Anyone who has been to Kazan will agree: it’s a beautiful city. Everything is well kept, well maintained, and the infrastructure is highly developed. Simply gorgeous.
But in reality, all of this is just a façade hiding a vast, gaping void. Beneath the capital’s outward prosperity lies a monstrous, predatory system. The people of Tatarstan have been deceived and robbed, and those who seized power here cling to it so tightly that they are ready to do anything to keep it.
Settle in: what we’re about to show you shocks even us.
Tatarstan is a place where a real sultanate, khanate, kingdom—call it whatever you like—has taken shape, but the essence is the same. For 30(!) years (that is, longer even than Putin and Lukashenko), one clan has remained in power, and at the expense of their own people’s well-being its members have become some of the richest people in the country, perhaps even the world. To understand how this happened, let’s go back in time.
“Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow”—this phrase by Boris Yeltsin, spoken in Kazan, is probably known and remembered by every Russian over 30. Yeltsin said these words in 1990. In this way, the future first president of the new post-Soviet Russia was trying to hold the disintegrating country together and stop the “parade of sovereignties.” The authorities in Moscow were taking unprecedented steps to calm the “rebellious” regions, above all Tatarstan. Take whatever you want, be as independent as you can—but just don’t leave Russia.
Tatarstan wanted sovereignty and fought for it. The symbol and driving force of that struggle was a local agriculture official, Communist Party regional secretary, future president, and “babai” (“grandfather” in Tatar/Russian usage) of Tatarstan—Mintimer Shaimiev.
Take a look at the front pages of local newspapers in 1991:
That same summer, in 1991, Shaimiev was elected president of the Republic of Tatarstan. And from that moment began what was probably the largest-scale usurpation of power and the most shameless personal enrichment. The election was uncontested—there were simply no other candidates on the ballot. Shaimiev won with 71%. And here is another interesting detail. On that same day, the country was also electing the president of Russia, but at polling stations in Tatarstan those ballots were simply not handed out. So Tatarstan chose its own president and ignored Yeltsin’s election.
And over time, the tension only grew. In 1992, Tatarstan held a referendum on independence. Sixty-one percent voted for sovereignty, with half of all eligible voters turning out. Despite this, Russia’s Constitutional Court declared the referendum illegal.
But the people did vote! And using that referendum as justification, Tatarstan refused to sign the Federal Treaty with Moscow. Tatarstan demanded special status and a separate agreement. A real tough political struggle, right? The local authorities were supposedly defending the interests of their people.
The standoff with the center continued for another two years. Shaimiev skillfully added fuel to the fire, frightening Moscow with Tatar nationalism and maintaining the impression that without him the region would descend into ethnic conflict. In 1994, Moscow and Kazan finally signed the most important agreement: “On the Delimitation of Jurisdictions and Mutual Delegation of Powers.” It gave Tatarstan the exclusive right to create its own system of state bodies, form its own budget, have its own citizenship, and take part in international relations. And most importantly, to control its land and resources.
It would seem that this was the longed-for independence. Money was not flowing to Moscow, as it did from every other region, but staying in Tatarstan. Resources—land, mineral wealth, water, oil—were declared the “exclusive heritage and property of the people of Tatarstan.” Sounds like victory? Not so fast.
Shaimiev is re-elected to a second presidential term. Once again, an uncontested election—and an utterly shameless 97% of the vote. When asked whether he would run again, Shaimiev sighed: of course not, no, that would be unimaginable! And yet... in 2001 he ran again and became president for a third time. And then a fourth—in 2006. Though by then there were no elections at all, just at Putin’s request.
And speaking of Putin: his relationship with Shaimiev was excellent from the start. When they first met (Putin was still head of the FSB at the time), they somehow exchanged wristwatches. More broadly, Shaimiev stood at the origins of the United Russia party; he can be considered its regional father and later one of its main patrons. Shaimiev has served as one of Putin’s official campaign surrogates in every election.
