Let me explain. My salary, as director of the Yeltsin charitable foundation, is 10,000 rubles*. My husband covers most of our day-to-day expenses. I married him in 2001. After leaving the Kremlin, Valentin worked for several companies. Every year he files an income declaration. Once, one of those declarations even made it into the newspapers. Someone stole a file from the Moscow tax service, and the tabloid press published information about the incomes of many well-known people, including Valentin. What he earns is enough for our everyday life. There are also more substantial expenses. For example, in the summer we used to go to Italy or France together with all the children and grandchildren. Those major expenses are paid for by Valya’s daughter’s husband, Oleg Deripaska. If Polina had married someone else, we would probably have spent our vacations differently. In Turkey, for example, or in Sochi. **By the way, last year, because of the crisis, Oleg couldn’t rent a house on the Mediterranean. So we spent our vacation with all the children in Krasnodar Krai, in a stanitsa (a Cossack village). Everyone really liked it. The children learned to sing Cossack songs. And now they happily perform them at concerts. This year, it seems, we’ll be going to Krasnodar again. I think the children will learn some new songs. ** Now, back to what I wrote in my post about my so-called millions. *There is a well-known falsehood that has been circulated for a long time: that during the years I worked in the Kremlin, I amassed a fortune worth many millions (tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions—the amount depends on the writer’s imagination). I repeat: this is a lie. LiveJournal post by Boris Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Yumasheva, February 8, 2010.
If we had made millions, there would have to be some physical embodiment of them somewhere*. But neither Tanya nor I own planes or villas in France or England ... If, while serving as chief of staff, I had wanted to arrange my own affairs, I would have invited my classmates and former colleagues to work at the Kremlin so that it would be convenient and comfortable for me to handle my business. *But if that had been the case, then after 12 years it would certainly have come out that I was the owner—or at least a shareholder—of some “Neftmetallinvest.” But there is nothing of the sort! Tanya’s and my financial situation was scrutinized almost under a microscope. Why do I feel so calm? Precisely because I did my job honestly. Interview with Valentin Yumashev (Yeltsin’s daughter’s husband) in Moskovsky Komsomolets, February 1, 2011.
Valentin Yumashev, former head of the presidential administration and President Yeltsin’s son-in-law, has turned out to be a property developer. Half of the Imperia Tower in Moscow City and half of OAO City, the company managing the business center, belong to the Cypriot company Valtania. The name comes from “Valya + Tanya” — the names of the first Russian president’s son-in-law and daughter, Vedomosti’s sources explain. ... *Valtania also owns 50% of ZAO Fleiner-City, the owner of the Imperia Tower in Moscow City (the developer is Pavel Fuks’s MosCityGroup), a source close to Fleiner-City said. Imperia Tower is a joint project of Yumashev and Fuks, confirms a source close to VTB (the bank is financing construction of the tower). Fuks says he is building the tower with Grankin and declines further official comment. The 60-story Imperia Tower skyscraper project began back in 2004. Its total area is 310,210 square meters (including 70,110 square meters of office space, a 25,707-square-meter hotel, and 51,760 square meters of apartments). 15 billion rubles have been invested in the tower’s construction. According to Fuks, it will be commissioned in August, and about 70% of the space has already been sold. According to Andrei Zakrevsky, senior vice president of Knight Frank, apartments in the complex could cost from $10,000 per square meter, and offices no less than $5,000. *Based on that, sales of the apartments could bring Valtania around $260 million, and office sales around $175 million. Today’s Vedomosti newspaper Still, this whole disgusting, thieving Yeltsin family are bloodsuckers worse than any Putin. Timchenko, the Kovalchuks, and the Rotenbergs are left nervously smoking on the sidelines. They steal when the opportunity presents itself. But these people simply traded for cash the good that Yeltsin did, while actively exploiting all the bad for their own purposes. So in the end, we got privatization from Yeltsin and the electoral system from Putin. And all so that this family of crooks could set up the offshore Valtania and launder money through construction. It’s all so banal it’s almost insulting. These are exactly the people who should be first in line for a review of the legitimacy of their enrichment, in full accordance with Article 20 of the UN Convention against Corruption, still not ratified by Russia.