Sold to Russia Viktor Vekselberg acted as an intermediary in the deal involving the building on Presnya: he bought it from Hungary for 7 times less than he later sold it to the Russian government for. According to the Ministry of Regional Development, the building at 3 Krasnaya Presnya Street, with an area of 17,612.8 sq. m, was purchased for 3.5 billion rubles in 2009 from Renova Innovative Technologies LLC (Vedomosti has the documents). Two state contracts were signed, dated December 10, 2008. Read in full An astonishing investigation by Vedomosti. You read it and realize: compared with this, the “cursed nineties” are standing off to the side smoking nervously. In outline: The Hungarian embassy owned a building on Krasnaya Presnya. Its market value was about $50 million. Hungary began cutting costs and decided to sell the building. Hungarian crooks sold the building to an offshore company below market price, for $21 million. Crooks in the Russian government SUDDENLY buy the same building from the offshore company at a price far above market value, for $116 million. The Russian and Hungarian crooks split $95 million between themselves. It is now emerging that the person who arranged the deal and provided the offshore companies was none other than Viktor Vekselberg.
The president of the Skolkovo Foundation, which is supposed to lead Russia into the Amazing World of High Technology in exchange for a Very Large Amount of budget money.
A quote from the article:
So it turns out that in March 2008 the Hungarian side sold the Diamond Air building for $21.3 million (about 511 million rubles at the exchange rate at the beginning of the month), and in 2009 the Ministry of Regional Development bought that same building from Renova Innovative Technologies for 7 times more — 3.5 billion rubles.
7. The Hungarian crooks are now under investigation. Hungary may not have “Sovereign Democracy” (a Kremlin-coined political term), Great-Power Grandeur, or an Innovative Path, but it still has at least some law and political will to launch criminal proceedings against crooks who stole $30 million in Hungarian money:
According to AP, on February 9 the Hungarian authorities detained former Hungarian ambassador to Moscow Árpád Székely, former Hungarian Foreign Ministry secretary Fexi Horváth, and former State Property Agency secretary Miklós Tátrai on suspicion of real-estate fraud in Moscow.
7. Our crooks, who stole roughly $66 million of Russian money, are calmly continuing to work in the Russian government, the Ministry of Regional Development, and the Skolkovo Foundation.
The Skolkovo Foundation website is still blinking with various little lights, as if hinting to us: trust us, we are great Innovators and Nanotechnologists. We are certainly not just making money by crudely stealing from the budget. We’re like Steve Jobs now.
And besides: The Board of Trustees of the Skolkovo Foundation is chaired personally by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
We will definitely be pursuing this case.
And right now it will be very interesting to watch the reaction of our Great Fighter Against Corruption to what is happening, given that just a week ago he announced a New Stage of Uncompromising Struggle.
Multiple fines and all that.
It’ll be interesting to see whether there is even a single resignation.