The secret of their wonderful relationship is simple. There was another, unspoken agreement between Kazan and Moscow. One side, Tatarstan, delivers sky-high support numbers for Putin and United Russia—truly sky-high, Chechnya-style. In Putin’s first presidential election, he got 53% nationwide, but 69% in Tatarstan. In 2018 it was 77% nationwide and 82% here. And so it continues to this day. In the last State Duma election, United Russia won 54% nationwide, but a full 85 in the republic. Nationwide, 78% voted for resetting Putin’s term limits, while in Tatarstan—just to be safe—it was 83.
And the other side of the deal—Putin—lets the Tatar elites steal on a scale beyond even the wildest dreams of the most brazen United Russia figures in Moscow. Steal with impunity, without oversight, in any amounts and from anything at all. This carte blanche has been granted to two families: beloved grandfather, babai Shaimiev, and his successor, the current president, Rustam Minnikhanov.
Minnikhanov replaced Shaimiev as president of Tatarstan in 2010. As of today, he has held the post for 10 years, and now, on September 13, he plans to win a third term—another five years.
Minnikhanov met Shaimiev back in childhood. He literally grew up “on the knees” of the republic’s first president. Then came friendship with Shaimiev’s sons, work in the Tatarstan government, and finally the ceremonial transfer of power in 2010. In short, a textbook successor: long known, loyal, devoted. Shaimiev calls Minnikhanov a figure of destiny. And Minnikhanov responds that Shaimiev is a model and guide for the younger generation. An idyll.
The system Shaimiev built in the mid-1990s was picked up and “improved” by Minnikhanov. Super-rich elites. Poor people who, on top of being poor, are constantly being fleeced. In Tatarstan there is a thing called “self-taxation”. A village or rural settlement holds a referendum—say, on whether people want the fence in the park replaced. The referendum votes yes, and then every resident is charged 300, 500, or 1,000 rubles (roughly $3 to $11) each. Mandatory. Not per household, but per person. And this is on top of the taxes people already pay, housing and utility fees, and other коммунalка bills—then officials come and say: “Chip in some more.”
The political field here has been completely cleared out, there are almost no independent media, and lawlessness and arbitrariness reign. The police here are known above all for torturing, raping, and killing people right inside their stations. During the few days we spent in Tatarstan working on this investigation, our film crew was chased, we were threatened, and when police arrived they confiscated phones, computers, and cameras—from us, for some reason, rather than from the attackers. Our lawyer, Belarusian citizen Vladlen Los, was illegally targeted for deportation from Russia. Georgy Alburov was fined 30,000 rubles (about $330) for flying a drone.
Why is this happening? Regimes like this are actually very fragile and require constant protection. Minnikhanov and United Russia understand that perfectly well. On September 13 there will be elections for president, for several city councils, and even a by-election to the State Duma. And what the crooks in Tatarstan fear most is that something might go wrong in those elections. So let’s scare them a little more. Vote for anyone at all—just not Minnikhanov. Sign up for “Smart Voting” if you live in Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, or Nizhnekamsk, and we will send you the name of the candidate you should vote for to throw out the United Russia nominee. That is the part you can do. We will do the other part. Because this investigation is not just a story about the incredible wealth of Tatarstan’s crooks. We caught the sitting president of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, taking a bribe of nearly 3 billion rubles. And we demand his immediate dismissal.
What you see in the photo is the Luciano hotel complex. It is an elite, very expensive hotel with a spa, beauty salon, and restaurant. In Kazan, literally everyone knows it. Above all because it belongs to Minnikhanov’s wife, Gulsina Akhatovna. It is in this spa complex that, pardon the pun, the billions of the Tatarstan president’s family are laundered. And the spa treatments have nothing to do with it. The hotel business is just a signboard, a cover. In reality, behind all these jars, massage rooms, and pools is a specially created machine for taking bribes—and legalizing the money the president’s family lives on.
