Burning Rivers and the Hidden Assets of the Head of Rosprirodnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental watchdog)

You live in Russia, which means, unfortunately, that you

most likely breathe polluted

air and drink water full of harmful

impurities, and you get angry and say, but

why does the state not care about this?

Watch this video to the end and find out.

Because any Russian problem ultimately comes down

to corruption. In Norilsk, there has been

a terrible environmental disaster,

the largest in the history of the Arctic.

Its scale is such that Putin declared

a federal-level state of emergency.

A situation of this scale needs to be addressed immediately.

All right, then, I agree with your

proposal regarding the announcement of

it. During the epidemic they did not declare one,

but here they did. So this is

a truly enormous catastrophe. So what

is happening on the ground? Of course, officials

are trying to hide everything, but the situation has reached the point

where even some of them can no longer

take it. An employee of the regional

environmental oversight agency who was among the first on the scene

of the accident even recorded a 40-minute

video address in which he talks about

how at first he was not allowed in, then

his inspection reports were not accepted, and in the end

he was simply removed from the inspection, and he

says outright that his colleagues are now

committing an official crime. But I

believe this is a crime against our

children and grandchildren, indeed against life

itself on this planet. In other words, the agency

responsible for investigating

the environmental disaster is busy

covering up the evidence

of the environmental disaster. And in this context,

it is very interesting that the head of

Rosprirodnadzor, Svetlana Radionova,

as the media report, flew to

Norilsk on a luxury business jet

belonging to the company Norilsk

Nickel—the very company whose fault it is that in

the Russian Arctic

rivers are now flowing with water that burns.

Here, I’m scooping some up.

So there you have it—it’s burning, at the very least.

It is, at the very least, strange: an inspection that could

fine oligarch Potanin, exposing Norilsk Nickel to

risks amounting to hundreds of billions

of rubles (billions of U.S. dollars),

and for some reason that inspection is flying on

a private jet belonging

to oligarch Potanin. So we at the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) decided

to take a closer look at this

remarkable lady, Svetlana Radionova,

the head of Rosprirodnadzor.

And to introduce you to her as well, let us begin our

meeting. To our surprise, we immediately

discovered that Roskomnadzor

is no less concerned about her reputation than it is about the reputation of

well-known public figures, because by court order

more than 100 websites have been blocked.

For someone who would seem to be an unknown and uninteresting

official like Radionova, the very fact that

she is truly unknown to the public is

a huge misunderstanding. This woman,

whom most of you are seeing for the first time,

is the country’s top official on environmental issues.

If environmental issues seem to you like something

abstract—some birds,

fish, and butterflies—

then let’s put it simply: garbage dumps

both in the Moscow region and the infamous ones elsewhere—

that is her area of responsibility.

The black sky over Krasnoyarsk and the million

city residents who choke every winter—this

is also on her. Poisoned water in

Chelyabinsk, the scandal over the “whale jail” (a facility where captive whales and orcas were kept)

and the abuse of animals—this is also

her responsibility. And now a river containing

20,000 tons of diesel fuel,

in which most likely all life will die for

the coming decades—this too belongs to our

heroine today.

Because of the garbage scandals alone, Russia saw

a wave of protests, a passenger plane narrowly

avoided crashing, and

two governors lost their posts. We have all heard about that

and know it well. But about the

female official responsible for making sure

none of this happens—you know nothing.

So, Svetlana Gennadyevna Radionova.

A young official with an impressive

career.

In 1999, she began

working in the prosecutor’s office, first in

the Moscow region, then in Moscow. She worked

in the Investigative Committee,

as an aide and head of an inspectorate, then

as deputy head

of Rostekhnadzor, where she oversaw

the oil industry. And in 2018,

she left that post for the position

she now holds: she heads

Rosprirodnadzor, the agency that

exercises oversight in the sphere of

natural resource use and monitors the protection of

the environment.

An absolutely ideal, distilled

bureaucratic career: at 22,

she entered public service and never worked

a single day anywhere else. And her asset declaration

fully reflects that image. In

the latest one available, for 2017, we see

an income of 400,000 rubles a month and

a modest 60-square-meter apartment,

nothing else: no dacha, no car,

no sign of any other income. She lives

on her salary—our modest

Cinderella. And her family is just as modest,

just as modest: her parents are pensioners.

