What a nice birthday present Shaposhnikov, the chairman of the Moscow City Duma, gave me. He was the last person I expected it from.
We state this fully officially, and can back it up legally: on air at Echo of Moscow (a Russian radio station), Shaposhnikov talked himself into resignation. From this moment, he should be temporarily suspended from office and, after an inquiry, dismissed.
WHAT HAPPENED?
In 2018, Shaposhnikov received at least 870 million rubles into his personal account. He later transferred that amount from his own VTB bank account to a company called Vash Consulting LLC.
Here are the payment orders:
I described this in our investigation, and Shaposhnikov did not deny it. No surprise there—we have the documents.
And here is Shaposhnikov’s admission:
Sounds insane, right? The money is in your account. You can do whatever you want with it: buy a yacht, buy a couple more penthouses, drink it away if you like. Shaposhnikov spends that money—puts it into his own company. And at the same time says he doesn’t have that money. That it isn’t income.
He really thinks we’re all idiots.
WHAT DID SHAPOSHNIKOV VIOLATE?
He failed to declare income of 870,000,000 rubles in 2018—income he admitted to on air, and which we confirmed with payment records.
That position directly contradicts Subparagraph 1, Paragraph 1, Article 223 of the Russian Tax Code, which defines the date income is actually received as the day the income is paid, including when the income is transferred to the taxpayer’s bank accounts, as well as Note 1 to the income statement form approved by Presidential Decree No. 460 of June 23, 2014, according to which income for the reporting period must be listed (including pensions, benefits, and other payments).
In other words, Shaposhnikov submitted knowingly false/incomplete information. Under the law “On Combating Corruption,” that is automatic grounds for dismissal.
He failed to declare an expenditure—that is, the source of the funds used to pay into the LLC’s charter capital. Yes, that is a separate violation that leads straight to resignation.
If an official acquires something worth more than his income for the previous three years, he is required to state separately what money he used to buy it. In 2018, Shaposhnikov “acquired” a stake in Vash Consulting LLC by contributing 870 million rubles to its charter capital. By law, Shaposhnikov was required to explain in a separate section of his public declaration how he acquired that stake in the LLC. We look at Shaposhnikov’s declaration. Not a word about it for 2018.
He bought the stake, but with what money—unknown.
Here is an example of what this is supposed to look like. A colleague of Shaposhnikov’s, also a legislator but in Novosibirsk Region, bought expensive real estate. He explained that expenditure by saying he had sold his previous apartment and car.
Shaposhnikov deceived voters. The information published about candidate Shaposhnikov (on the election commission website and at polling stations) turned out to be false. That is a violation of Federal Law No. 67-FZ on elections and the Moscow Electoral Code.
So the question arises: is he an idiot? How can you fail to declare a billion? No. He is not an idiot at all. It was vitally important for Shaposhnikov to lie to voters.
There are things more important than declarations and taxes. For Shaposhnikov, that was the election. His financial well-being for the next five years depended on the 2019 election. So did his entire future career.
Thanks to Smart Voting, Shaposhnikov’s chances of reelection were melting away before his eyes, and he understood that perfectly well. In his case, every single vote had to be fought for—and he fought for them:
That was not enough; the risk of losing still remained. So Shaposhnikov came up with another clever trick. Look at the photo below: this is what the information board at every polling station looks like. A photo, the candidates’ biographies, and below that—a full list of their assets and income. It is the last thing a voter sees and studies before casting a ballot.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the information sheet from Shaposhnikov’s district right now, but it looked something like this:
And what would a grandmother from Severnoye Medvedkovo think when she came to vote? That she lives on 15,000 rubles, while the “young fellow” a social worker asked her to vote for made a billion in a single year. 5,555 times more than she did over a lifetime of work. Would she have voted for him? Hardly.
This trick should cost Shaposhnikov his parliamentary career.
I would also suggest that perhaps Shaposhnikov never intended to declare that insane income of 2 billion rubles at all—or at least not in that amount. But we at the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) are good at our job, and as early as last summer we started asking questions about those same 870 million. That forced Shaposhnikov to declare income proportional to that spending. Otherwise, he would have remained just an ordinary Moscow City Duma deputy, albeit one with a very high salary, and would never have become famous as a billionaire.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
By law, the sequence should be as follows:
Step 1. Shaposhnikov submits all of his “full” (also known as “extended”) declarations to the Moscow City Duma commission on income oversight.
Step 2. Shaposhnikov steps down as chairman of that commission. Otherwise, he would be investigating himself. Ideally, all United Russia deputies should be removed from considering the case, since Shaposhnikov is their direct party superior. They have a conflict of interest.
Step 3. The commission carefully reviews Shaposhnikov’s “full” declarations, as well as his tax return. It easily confirms what Shaposhnikov HIMSELF said on air: in 2018 he received 870 million and did not declare it because “it doesn’t count as income.” Given that it does count as income, the commission can reach only one conclusion—that Shaposhnikov broke the law. Twice. Once when he filed his annual declaration for 2018, and again when he filed his election declaration in the summer of 2019 before the Moscow City Duma campaign. That is enough for immediate resignation.
Step 4. The matter of Shaposhnikov is put to a vote. There are so many violations here that even a United Russia member would find it hard to vote against his removal.
Step 5. Shaposhnikov neatly packs his things into cardboard boxes, calls a GAZelle van with movers, and gets swept out of the Moscow City Duma—just as his crooked colleague Metelsky did not long ago. A by-election is announced in Shaposhnikov’s district, and we get a normal deputy without billions and penthouses.
WHAT QUESTIONS REMAIN
There are already more than enough grounds for Shaposhnikov’s resignation, but several important questions still need to be cleared up.
First, there is the matter of the shares in the company Severyanin that Shaposhnikov owned and sold. It is an extremely murky story—one that even Venediktov questioned during the interview, as did Open Media, which published a detailed analysis of the deal.
Shaposhnikov sold those shares for many times more than they were worth, and immediately afterward permission was granted to build a residential complex on Severyanin’s land. Shaposhnikov claims he knew nothing about the change in the land’s designation—yet if that is true, it is unclear why he sold so expensively. And if he did know and was involved, then it means he a) was managing a business, which he is prohibited from doing, and b) was abusing his powers as chairman of the Moscow parliament. To put it mildly, it does not look good.
Second, there is a new and interesting point here. From Vash Consulting’s financial statements, we can see that the 870 million Shaposhnikov contributed to the charter capital was invested somewhere almost immediately. Apparently, it was issued as a loan.
The question is: to whom? We, as voters, have every right to know where the chairman of the Moscow City Duma invests his personal money. Shaposhnikov is simply obliged to disclose this information—where he spent that billion, what business he has a huge commercial interest in, and whether that business is connected to Moscow, budget money, construction, curb contracts, and so on down the list.
If you know anything about Shaposhnikov’s business dealings and schemes, write to us via Black Box.