Minnikhanov’s wife Gulsina first burst into the national news, probably in 2017, thanks to her financial disclosure: according to the published data, she earned 2.3 billion rubles in a single year. That is far more than the budget of Nizhnekamsk, for example.
Naturally, everyone was stunned. Even the biggest crooks in United Russia do not dare declare 2.3 billion. At first there was no explanation at all. Then came a terse comment: supposedly she had sold a stake in that very spa complex to some unknown offshore company.
A stake? In a Kazan spa complex? For more than 2 billion rubles? That did not sound very convincing. So we decided to look into it.
We started digging and were veeeery surprised. Right out in the open, we found one of the biggest bribes we can remember. And most interesting of all, it is perfectly proven—fully documented, point by point.
The stake in Gulsina Minnikhanova’s company was bought by a Cypriot offshore firm, Santerna.
We found it and studied its annual reports. Here is the line we needed, from 2016. The offshore company bought 49%—that is, a non-controlling stake—of LLC Luciano for 2.2 billion rubles. That is roughly $33.5 million.
And now things start getting suspicious. Immediately after buying those shares, the company writes down their value. To simplify: if you bought something for 100 rubles, then in your accounting records it should also appear as 100. Not 200—that would be an overvalued asset. Not 50, either. But our offshore company bought a stake in the Minnikhanovs’ spa complex for $33 million and put it on its balance sheet at only $6.5 million.
In theory, that could happen if, the day after the purchase, a meteorite had fallen on the Luciano spa complex and completely destroyed it. Then such a write-down might make sense. But we checked: no meteorite fell.
In other words, the deal was fictitious, not a market transaction.
We kept going through the filings, and in 2018 it happened again! Offshore Santerna contributed $10 million to Luciano’s charter capital, did not increase the stake it owned, and then fully wrote down that investment too. In other words, they again spent money on something completely unnecessary—they paid for thin air.
So then, who is this bumbling businessman of ours? Who is just throwing money around and literally stuffing it into the Minnikhanovs’ pockets? The answer is right there in the corporate registry.
The offshore company through which the bribe was paid is 100% owned by Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan.
Vardanyan, one of the richest people in Russia, is known as the founder of the investment company Troika Dialog and as one of the ideological inspirations behind Skolkovo and other innovation projects. He presents himself as a highly sophisticated international investor, engages in philanthropy around the world, and maintains an extremely respectable image.
But that really is just an image, apparently aimed at his foreign colleagues and partners. In reality, he quite recently paid a clean 3 billion-ruble bribe to the president of Tatarstan. What does Tatarstan have to do with him, you might logically ask? Vardanyan has close and longstanding ties to Tatarstan: since 2006, his Troika Dialog and he personally have held major stakes in KAMAZ, which is based in Naberezhnye Chelny. Vardanyan and Minnikhanov sit together on the board of trustees of the Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan. And by his own words, he is “a big fan of Tatarstan.” It shows.
In total, Vardanyan paid the Minnikhanovs $43.4 million. Of that amount, he “wrote off” or “devalued” $38.4 million. That is the bribe. In ruble terms, it is nearly 3 billion. After all, this is the 21st century; the era of cash in suitcases (or railcars, in our case) is over, so to disguise the bribe they used the story of a fake purchase of the spa complex.
A fake purchase, exactly. From the outside, it looks as though Vardanyan’s offshore company owns 49% of this huge hotel and spa complex—that is, of a business that generates at least some income. But that is not true. LLC Luciano holds title only to the buildings, while the actual money is earned by entirely different legal entities, and Vardanyan has nothing to do with them. We even went to have coffee in the hotel restaurant specifically to see who was collecting the profits from the complex. And the receipt surprised us: it turned out that payment for services goes not to Minnikhanova and Vardanyan’s company, but to a certain LLC “SERVICE CENTER.” The same company is listed on Luciano’s website.
This is the company of Venera Gafarova, Gulsina Minnikhanova’s sister. She is a very important figure in our investigation.
