The investigation that brought in the special forces

Hi everyone, it’s me again, and today at 1 p.m.

we were planning to release another one of our

investigations, but at 12 noon our world

was literally cut apart. I can imagine the kind of

wonderful young men behind it, and we have

strong suspicions that this was done by

the brilliant mind

of one wonderful state-owned

bank, so that you wouldn’t see what

you were supposed to see. And right now it’s still a little

unfinished, not fully put back together, but we decided

to publish it today so that

he and all the other crooks would know that nothing

will ever stop me.

I don’t want to put off

unfinished business until next year, so now

you and I are going to give a proper slap on the wrist to

the crooks and thieves from the state-owned

bank VTB, who obviously

think they’re the cleverest crooks in the

world, the kind no one will ever catch.

We’ll catch them. Let me remind you that our last

investigation was about the beautiful

love story between VTB chief

Andrei Kostin and the host

of the state TV channel Russia-1

Naila Asker-zade. We explained that

Kostin steals from state banks — in other words,

from our pockets — billions of rubles

in order to shower his mistress with the most

expensive gifts in the world: apartments, country houses,

a plane, and a yacht. The total value

of the property we uncovered exceeds

11 billion rubles.

The most interesting part turned out to be the plane used by

Naila. At first we found it simply by

mechanically comparing where she was and

which planes were flying there at the same time.

And then we stumbled onto an entire

scheme by which several private jets were stolen from the books of the state bank VTB

and

transferred to an offshore company in Belize, and now

one of those planes, in particular,

is used by Svetlana Medvedeva

the wife of Dmitry Medvedev, our

prime minister and the leader of the United Russia

party.

Corruption must not simply be

illegal.

It must become socially unacceptable. As it later turned out, other

officials also fly on the others,

and even the Patriarch (head of the Russian Orthodox Church).

[music]

The information was quite scandalous, and we all

waited to see how Kostin, Asker-zade,

and the others would respond.

Medvedev, who was simply bombarded

with questions about his wife’s plane during a

press conference, said absolutely nothing

out loud in response — not even

the usual “nonsense, rubbish, and gibberish.” Even so,

nevertheless,

we noticed retaliatory measures

immediately. Our lovebirds

did what they do best:

they classified the movement data of their

plane — and at the same time the plane used by Svetlana

Medvedeva,

and all the other planes

linked to the offshore company. We don’t know how

they did it — whether they paid the websites

that publish this kind of information or

intimidated them — but just look for yourselves. Here is

a popular flight-tracking service.

This is exactly where we took the screenshots

for our investigations. Let’s try to find

Naila’s plane. Error. Now let’s try

to find Svetlana Medvedeva’s plane. Nothing.

Don’t get the wrong idea — the planes

are still flying, still sending

signals with their coordinates. It’s just that

now you’re not supposed to know about them. And

at the same time, the state bank VTB

issues a statement saying that all these

planes were sold long ago to third parties and

now they have absolutely nothing to do either

with the bank or with anyone connected to

the bank. And, quoting VTB Leasing, it has no

involvement in their further operation,

leasing, or anything else. So, well,

some Medvedevs are flying around somewhere,

Asker-zade is somehow paying

€7,000 per flight hour,

plus crew salaries, maintenance,

and insurance — and VTB has nothing to do with it.

And right now

we’re going to prove the opposite. So, VTB

Leasing once bought several

dozen passenger aircraft, and as

you can guess from the name, this was done

in order to lease them out — that is, to provide them on

long-term lease to various major

airlines: Aeroflot, Rossiya, Pobeda, and

so on.

Along with these large aircraft, VTB

Leasing also acquired several private

jets. As we now understand it, these planes

were never intended to be leased out

for genuine commercial use. They were needed to

serve the interests of various crooks

who were not entitled to have planes.

But they so badly wanted to fly, so VTB

Leasing bought them in its own name and

operated them itself. When the planes

belonged to VTB, they were serviced by the company

Business Aero Aviation Enterprise. They

organized the flights, hired pilots,

handled logistics, bookings, and so

on. Traces of all this can be found in

public procurement documents. And a few

years ago, the email account of one

of VTB’s secretaries was hacked. That email archive is now

publicly available on an investigative journalists’ website.

You can look at it there.

It shows how this same Business Aero

arranged flights on several different

Bombardier aircraft. For example,

it booked a plane for an opera singer.

