I’ll put everything together here for convenience. My original post about the astonishing 308 square meters in central Moscow owned by Sobyanin’s underage daughter. The value of the apartment owned by state official Sobyanin is roughly six times greater than his possible income over the past 10 years.
Explanations from Sobyanin’s press office: “An apartment measuring 308 square meters was allocated to Sergei Sobyanin by the Administrative Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation in January 2006, when he was head of the Presidential Administration,” acting press secretary to the interim mayor of the capital, Gulnara Penkova, told journalists on Friday. “The apartment was privatized in accordance with the established procedure and officially declared.”
SLON’s investigation into why Sobyanin’s press office is lying: According to the 2008 disclosure, Sobyanin had an apartment under a social tenancy agreement. But its area was not 308 square meters, but 201 square meters. In the 2009 disclosure, an apartment appears under his daughter’s name—of exactly the same size (201 sq. m) as the apartment under social tenancy held by Sobyanin himself. This suggests that it was most likely in 2009 that the state apartment was privatized and transferred to his daughter. Indeed, the property register extract says that Sobyanin’s daughter acquired the apartment in 2009. But in the extract (as of August 6), it is already those same 308 square meters that are mentioned. And in Sergei Sobyanin’s 2010 disclosure, there also appears an apartment of 308 square meters listed as being in gratuitous use. If we follow the information Penkova voiced today about Sobyanin’s apartment, it turns out that in 2006 the apartment measured 308 square meters, by 2008—when disclosures had to be published—it had shrunk by 107 square meters, and in 2010 it had grown again by exactly the same amount. Absurd. http://slon.ru/russia/otkuda_u_sobyanina_107_kvadratnykh_metrov_moskvy-976477.xhtml Comments by Sergei Parkhomenko: *3) Sobyanin could not have received the apartment as a gift, because this is explicitly prohibited by the “Law on the Foundations of State Service” (Art. 11, para. 8 — http://www.rg.ru/1995/07/31/Federalnyjzakonot31iulya1995.html) ONCE IN A LIFETIME, every citizen of the Russian Federation has the right to privatize housing (the housing in which they actually live) free of charge. This is governed by the Russian Federation law “On the Privatization of the Housing Stock in the Russian Federation” (http://www.consultant.ru/popular/privat/). Article 11 of that law states that this can happen only once. This raises the question: did Sobyanin already exercise that right in Tyumen, and is his apartment there (116 square meters) in fact such a previously privatized apartment? In any case, the same law prohibits the straightforward privatization of service housing (Art. 4 of the same law — http://www.consultant.ru/popular/privat/51_1.html#p73). However, the second part of that same article creates room for various crafty schemes involving the prior transfer of state service housing into the ownership or management of commercial companies*. https://www.facebook.com/serguei.parkhomenko/posts/10201604434502139 And finally, this excellent statement to the prosecutor’s office by well-known housing law specialist Oleg Shein, which effectively closes the question of the “legality” of the privatization: P*rosecutor of Moscow S.V. Kudeneev Dear Sergei Vasilyevich, As reported by the Moscow mayor’s press office, in January 2006 a 308-square-meter apartment was provided to S.S. Sobyanin in his capacity as head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation (http://www.interfax.ru/russia/news.asp?id=322722). This information was confirmed by Viktor Khrekov, press secretary of the Administrative Directorate of the President. Thus, this housing could have been provided as service housing. ** Subsequently, the apartment was privatized in the name of S.S. Sobyanin’s underage daughter, since the principal tenant had evidently already used his one-time right to privatization at his previous place of residence. Meanwhile, under Article 4 of Federal Law No. 84-FZ “On the Privatization of the Housing Stock in the Russian Federation,” “residential premises are not subject to privatization if they are in аварийном состоянии (officially deemed unsafe/emergency condition), in dormitories, in buildings located in closed military towns, as well as service residential premises, with the exception of housing stock belonging to state farms and** other equivalent agricultural enterprises, and rural housing stock of stationary social protection institutions.” (as amended by RF Law of 23.12.1992 No. 4199-1; Federal Laws of 01.05.1999 No. 88-FZ, 20.05.2002 No. 55-FZ, 29.12.2004 No. 189-FZ, 11.06.2008 No. 84-FZ). In the media, the same sources have al**so put forward another version—that S.S. Sobyanin received the housing under a social tenancy agreement. However, Articles 49 and 50 of the Housing Code of the Russian Federation provide that only persons whose family standard of living is below the official subsistence minimum are entitled to receive such housing. If, as of 2006, S.S. Sobyanin submitted the relevant certificate, it should be noted that the right to priority receipt of housing under social tenancy, under Articles 51 and 57 of the Housing Code, applies only to three categories of citizens: **- **orphans; persons suffering from particularly severe illnesses **that make cohabitation dangerous (epilepsy, tuberculosis, leprosy, and others in accordance with Government Resolution No. 378); **persons whose only home has been officially declared unfit for habitation (for example, fire victims and victims of natural disasters). **If the apartment in question was indeed provided under a social tenancy agreement out of turn, I ask that you inform me whether S.S. Sobyanin belongs to one of these three categories. In view of the above, I ask you to verify the grounds for the privatization and, if it was unlawful, to take prosecutorial measures to revoke the relevant act. Respectfully, Deputy of the Astrakhan Regional Duma O.V. SHEIN h*ttp://oleg-shein.livejournal.com/877506.html