Venera Gafarova herself is unlikely to be doing business in Kazan, because she mostly lives in Switzerland, where she looks after her grandson, who studies at one of the most expensive schools in the world.
Venera Gafarova’s husband, Kharis Gafarov, headed the pension fund of the Vysokogorsky district from 2002 to 2015. And when his career as an official ended, in 2017 he and his wife bought themselves Maltese passports. Here is the notice of their admission to Maltese citizenship:
It is always the same with United Russia people—the pension fund is in Tatarstan, but their retirement is in Switzerland or somewhere else in Europe. We will mention Gafarova more than once in this investigation, because many of the Minnikhanov family’s assets are registered in her name as a nominal owner. But first, we need to finish with Luciano.
When you hear “spa complex” or “hotel,” even if you have a very vivid imagination, you still picture just a hotel—maybe a building, some infrastructure. But that is not our case. The Minnikhanovs own an entire city block, and they are expanding right before our eyes.
The largest building—the Luciano spa complex—covers more than 14,000 square meters. Attached to it is a 10-story hotel building and conference hall. The huge covered parking garage also belongs to the Minnikhanov family. The residential building next door is worth mentioning too. The Minnikhanovs own apartments there—not one, not two, not even five, but an entire entrance section containing 22 apartments with a total area of 2,178 square meters. And here is a new mega-construction project. A year ago, Minnikhanov’s wife bought from former Kazan mayor Kamil Iskhakov the land under the “Health Combine” complex. Unlike Luciano, this was a fairly affordable bathhouse and gym complex. The 12,000-square-meter plot in the very center of the city was sold to Minnikhanov’s wife for 165 million rubles, and just three weeks after the purchase Minnikhanova herself revalued it at 560 million rubles. The old bathhouses were demolished, and some kind of multifunctional center is now being built in their place.
So, we have разобрали the bribe from oligarch Vardanyan, and so that you do not think this was some kind of aberration or mistake, let’s move straight on... to the next bribe! It is not only major oligarchs who have to pay tribute; local businessmen keep up as well. Minnikhanov’s system is arranged so that he extracts his small rent—or more often a large one—from literally everything and everyone around him. Let’s figure out where the president of Tatarstan, a lifelong public servant, got a 1,600-square-meter house.
This is the very heart of Kazan; you simply cannot find a more central location. The Kazan Kremlin and the famous Kul Sharif Mosque are nearby. Without exaggeration, the most expensive houses in Kazan stand here. But the most expensive of them all, of course, belongs to Minnikhanov. This luxurious house of nearly 1,600 square meters belongs to his wife’s company. The mansion looks very modern; with a terrace like that, it would fit right in somewhere in Switzerland or Spain. The house is listed in the disclosure, but the land under it is declared only partially. The plot area is 6,500 square meters (extracts one, two, three). To the right is another, smaller house, registered directly in his wife’s name, along with a boiler house and a greenhouse. It is very hard to estimate the total value of this compound—nothing like it has ever been sold in Kazan. Still, we are certain it is worth no less than 1 billion rubles.
How could that kind of money have appeared in the family of a public official? It could not, of course—and it did not. Minnikhanova’s company traded for the 1,579-square-meter house with local businessman Ravil Ziganshin—a businessman, former legislator, and contractor. Minnikhanova had a basement non-residential premises, and she exchanged it for a house like this on the embankment.
What is this, luck? No—it is a bribe to the sitting president of the republic from the region’s biggest developer.
But we are not done yet with the luxurious houses on the embankment. Let’s look again at Minnikhanov’s billion-ruble house and at one neighboring plot.
This house to the left of Minnikhanova’s is registered to her sister’s daughter, Leila Akberova. The house has an area of 575 square meters and was bought in 2011. We estimate its value at 200 million rubles.
Akberova herself, by the way, works as an ordinary notary. You can book an appointment and even order a house call.
Literally just across the fence from the Minnikhanovs’ house stands a mosque. We will tell you about it too, because the story is very interesting.