Anna Netrebko

And here is another one for the former deputy prime minister

Dvorkovich. By the way, this very one

plane would later be stolen and handed over for

the use of Svetlana Medvedeva. The company

Business

Aero belongs to two people. One, whose last name is

Bukov, is very easy to find. He is a

VTB contractor and received from the bank

half a billion rubles (about 5 million USD) for security services

In addition, Bukov is a member of VTB’s amateur

hockey team

But the second person is mysterious. He is

hidden even better than the planes and yachts, or rather

no matter how much you Google, no matter how you look, it is completely

unclear who this Vorontsov, Alexander

Yuryevich, is

Who is this super-close and super-

reliable person who owns the air carrier

to whom it is not scary to entrust such

secrets as, for example,

the passenger list for every flight? This

was not an investigation but some kind of chase

First we found his photograph. Here,

look: the man is identified as Alexander

Vorontsov

and is standing next to Kostin at the forum

Russia Calling! (a major Russian investment forum). We tried to buy this

photograph from the photo agency, but to

make out what was written on his

badge, we were first refused

and then the owner of the photograph,

the state agency

RIA Novosti, removed this picture from

its archives altogether. Then we identified

this man’s phone number and found

a very similar-looking man on a tractor. Here

we asked him about it, and he fell silent

The man disappeared, the photo on the site

vanished. We found the cars he

parks, and they all turned out to be official

VTB vehicles. The answer seemed so close, but

then we simply went ahead and called

Kostin’s office

[music]

Hello, could you please tell me how

to reach Alexander Yuryevich Vorontsov’s office by phone?

And Vorontsov

[music]

The non-profit organization, the Foundation

for the Support and Development of Civil Aviation

We came for a meeting. We want to send a gift

We have an anniversary, and New Year is coming soon

You wanted to know where it would be best to send it

so that it definitely arrives, and what exactly

to write on the card, what the person’s name is

[music]

Kostin Andreevich... yes, thank you very much. So,

Vorontsov, Alexander Yuryevich

He is the chief of staff to the head of

VTB, Andrei Kostin, and his most trusted

employee and closest confidant. It was he who

handled the booking of flights both on

VTB’s side and on behalf of

the relevant organizations, as

the founder of the company Business

Aero. But that was our theory before. Now, as

we know, the VTB planes do not belong to it. They

were sold off, according to them, and at least three of

them

are registered to an anonymous offshore company in Belize

This is the plane on which Svetlana

Medvedeva flies, the plane for Asker-Zade, and

one more plane that is used

as a backup. So, for example, if

Asker-Zade’s main plane is

under maintenance, according to data from

the European Organization for the Safety of

Air Navigation, the planes we are interested in

are all operated by the same

operator, Skyline Aviation, an absolutely

unknown company registered in

San Marino, apparently specifically

for servicing

the aircraft stolen from VTB. We obtained an extract from

San Marino and learned that the company is run by

a certain Russian man named Oleg

Burov. And, would you believe it, this very Burov

is the director of

Business Aero, which belongs to the chief of staff

of Kostin’s office. Moreover, both companies, the

Russian one and the San Marino one, use

for their operations

the very same mail server

registered to Business

Aero. In other words, the supposedly new company with no connection

to VTB, Skyline, is simply

the foreign twin of the Russian company

owned by the chief of staff

to the head of VTB. To put it very simply:

VTB had planes, and they were managed by the chief

of Kostin’s staff. The planes were stolen, and they are still

being managed by the chief

of Kostin’s staff. They steal,

they hide, they just lie endlessly right

to your face

They pretend to be a modern, cutting-edge bank, but

in reality it is simply

a bottomless state trough into which

they put some fool, Putin’s crony, so that

he would simply provide the whole mafia with a luxurious

life, without forgetting himself. And this will continue until

we finally throw off from our necks

all of them

all these Putins, Sechins, their Kostins, and

Asker-Zade

As a shareholder of VTB and as a citizen

of Russia, I will file a whole stack of complaints like this

about theft and blatant corruption at

this bank. And next year, you and I

will watch with great interest as these people

squirm in the frying pan. But in 2019

this is our last video, and in closing I

want to say a big thank you to all of you

to everyone who helped, everyone who supported us, and

everyone who acted together with us. You are

the best. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and we

will continue fighting for our homeland

with all sorts of

offshore occupiers, subscribe to

our channel — they tell the truth here