Her father had a small food shop. Svetlana’s younger

brother, Grigory Rodionov, was also

appointed to the post of prosecutor

for Moscow’s Western District at the age of 33, and he too

has no wealthy spouse or

some suspicious billions or other

just the prosecutor’s income: one hundred and fifty

thousand rubles a month, and here is the only

other strange person with whom

the media persistently and constantly

link Rodionova. He is also a servant

of the people

Anton Alexeevich Ustinov. In the early

2000s, he worked, incidentally,

together with Mishustin at the Federal

Tax Service and became known for

taking part in the Yukos case. Then he was the personal

assistant to Sechin, and after that became

an adviser to President Putin. He

oversaw issues in the

fuel and energy sector. Apparently, they

worked so well together with Putin at that

point that in 2016 Ustinov was

appointed chairman of the board of SOGAZ

— that crafty insurance company stolen from

Gazprom, which

now belongs to

Putin’s nephew and Putin’s cronies,

the Kovalchuks. In any case, the media keep writing

that Rodionova owes her career

successes

specifically to Ustinov. We do not know how

true that is, but we can confirm that their

connection is not limited to their studies. Twenty-five years

ago they studied at the same university in Saratov

According to Novaya Gazeta,

Rodionova and Ustinov regularly fly

somewhere together by plane, and to our

surprise, we discovered that Rodionova’s father

for some reason posts links to photographs

of Anton Ustinov

on Odnoklassniki (a Russian social network). Meanwhile, Ustinov’s wife

does exist. Well, in any case, even if there is some kind of

complicated love triangle there, let them

sort it out themselves. What interests us is

corruption, and that brings us to

what has been hidden from our

view. The first alarm bell was

information recently published in one of the

Telegram channels about Rodionova’s apartment

on the French Riviera

in France. A very loud alarm bell indeed,

especially considering that Novaya writes that

official Rodionova flew to Nice

more than 40 times over the past three-plus

years. Of course, ideally, flying 40 times

up there would make more sense, but for some reason she was flying

down there. We double-checked, ordered all the

records, and it is indeed so.

The apartment was bought in 2017 and registered

to her parents’ company. It is a very

attractive building, with a sea view, right in the middle

of the high life between Nice and Cannes.

The apartment was purchased for half a million euros

Half a million euros, at the exchange rate in the month of

purchase, was a little over 33

million rubles. And you know, if that were all

there was to it, one could probably

say: to hell with this Rodionova

and her French real estate. Maybe

they really did sell everything,

take out loans, and fulfill the dream of their

lives: retirement by the sea with fresh croissants

every morning. But of course, that was not the end

of it.

At the same French address, we

found a second, previously unknown

company connected to the Rodionovs. It was

created at the same time as the parents’ company,

but the shareholder there is the wife of the Moscow

prosecutor Rodionov, who is also

Svetlana’s brother. This company also has registered to it

another apartment in France, judging by the corporate charter,

in the same building. For now, we

cannot say which one exactly or for how much

it was bought, but as soon as we receive the

documents, we will definitely tell you everything. Meanwhile,

for now

we are studying what is in the French

documents. They list the Rodionovs’ parents’ address

in Moscow, Furmanny Lane, and it immediately

becomes clear that they did not scrape together money

for the French apartment from the bottom of the barrel. A 120-square-meter

apartment in central Moscow is still

owned by Svetlana Rodionova’s mother,

Tatyana, and such a place is worth at least 86

million rubles. This is not some kind of

inheritance from a grandmother; it is a

relatively recent purchase, from 2011. In the

ownership of this same mother, we

found another apartment which,

you will also be surprised to learn, did not need to be

sold in order to buy real estate in

Nice.

It is a huge 189-square-meter apartment

in one of the most elite

and recognizable residential complexes in Moscow, on

Tsvetnoy Boulevard.

Sobyanin’s deputy and the city hall’s chief

crook, Pyotr Biryukov, lives here.

TV propagandists Kiselyov and

Gabrelyanov live here.

Here, Sobyanin’s deputy Natalia Sergunina owns a huge space for a

restaurant,

Natalia Sergunina.

