Last week, we published an investigation into Mikhail Degtyarev, the new governor of Khabarovsk Krai, in which we described the 100 million rubles’ worth of property owned by his parents, ordinary doctors from Samara. After that, Degtyarev gave an interview in which he admitted everything. That interview, however, shocked us so much that Georgy Alburov from our investigations team even produced a detailed breakdown of it.
Really now: how are retired doctors from Samara supposed to get by without 100 million rubles’ worth of property in Moscow? Degtyarev talks as if, in every region, the moment a doctor retires, someone hands them a suitcase with 100 million rubles and a one-way ticket to Moscow. How else could it be! But by some tragic coincidence, this only worked out for the parents of State Duma deputy Mikhail Degtyarev, while for everyone else, alas, the system somehow failed.
But we have examined Mikhail Degtyarev’s property affairs so thoroughly that we can catch him in any lie about the origins of his family’s real estate, even the most skillful one. Though Degtyarev is not capable of lying skillfully; as usual, he can only do it stupidly. Which he hurried to demonstrate.
The main thing Degtyarev says is this: his parents sold all their property and built a house in the Moscow suburbs.
Let us clarify that all of his parents’ property, apart from the Moscow real estate, is in Samara. Alburov decided to see how many Samara apartments they would have had to sell in order to buy a plot of land and begin construction on a 1,000-square-meter house about 2 kilometers from the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road).
The correct answer: 0 apartments in Samara.
The plot was purchased in October 2013, a month after Degtyarev took part in the Moscow mayoral election as a minor helper to Sergei Sobyanin. The first apartment in Samara was sold in October 2014—that is, a year after the plot had been bought and construction had begun.
This is what the plot looked like in 2014: the house foundation had been laid, and construction was already well underway:
And what kind of golden apartment in Samara was this, the one that supposedly made it possible to launch a project on such a massive 70 million-ruble scale? Was it 2,000 square meters in size? Was it an entire entrance section of a Khrushchyovka apartment block (a Soviet-era low-rise residential building)? No, we will tell you. It was an ordinary 78-square-meter apartment in an entirely unremarkable Samara building constructed in 1996.
The upper-end price for such an apartment in 2014 was 5 million rubles.
That is all. Degtyarev’s parents sold no real estate before buying the plot; all they sold was one apartment for 5 million rubles, which could have covered only 1/15 of what was invested in building the house. But we can even take that pitiful excuse away from Degtyarev. The fact is that his parents not only did not sell all their property in Samara in order to build the house—they actually bought more. In 2016, while the house in the Moscow suburbs was under active construction and required millions of rubles a month, they bought a 100-square-meter apartment in Samara in the newly built residential complex “Historical Quarter.” It cost them at least 8 million rubles.
So the math Degtyarev is offering us goes like this: they sold an apartment in Samara for 5 million rubles, bought an apartment in Samara for 8 million rubles, and with the money left over built a 70 million-ruble house near Moscow. Thank you, Mikhail, for these extremely convincing calculations.
And we cannot help responding to one more small but important lie from Degtyarev.
In the interview, he says that the extension to the house has not yet been completed, and therefore we should count the area of this giant house as only 266 square meters. Here, of course, he is treating not only us—who have looked into the history of his property—but everyone with functioning eyes as idiots. He claims that this part of the house is unfinished:
Okay, let us look at satellite images from 2015.
Here, the main part of the house—the part that is officially registered now—is under construction, along with that same “unfinished extension.”
2016: roofs appear on both parts.
2017: a lawn appears, and all traces of construction disappear:
2018: by now there is a greenhouse, a pond, and another structure as well:
And in the two years since then, nothing has changed. Now, in 2020, there are no signs of construction whatsoever—as you can see in the drone photo above. Not the slightest trace. The answer is simple: everything was completed long ago and not officially registered for purely petty-fraud reasons. They found 70 million rubles to build it, but Degtyarev does not want to pay the proper amount of tax on it.
I want to end this analysis with an address to the people of Khabarovsk. The whole country supports you: you are fighting for your rights, for the right to choose the government you want. Putin is absolutely furious about this, and in retaliation he sent you the political opportunist Degtyarev. He decided to humiliate you this way, to show you that you, the residents of Khabarovsk Krai, are not supposed to decide anything in Khabarovsk Krai. And if you do want to decide—well, then supposedly someone paid you to say so. Putin sent you a man who could not find Khabarovsk Krai on a map, a man who has repeatedly shown throughout his political career that he does not care what he takes part in, as long as he gets paid. That is how he earned money for both the house in the Moscow suburbs and the brand-new apartment. He cannot even properly explain where the money came from; he genuinely thinks you will be convinced by the story that two doctors from Samara, after retiring, bought 100 million rubles’ worth of real estate. And the fact that Degtyarev was participating in elections on United Russia’s side when the purchases were made—well, what an amazing coincidence.
Keep taking to the streets, keep standing up for your rights; the whole country is watching you and knows that you are right. And most importantly: do not let yourselves be deceived. No one should make you doubt that you are the real power. Then you will win.
And I urge everyone else to sign up for Smart Voting: in September, elections will be held in 31 federal subjects (regions), and we must defeat United Russia the way it has already been defeated in Khabarovsk. It is not difficult at all—the main thing is to register and encourage your friends to do the same.