In principle, construction is not supposed to be allowed here at all (the entire area in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin has special protected status as a UNESCO World Heritage site), but this is just one more illustration that laws and rules do not exist for the Minnikhanov family. This mosque, made of “the whitest marble in the world,” was built quite recently. The construction was overseen by the same Ravil Ziganshin, who effectively gifted the neighboring house to the Minnikhanov family. The mosque is named Irek, after Minnikhanov’s son, who died in a plane crash in 2013. Although the mosque is open to the public, it clearly has a special status—first, it is literally just across the fence from the Minnikhanovs’ house, and second, among its founders are the president’s closest relatives.
Twenty-four-year-old Irek Minnikhanov, who lived permanently in Switzerland, was buried not here but in the city center, on the Alley of Glory. This is a memorial complex in the local Gorky Park, where famous revolutionaries, cultural figures, and scientists are buried. There had been no burials there since 1957, and then half a century later Irek Minnikhanov’s grave appeared there.
But let’s return to the list of the Minnikhanov family’s assets. We are still only at the beginning.
We found the Minnikhanov family’s second house 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Kazan, in the village of Ilyino.
This land is registered not to Minnikhanov’s wife, but to his wife’s sister’s company—the same Venera Gafarova in whose name the Luciano restaurant is registered.
A prime location: more than three hectares (over 7.4 acres) of Tatarstan land with access to a helipad.
Here is the property extract for the main house with access down to the water; its area is 1,380 square meters. To the right is a 770-square-meter pool building, a little farther on there is a separate bathhouse and a greenhouse, and at the entrance to the property there is a checkpoint and a guard house. We estimate this entire country estate at 500 million rubles.
A defining trait of any United Russia official is that he is incapable of stopping his stealing. A corrupt, bribe-taking bureaucrat will never have enough. This is the answer to the famous line, “Why do we need new officials? They’ll come in and start stealing, while the old ones have at least already stolen enough.” No—they will never steal enough. And the methods will only grow more sophisticated.
The Minnikhanovs’ third country house is located 30 km (18.6 miles) from central Kazan, on the picturesque bank of the Volga River. The story of this house is breathtaking in its brazenness. There used to be an old Soviet children’s camp called Volga on this site. The camp had long needed repairs and reconstruction, and the oil company Tatneft volunteered to do it. But to understand the trick, you need to look at satellite images. The camp used to be right here, in a very good spot, directly by the river:
And it was moved over here. In its place on the riverbank, an elite residential settlement appeared.
At the opening of the new camp in 2011, Minnikhanov said: “We have always wanted a good youth center, a camp, and thanks to Tatneft this wish has come true.” Minnikhanov’s personal wish also came true—another mega-dacha.
The settlement of Borovoye-Matyushino, located directly on land stolen from the children’s camp, is called “Kazan’s Rublyovka” (a reference to Moscow’s ultra-elite suburb). Important Tatneft bosses live here, but the biggest and most luxurious house once again belongs to our old acquaintance—Rustam Minnikhanov. The 9,000-square-meter plot is registered to his wife’s company. There is a separate servants’ house visible, with an area of 308 square meters. The main house covers 1,500 square meters. We found the architectural plans for this house. The luxury is staggering. It has its own movie theater, a sauna complex with mosaic walls, a fireplace hall, and of course its own huge swimming pool.
We estimate this entire super-dacha at 1 billion rubles.
Now let’s turn our attention to the helipad.
Dear people of Tatarstan, we have found out that this is YOUR helipad. Come and use it. This floating platform was built by Tatneft and, according to the documents, gifted to the Republic of Tatarstan. But by some remarkable coincidence, this gift to the republic was placed not on the Kremlin embankment, but at President Minnikhanov’s private dacha. And ordinary people cannot get anywhere near this public property.
