Is there any official in Russia more absurd and ridiculous than Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin? It is as if he were invented специально as a character in a comedy series. Whatever he touches, everything goes wrong.
He drowned a dachshund. He got stuck in a tank. He wrote rap lyrics about Ukraine. He publicly lost a bet involving his own tooth. Trying to show off, he accidentally posted on Facebook the full roster of a top-secret SVR (Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service) unit deployed to Syria. With incredible pride, he presented Putin with a unique machine, a space robot for deep-space exploration. That was how we all met Fyodor.
Rogozin’s Twitter? A disaster. Most of his tweets are so embarrassing you just want the ground to swallow you up. This is how he congratulated the Americans on the successful start of their Mars mission: with memes. Featuring himself.
Here is his powerful prediction that in three years even a blind person would see the revival of industry. That prediction was made in 2012.
And of course, there is the immortal classic about how he would gladly trade EVERYTHING he has for the happiness of ending up in a trench in the DNR (the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic). Why, oh why, did he not simply follow through on that wish?
He also called Elon Musk’s company a pyramid scheme. He became a producer of a film to be shot on the ISS. To beat Tom Cruise to it. He suggested painting Russian rockets in Khokhloma and Gzhel styles (traditional Russian decorative art styles). This could go on forever.
We do not know how it happened, or why one of the biggest and most symbolic posts in the country—the head of the space program—is occupied by such an, excuse us, idiot. Why not an outstanding engineer or designer? Why not, after all, a cosmonaut? Why, out of everyone in a spacefaring nation, did Putin choose journalist (!) and party functionary Rogozin to head Roscosmos?
But let us get to the point. Last week our Dmitry Olegovich got himself into trouble again. A corruption scandal. The situation is both simple and brilliant at the same time.
There is Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin, head of Roscosmos and formerly deputy prime minister in charge of the entire defense sector. There is his son, Alexei Rogozin, who until recently also worked in the defense industry. There is an apartment. An expensive, very expensive apartment in Triumph Palace, which Alexei Rogozin bought in 2019. We even know its value, at least its market value. In the very same building, on the very same floor, the neighboring unit is for sale. Perfect.
And then there is the seller of this apartment.
A shareholder in one of the largest enterprises in the defense-industrial complex.
A factory that produces spacecraft and naval artillery mounts. In other words, this businessman’s wealth—his entire business—depends directly on Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin.
And the trick here is that we have backed the crooked Rogozin family into a corner. If the younger Rogozin bought the apartment on market terms—for 180 million rubles (about $2.4 million at the time)—then the immediate question is: where did the money come from? He could not have earned that much at the Ilyushin aircraft plant, and even together with his father, or his wife, or his mother—in no possible combination does he have enough money for this apartment. That means illicit enrichment: you cannot spend more than you have earned. And if he bought it for less, or on any other non-market (special) terms, then it is a bribe. A conflict of interest. Corruption. And what should be done about corruption in the defense sector? We think people should go to prison. But today’s hero himself says they should be shot.
It is hard to wriggle out of this trap, though perhaps theoretically possible. One could make up a story that young Rogozin found buried treasure. Or won the lottery. Or that some very distant elderly relative turned up and left everything to Alexei Rogozin before dying.
But to wriggle out of it, to explain anything at all, requires at least a token mental effort. Rogozin does not have the capacity for that.
Last Tuesday, on the air at Echo of Moscow, Dmitry Rogozin spent 11 minutes answering a question about this apartment. For 11 minutes he rambled about fakes, about how he was not the one who had to report anything. About how he is, attention please, under the TELESCOPE of oversight bodies:
And, he says, someone must have commissioned our investigation, because it supposedly costs “a great deal of money”:
No, Dmitry Olegovich, it is you—and your apartments and houses—who cost a great deal (to the budget). The investigation cost 300 rubles. That is the price of an extract from Rosreestr (Russia’s property registry).
And when the arguments ran out, Rogozin simply started lying. Shamelessly, spectacularly lying. Let us read:
Is the idea clear? We think it is perfectly clear. Twice in one minute the man said: “Not connected.” There are three equally unrelated Arsenals. A football club (in London, by the way, not Liverpool). A design bureau. And a machine-building plant. And the last of these, just like the football club, has nothing to do with Roscosmos. And it was we, the bumblers, who got them mixed up. No contracts, no relationship, no conflict of interest, because really, how could there be a conflict of interest with some completely unrelated, obscure legal entity? Rogozin even conducted an internal investigation.
And now, dear readers, we invite you to conduct your own internal investigation with us. Let us time how long it takes to expose the lies of such a mighty state manager. One of Putin’s finest appointees. A man so highly qualified that he is paid 60 million rubles a year.
We open a website with company filings. We enter the tax ID number of the Arsenal machine-building plant. We find it. We go to the reports section, download the first file we see. We open it. We scroll to page 5. The section is called “information about shareholders.” There is the list. We see the seller of the Rogozin apartment, and above him… Above him we see that almost 8% of this enterprise is owned by Roscosmos—through its subsidiary, the United Rocket and Space Corporation.
It took us only a few seconds to completely demolish what Rogozin had been saying so confidently while citing inspections and investigations. He accused us of lying, of carrying out a political hit job, of spreading fakes. And just a few seconds are enough to verify and prove it: Rogozin is lying.
He says the machine-building plant has nothing to do with Roscosmos, that it is a private enterprise, yet just a couple of clicks away there is a document stating: no, Roscosmos has a stake in it. And not just a stake, but also a golden share. On the board of directors of this enterprise that is supposedly completely unrelated to Roscosmos sit representatives of… Roscosmos.