What a nice building—it keeps

turning up in our investigations. There is

a House of Writers in Moscow, and then there is a House of Crooks,

and in it is the apartment of the mother of our

today’s modest official,

Rodionova. Such an apartment is worth about

210 million rubles. It was bought three

years after the apartment on Furmanny Lane, in

2014, at the moment when her daughter

was in charge of inspections of oil companies

at Rostekhnadzor, and her son had just then

been appointed deputy

Moscow prosecutor. And then, then

the real miracles begin. As we were ordering

records for several neighboring apartments

in this residential complex, literally

wanting to study the neighbors on the same floor, we

discover yet another apartment, 162 square meters.

bought in 2018 by Svetlana’s father

Rodionova, Gennady—and that’s another 180

million rubles. We look around and

then suddenly notice a third apartment

again 160 square meters, and once more

owned by the pensioner Rodionov

Gennady Grigoryevich. So that you don’t think

we made a mistake

or slipped in some unrelated people with the same surname,

look: the apartment on Furmanny Pereulok

is officially declared as being used by

the Moscow prosecutor, Rodionova’s brother

one of the apartments in Tsvetnoy Legend is

listed as being used by his children. In other words, everything

is proven very clearly. Look at this view

from the three apartments owned by the Rodionovs

on Tsvetnoy Boulevard

This isn’t just some Moscow

real estate. This is the best real estate in Moscow—

the most prestigious, the most

elite—and it belongs not to some

oligarchs or businessmen, but to the elderly

parents of two officials. The combined

annual income of those officials would be enough

for at most 5–6 square meters in this

building, and probably not even for a parking space

By the way, before we go too far

from the residential complex on Tsvetnoy Boulevard,

right between the apartments of Rodionova’s father and mother

we found another 194

square meters. It belongs to that same

Anton Ustinov, with whom

Rodionova is so often linked. In 2014,

when Ustinov was working as Putin’s adviser,

his mother,

58-year-old Natalya Sirava, became

the owner of this apartment for 215

million rubles. She bought it almost

at the same time that the apartment

was bought by Rodionova’s mother. And just

a couple of months ago,

now Ustinov has, apparently, finally been able to

have the apartment re-registered in his own name

Returning to the family of official Rodionova,

it’s time to sum up: her parents

who are pensioners, were found to own four

apartments in Moscow worth 655

million rubles, and then add another

40 million for a country house outside Moscow

also owned by the pensioners: a 600-square-meter house

and a 34-sotka plot (0.34 hectares / 3,400 square meters). That gives us

a total of around 20 million—this level of

wealth cannot be explained by anything. It is

so blatant that one can calmly

say without any doubt: she stole it or

received it in the form of bribes for what

she did at Rostekhnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental, technological, and nuclear oversight agency) or at

Rosprirodnadzor (Russia’s federal environmental watchdog), and put everything in

her parents’ names so that her own

asset declaration would look as

spotless as it does

now. And what’s more, besides the four

apartments owned by her and her parents,

there were also two more Moscow apartments with a total

area of 230 square meters, bought and

sold within a few months

of being purchased. That’s another several

hundred million rubles. In other words, it looks like, I don’t know,

they are literally being bribed with apartments

Look at these photographs: huge

bags stuffed with cash, boxes full of

dollars, and suitcases filled with watches

These photos were taken at the home and in the office of

Rodionova’s former subordinate, the head of the

regional Rostekhnadzor office for

the Northwestern District, Grigory

Bykov. Like his colleague, our

heroine today, he declared a very

modest income—

1.5 million rubles a year. At his home

they found 1 billion rubles in cash. And this was just

Rodionova’s subordinate—not even her

most senior subordinate. Now

just imagine how much Potanin will pay off

directly to the Kremlin and to Rodionova

to bury the scandal in Norilsk. In any

other country, Potanin would have ceased to be an

oligarch—he would have been forced to pay such enormous fines. But here,

don’t

doubt it: they’ll come to an arrangement. All these

apartments and suitcases of cash lying

under beds in those apartments are paid for with your

health. You, in Chelyabinsk or in

Krasnoyarsk, are coughing from the smog because

instead of

installing

treatment facilities, the company simply brings bribes

to Rodionova. Your children in Vologda Region

drink water that makes their teeth crumble,

but Rodionova’s agency will only stir

for the sake of having another apartment bought for her

as a bribe. You in Moscow

will be walking hand in hand with your children, and

warm air from the

waste incineration plant will be blowing at your back, but the inspector’s device

will never show

excess emissions, because someone was bought

yet another apartment in the Tsvetnoy Legend complex

Putin’s власть consists of thieves

and now they are dragging you into a fake

vote to reset Putin’s term limits

and make him ruler for life. Do not

accept the resetting of Putin’s terms. Do not

take part in this fraud, or if

you are being forced to participate, vote

against. Subscribe to our channel—here

we tell the truth