This story, by the way, is a perfect illustration of the fact that Minnikhanov truly sees Tatarstan as his personal domain. He directly equates himself with the republic: state property equals my property. And Tatneft is the key mechanism of his enrichment. The company has two parallel functions: on the one hand, it extracts and sells oil; on the other, it pays for all of Minnikhanov’s personal whims and desires. It provides him with a lifestyle he officially has no money for.
The best example is a private jet. We analyzed Minnikhanov’s movements around the world and compared them with which aircraft were in the same places at the same time. The only match was a private Falcon 8X jet.
In November of last year, Minnikhanov visited Bratislava—and the plane we were tracking was there too. On February 2 of this year, the aircraft flew to New York, where we also found Rustam Minnikhanov, who was meeting with the Association of American Tatars. On June 6, the plane flew to Altai, and two days later, on Monday, the media reported on a meeting between the president of Tatarstan and the region’s governor, Oleg Khorokhordin.
Minnikhanov also flew on this same plane on an obviously non-work trip to Abu Dhabi to watch the Formula 1 final. Over New Year, the Falcon was waiting for Minnikhanov in the Maldives during a 10-day vacation.
A plane like this costs 3 billion rubles. Its upkeep is at least 200 million rubles a year. It is an extremely expensive luxury. Neither Minnikhanov personally nor even the state budget can afford to pay for this—just the aircraft itself, without maintenance, costs as much as ten annual city budgets of Bugulma. So who pays for it?
We ordered records from Russia’s civil aviation authority to find out who owns this private jet. The answer we got was: Tatneft.
One important thing needs to be stated clearly and plainly: these are not some cute little favors, this is a bribe. Tatneft is a public company, traded on the London Stock Exchange, with substantial stakes owned by major international investors—and all those investors, instead of receiving dividends, are paying for Minnikhanov’s New Year flights to the Maldives.
Speaking of New Year, here is a very funny story—about pettiness. The Minnikhanovs own a 222-square-meter apartment in Dubai (it appears in the disclosure). The apartment was registered to their son and bought by him when he was about 20, and then after his death it passed by inheritance to his mother. The Minnikhanovs love celebrating New Year there. But! You have to get to the UAE somehow—and that is expensive, lots of people are traveling, and so on. So every year, in the last days of December, around the 29th or 30th, Minnikhanov would arrange for himself a working visit to Dubai.
2015, December 31—hard at work.
2016, December 31—a meeting with some important representatives of the Emirates.
It feels as though the meeting is taking place in Minnikhanov’s home, or in the next room: here is his nephew spending the holidays in exactly the same interior.
Then 2017: by an amazing coincidence, work right before New Year again came up in the Emirates. 2018—the exact same situation.
So Minnikhanov invents official business for himself in Dubai on December 31, and then—well, how could he not stay a couple of extra weeks! He literally squeezes everything he can out of the Tatarstan budget.
Tatneft, supposedly a national treasure, is used simply as a cash cow—build a helipad here, a dacha there, provide a plane. Tatneft also gives money to Minnikhanov’s election campaign. He has a well-known campaign beautification program called “Our Yard”. Minnikhanov flaunts it as his main trump card and achievement. Who actually pays for it? Tatneft—to help its boss get re-elected. They have turned a public oil company into their personal wallet.
When did Minnikhanov start stealing? We asked ourselves that question and are ready to answer: immediately, as soon as the opportunity appeared. Even before he became president—back when he was prime minister—Minnikhanov had already begun enriching himself fabulously.
In 2009, even before all these spa-salon stories, Minnikhanov’s wife became the owner of a 175-square-meter apartment in an elite residential building on Yakimanka in Moscow.
Today, a place like that costs around 120 million rubles. Gulsina Minnikhanova’s income that year was 8 million rubles.
In 2011, Minnikhanov’s 22-year-old son bought two apartments in the same building in France for 1 million euros.
