the 870 million in his company came from. But Alexei Valeryevich Shaposhnikov has solved nothing and fixed nothing with this declaration. He has only made things worse. And while he is, I hope, packing up his office as chairman of the Moscow City Duma, I will explain to readers exactly how this Moscow United Russia politician deceived us.
The head of Moscow’s deputies declares an income of 2 billion for 2019, even though the 870 million we focused on was in his possession a year earlier—in 2018. Deputy Shaposhnikov apparently sincerely believes that we do not understand how a calendar works, that 2018 is not the same as 2019. It came BEFORE it. And you cannot say that in 2019 you earned the money for something you bought a year earlier.
Now look at this—an exclusive document, almost as shocking as Shaposhnikov’s declaration.
This is a decision dated June 9, 2018, under which the company’s previous sole owner, Your Consulting (Shaposhnikov’s father, Valery), decides in effect to transfer a stake in the company to his son, Alexei Valeryevich. The younger Shaposhnikov is to contribute 870 million rubles to the company’s charter capital and in return receive a 99% stake. These millions were to be contributed specifically in cash; there is even a payment schedule—three installments of 290 million rubles each. In June, July, and August 2018.
And here is the bank payment order. On June 14, 2018, Alexei Shaposhnikov transfers those same 290 million rubles from his personal account at VTB to the company’s account.
And then he did it two more times.
Now we open and carefully examine Shaposhnikov’s declaration for 2018. Income: 24 million.
That is ALL the money Shaposhnikov earned that year; there are no hundreds of millions there. There is nothing like that in his accounts in 2019 either. The balance in his VTB account is 1 million rubles; the others are zero.
He earned 24 million, but spent 870 million. What exactly is Shaposhnikov counting on? How can his 2 billion a year later possibly explain that?
They can’t. And that is obvious to absolutely anyone. You do not need to be a specialist or an accountant to understand it—he is lying. Manipulating facts and dates.
And you know what? From this point on, Shaposhnikov can quite officially live the life of a billionaire. Buy whatever he wants. Fly on private jets. Buy white elephants for family members so they can ride them around Moscow. And for every question, he has a ready answer: what’s the problem? It’s my officially declared income.
So we want to know where this income came from. What exactly did Moscow City Duma chairman Shaposhnikov do to earn 2 billion rubles? On behalf of all Muscovites—and probably not only Muscovites—allow me to put this question to Shaposhnikov himself, to all the other Moscow City Duma deputies, to Sobyanin, Putin, the FSB, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Interior Ministry, the National Guard, the Emergency Situations Ministry. I don’t even know who else. Rospotrebnadzor (Russia’s consumer protection watchdog). Sportloto (a Soviet/Russian state lottery, used here sarcastically).
Explain to us how a public official can suddenly have 2 billion rubles from who-knows-where.
Shaposhnikov is not just a deputy. I did not say for nothing that he governs Moscow together with Sobyanin. Sobyanin heads the executive branch, and Shaposhnikov the legislative one. All these amazing experiments by Sergei Bordyurovich (a mocking nickname based on “bordyur,” or curb) in relaying paving tiles twice a year would be impossible without Shaposhnikov, who, with the help of United Russia deputies, approves the budget and then performs the supervisory function. Parliamentary oversight.
That is, he comes out and says: there is no corruption in replacing the new granite curbs on this street with even newer ones. After all, they served for a whole year. They wore out. Time to replace them.
Shaposhnikov is a key link in Moscow’s corruption, and as we can see, he has so much money that it can no longer even be hidden.
At the same time, note one small but important detail. The man is a billionaire. He can afford anything. But from the declaration we see that he is not giving up the state dacha that we pay for. In other words, they robbed us, and as a token of gratitude we are also supposed to pay for a country house so deputy Shaposhnikov can stroll around there and eat gooseberries.
Just the other day, opposition deputies in Moscow introduced a bill to give every Muscovite—or at least every Muscovite—20,000 rubles now, during the crisis and the ongoing quarantine in Moscow. That is what I also proposed in the Five Steps program.
And what does Shaposhnikov do? He does not even put the issue on the agenda. It is not even discussed.
Remember this, everyone. Direct cash support for people is not on the agenda of Putin’s ruling party. They got their billions and they are doing just fine, while we are supposed to keep quiet and go on paying taxes.
This will continue as long as there are brainwashed people around us who still vote for Putin, United Russia, and their deputies. Always and everywhere campaign against them, vote against them.