The Audit Commission—the body that oversees the company’s financial and business operations—has three members. One of them is a current Roscosmos employee, subordinate to Rogozin.
Knowing and understanding all this perfectly well, Rogozin goes on Echo of Moscow and shamelessly lies to a million listeners. Because it is unlikely that a million people will go check the filings, right? But they will remember that we supposedly confused an English football club with a factory in St. Petersburg. And if someone keeps asking questions, like our colleague Lyubov Sobol, you can always just write, “what an idiot.” Or preemptively block them on Twitter.
Next: contracts. You say there is not a single contract with Roscosmos?
Then what is this?
And this?
And this?
These are all contracts, Dmitry Olegovich. Between the machine-building plant and the design bureau owned by Roscosmos. In an official reply to Echo of Moscow, Rogozin’s subordinates confirm that yes, Dmitry Olegovich was not entirely truthful on air: the contracts do in fact exist. They are just supposedly insignificant—utilities, security, that sort of thing, so it does not count. Roscosmos interacts with the machine-building plant simply because they share a building, they are neighbors, that is how it happened. Fine.
We open the court documents. The parties in the lawsuit are the design bureau (that is, Roscosmos) and the supposedly unrelated Arsenal machine-building plant.
The ruling is dated September 3, 2020. We expect to see a dispute over utility bills for electricity or water, but instead we are surprised to find that the contract concerns research and development work.
Worth hundreds of millions of rubles. And the work under the contract continues to this day. It cannot be stopped, because otherwise the state defense order would be disrupted.
And this is just one random contract that we can see, and only because the parties went to court. In reality, there could be a hundred contracts there worth 100 billion rubles each. We will never know. That is because Roscosmos has been allowed to classify its procurement if it is connected to state secrets. We have proved that Rogozin is lying about the absence of contracts, but we do not know by how much. That is a state-protected secret.
Dmitry Olegovich, let us go over this once more. Very simply, so that you can understand.
Here is your career. In 2011, you became deputy prime minister. You were put in charge of overseeing the military-industrial complex. You were responsible for defense procurement, the nuclear industry, the rocket and space industry, shipbuilding, and aviation. National defense, in the end.
You worked there for seven years and found your son a position paying 2 million rubles a month, as you know.
In 2018, you became head of Roscosmos.
Now let us make it slightly more complicated, but only slightly—do not worry. In 2013, oligarch Gutseriev buys the Arsenal machine-building plant. A major defense-industrial enterprise. Yes, yes, one that you oversee. As they themselves write in their report, since 2008 they have been the sole supplier of products under the state defense order for space-related projects.
In 2018, Gutseriev’s stake passes to Sergei Saruyev. Most likely it was simply reassigned because of sanctions, but that is completely beside the point here. You are still overseeing the military-industrial complex. From that moment to the present day, you and Saruyev have been in the same boat. He is one shareholder of Arsenal, and you are the head of Arsenal’s other shareholder, Roscosmos. In 2019, Saruyev sells your son an apartment that your offspring—however talented he may be—cannot afford. And in 2021, you say that corruption in the defense sector should be punished by execution.
This, Dmitry Olegovich, is a conflict of interest so vast that it can be seen from deep space. At any point during this period, Arsenal’s shareholders had, have, and will have reason and motive to bribe you. And you would take those bribes! Just as you did before, when you “traded” the apartment the state gave you, worth 285 million rubles, for one worth half a billion.
We demand that Rogozin—senior or junior, it makes no difference—publish information about the price and terms on which this apartment, with a market value of 180 million rubles, was purchased. How much he paid for it. How much he handed over or transferred to the account of a man whose wealth depends on his father, a state official. We do not need disgraceful non-answers like this one, where for some reason Rogozin himself and his subordinates are answering the question of whether he steals or not. It talks about utility payments of some kind, but says nothing about the fact that the Arsenal machine-building plant is partly owned by Roscosmos. What are we supposed to do with that? What else could they possibly have written there?
Dmitry Rogozin is, yes, funny; yes, ridiculous; yes, unqualified—but at the same time he is a very harmful and very well-fed Putin-era crook. Officially, 60 million rubles in budget money goes just to maintaining Rogozin, a journalist whom God knows why they put in charge of space. And that is only his salary. If you do not want a thief building spaceports, if you do not want the country’s defense and security entrusted to a journalism school graduate, if you do not want to be treated like idiots and lied to right to your face, take part in Smart Voting. United Russia members must be driven out. And Rogozin is United Russia. He was one of Putin’s trusted representatives. He was appointed as an authorized representative of United Russia. He is the face of the party, as their own website says. And that is impossible to argue with—he really is the face of it. All the values of Putin’s party come together in him so neatly: he steals and he lies.
State Duma elections will be held from September 17 to 19. We all need to unite and make sure there are as few United Russia members there as possible. To do that, we need to vote together. Not just for any non–United Russia candidate, but for the specific non–United Russia candidate with the best chance of winning. You can find out who the strongest candidate is in your district on the Smart Voting website or in the app. The app is available in the Apple Store and Google Play. There is no need to register or leave your personal data there. Just enter your address in the search bar and you will find out whom to vote for. We will publish the lists of candidates selected by Smart Voting a few days before the election. Look for them in the app, on the website, on social media, and on our YouTube channels as well.
Freedom for Alexei Navalny.