Their total area is 322 square meters. The apartments are in a low-rise residential complex 10 minutes from the Swiss border. Where did a 22-year-old get 1 million euros for housing like that? Dad gave it to him—dad, who had just been elected president. Today those apartments are worth more: at least 1.5 million euros, or 135 million rubles. They are registered to Minnikhanova’s sister, Venera Gafarova.
We do not know in exactly what year, but apparently around the same time he became the owner of a 222-square-meter apartment in Dubai. From the photos, we have a rough idea where it is located. Apartments like that in Dubai also cost close to $1 million, so we will estimate it at 70 million rubles.
And do you know where apartments are even more expensive than in the sunny UAE? On Red Square. The Luciano company owns apartments there. They are worth 220 million rubles. They also have a garage there.
In total, we found almost 3.5 billion rubles worth of residential real estate belonging to the Minnikhanovs. And that is only what was purchased by the president himself or his wife.
The sum is certainly shocking, but the problem is not just the fabulous amounts of money they have poured into real estate. The problem is their lifestyle. For several years we have been closely following both Minnikhanov himself and his relatives on social media, and even we are stunned by the scale. It is not only Minnikhanov who flies on private jets—everyone does, right down to small children going on vacation.
Their social media is flooded with photos from private jets, diamonds, €20,000 handbags, and for some reason they are constantly photographing black caviar.
The children look as though they are growing up not in the family of a president, but in the family of some super-rich rapper. You look at it and genuinely realize: these people have completely lost all sense of shame.
This is Venera Gafarova’s grandson; he looks about 12 here. And this 12-year-old boy is wearing two watches at once. On his left wrist is a Hublot, worth more than 1 million rubles. On his right wrist is a Breguet, for about the same price. Why does he need two watches? So he can keep both Kazan time and Swiss time at once.
So this schoolboy walks around every day with 2.5 million rubles on his wrists.
Where does such brazenness come from? He is learning from the best. We examined President Minnikhanov’s own watch collection—we will never tire of repeating: a public servant, not a businessman—and he broke every record.
Judging by the photos, Minnikhanov is simply obsessed with watches. We found an entire collection in his possession; here are the finest pieces:
In total, we found 12 watches worth 107 million rubles.
Investigating Minnikhanov’s illicit enrichment is like a home renovation: it cannot be finished, only stopped. So by an act of will, we are drawing a line under the Minnikhanov story—but there is still something else we absolutely have to say.
Minnikhanov’s predecessor, Mintimer Shaimiev, was not sitting idle all this time either. It was he who began the plundering of Tatarstan, deceived and robbed his own people, and it is no surprise that the most luxurious, unimaginable houses we found belong to his family.
How exactly did he become so fabulously rich? Oil. The very oil that was supposedly the “exclusive property of the people of Tatarstan,” the mineral wealth around which the whole battle for sovereignty revolved—all of it became a source of prosperity not for Tatarstan, as promised, but for Mintimer Shaimiev personally.
In 1995, the authorities of Tatarstan created the company TAIF, which was tasked with preparing the privatization of the largest enterprises. The controlling stake belonged to the state; the republic contributed shares in the region’s biggest companies—Tatneft, Nizhnekamskneftekhim, and so on—to its charter capital. Unique conditions were created for TAIF. It paid no regional taxes at all, and the government allowed it to buy oil from Tatneft at a fixed low price and then export it at market prices. TAIF spent the profit conjured literally out of thin air on buying up telecom operators, TV companies, factories, building shopping centers—you could go on forever. It became an incredibly rich company very quickly, and then... it turned out that TAIF was no longer state-owned. The republic simply disappeared from the list of owners, and everything accumulated thanks to privileges and favors ended up in private hands. Whose hands these were remained hidden for a very long time; the ownership structure was extremely opaque. But in 2017, because of court proceedings, it became known that at least a quarter—25%—of TAIF belongs to the children and grandchildren of Mintimer Shaimiev. To give you a sense of the scale of this wealth: last year the Shaimiev family became the third-richest family in Russia, right after the Rotenbergs. Their fortune was estimated at $3 billion, or 225 billion rubles. That is roughly equal to Tatarstan’s entire annual budget.
How does the first president’s family spend this money? Exactly as you would expect—on ultra-elite real estate in Russia and abroad.
This is the estate of Mintimer Shaimiev’s younger son, Radik, in the village of Obukhovo, 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from Kazan. Even we were impressed by the size of the plot here—478,000 square meters, roughly the size of two Moscow Kremlins (extracts one, two, three). Behind a small forest, hidden from view from the main house, are a garage, utility block, and servants’ house. The estate’s infrastructure is run from there. And of course, the main house. It is only two stories, but its area is a full 3,000 square meters. Around it are perfectly trimmed lawns, trees, and gardens. You might think there is a lake behind the house, but no—it is an artificial pond covering 12,000 square meters. We estimate the value of this estate belonging to Shaimiev’s son at 2 billion rubles.
Radik Shaimiev’s daughter—that is, the granddaughter of Tatarstan’s first president—Kamila lives in London. In the incorporation documents of her Cypriot offshore company, we found her home address.
It is an apartment in this building in London’s most expensive district—worth £5.5 million, or 550 million rubles.
But besides granddaughter Kamila, there are also grandsons. They need somewhere to live too...
This estate is located three kilometers (1.9 miles) from Radik Shaimiev’s dacha, near the village of Bima. It was because of filming this dacha that security guards chased us on ATVs and the police stole all our equipment, just so you would not see what is here. Well then, we are pleased to present to you the gigantic dacha of Timur Ayratovich Shaimiev, the 30-year-old grandson of Tatarstan’s first president. And this dacha is no less impressive than his uncle’s neighboring estate. The total plot area is almost 400,000 square meters (extracts one and two). It is filled with artificial ponds and canals. Construction is now nearing completion; the size and purpose of many of the structures are still unclear, but the area of the main house is already known—2,000 square meters. We estimate this country residence at no less than 3 billion rubles.
In Tatarstan, many people consider Mintimer Shaimiev a national hero. He himself says that people kiss his hands. Monuments are unveiled to him while he is still alive. He retains his state position as an adviser to the president and actively participates in political life.
And we suggest you look once more at these two houses—5 billion rubles buried in dachas, or rather palaces. This is what it was all for. The division of powers, the nationalization of resources, the usurpation of power, the sky-high percentages for United Russia—all of it was for this. The money is enormous, of course, but when you think about it, they did not sell out their own people for all that much.
In 2010, when Minnikhanov had just become president of Tatarstan for the first time, a journalist asked him whether corruption could be defeated. He answered no, and said, quote: “Out of ten people, one won’t take bribes, nine will. If they bring it to you, how can you not take it?” And Minnikhanov has adhered to this principle faithfully and devotedly. The moment unlimited power fell into his hands, Minnikhanov began stealing—on a large scale, shamelessly, brazenly. Dachas, apartments, watches, planes, property abroad—Minnikhanov personally has EVERYTHING one could imagine.
And this did not come out of thin air; this is not some abstract money. It is your money, people of Tatarstan. Your wages, your taxes, your resources, in the end. You were deceived. Traded away. Thirty years ago, Shaimiev promised you that all of Tatarstan’s wealth would be yours, but he lied: all the wealth is his. His first of all, Minnikhanov’s second, and some next official from their clan third. And every new dacha, every new plane of your president is another transaction. You will be robbed, your right to choose will be taken away, tribute will be extracted from you—and Minnikhanov gets another property in Dubai.
Power is not given by God. There is no grandfather, great-grandfather, or father of Tatarstan. Your president should be someone to whom you matter more than a private-jet trip to the Maldives. On September 13, do not vote for Minnikhanov. Vote for anyone you like, just not for him. If you are from Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, or Nizhnekamsk, take part in “Smart Voting”. All those United Russia politicians in your assemblies are accomplices; they are participants in a giant operation to loot Tatarstan.