Another Billion for Sergunina

Hi, the election is the day after tomorrow, and for the past two

weeks we've been releasing

investigations for you every day. Over the last

month, we've already covered 15 stories. We

told you about Moscow crooks—and not only

Moscow ones, but crooks of every kind and

stripe.

And to wrap up this crazy marathon, we

decided to return to the same topic and the same cast

we started with: Natalia Sergunina, the person

who enabled all the lawlessness

that took place in Moscow this summer and

who bears responsibility for it—the chief official

in charge in the capital.

The official who decided not to allow

a single independent candidate onto the

ballot, who sanctioned unprecedented

political repression out of thin air, and

just as importantly, Sergunina, more than

a month after our first

investigation about her and her billions, still

hasn't found the time to respond to our

accusations. That's piggish, of course, but also

a strategy. But we're not going to

put up with it, so we're going to tell you

how Sergunina's family stole another

1 billion rubles (about US$16 million at the time). It's a great

story—you'll really like it. And as for

Natalia Sergunina, we want to say this:

this time, staying silent

won't work for her. And now let's take literally

just one minute to pause—we need

to briefly recap the contents

of the previous episode and refresh your memory on the

main players. Official Sergunina spent her whole

career in charge of Moscow property, and while

she was responsible for it, they were stealing it. They came up with

an even cleverer scheme, which we exposed: the husband

of her sister changed his name from Solas Irisov

to Aaron Aaronov, and using his new

documents, registered offshore

companies.

Then came a chain of companies, and soon his Russian

entity

was buying up tens of thousands

of square meters of historic buildings in

central Moscow for next to nothing.

All of them were sold by Sergunina's

personal order for laughable sums, and in the

buildings they bought there are now hotels.

And with the proceeds, Sergunina's sister

bought a mansion in Vienna

and opened a business there. In our

first investigation, an offshore company appeared—

the offshore of Sergunina's sister's husband, Candy.

Through it, for example, the Sergunina family

owns 40 percent of the Oktyabr cinema

and that same offshore led us to a new

discovery, far larger in scale than what

we had told you about before: Aviapark.

Aviapark belongs to the Cypriot

company Cossman Limited, which in turn

belongs to two offshore companies, and one

of them is that same Sergunina-linked Candy.

It owns 33 percent

of the shares. The remaining 66 percent belongs

to another offshore, whose owner

is still unknown to us.

But that's the ownership structure now. Earlier,

until June 2014, the company Aviapark

was controlled by the Department

of City Property of Moscow.

Let's stop staring at these

boring, soulless registry screenshots

and figure out what exactly

Laseresov grabbed—and what official

Sergunina has to do with it. In 1996, Moscow Mayor

Yury Luzhkov launched a gigantic

project on Khodynka Field, the site where

Moscow's first airfield had been located.

They decided to develop, literally, a garden city there.

Just look at the architectural

plan: the abandoned field was to be transformed

into an elegant landscaped park;

on the vacant lot they were going to build an unbelievably

beautiful Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics;

there was also supposed to be a school, housing, and

an exhibition center. They decided to build it under an

investment contract.

A commercial company, naturally,

owned by Luzhkov's wife, was supposed to

build all of it and then hand over

part of what was built to the city, and also fulfill

the so-called social obligations—that is,

to build all those public

spaces, the park, and the school. And here I just

can't help interrupting to note

the sad irony of this whole story: one mayor

gave contracts to his wife, then the mayor changed,

but the scheme didn't—they still give them to their own people,

just different insiders. Exactly right.

Now look at what happened next. Luzhkov

left, and Sobyanin was appointed to run Moscow.

Specifically for this project on

Khodynka Field, Sergunina became responsible.

Here is a Moscow government decree with

amendments; in the final clause,

the responsible official is Sergunina. The official

client for the entire construction project is

the company Aviapark, a subsidiary

of the Department of City Property. From its

reporting, you can see Aviapark's strategic

goal: the construction

of the museum and the park. The project was valued at

an enormous sum. The city's share alone,

according to the financial statements, was 4.3

billion rubles (about US$68 million at the time). And then something very

familiar happens: the city decides

to get rid of this asset entirely and

through several intermediaries transfers

its company Aviapark to a Cypriot offshore,

which in turn

ultimately belongs to the company of Laseresov,

the husband of the sister of the official overseeing

this project from City Hall. There were 4

billion rubles belonging to the city

—to all of us, in other words—and they ended up with an offshore

in Cyprus. And 33 percent of those four...

billions

that is, almost one and a half billion went

personally to the family of Sobyanin's deputy—a huge

sum, absolutely enormous

and there is no official

explanation for why the city suddenly decided

to give up its share of the profits

from the Khodynka development

but the worst part isn't even that—you know

there is such a widespread point

of view, that they steal and have always stolen

they stole, sure, but look what we got, what a

beauty it has become, what great places

they built—not this time. Nothing that you

see in these pictures was actually built

it simply wasn't. It's outrageous. Let's

take a look. I am standing where the Museum of Aviation

and Cosmonautics was supposed to be. Right here there was supposed to

be a huge tower resembling a

rocket; here there were supposed to be displays of

aircraft

achievements in rocketry, and the museum was supposed to operate

and host exhibitions

as well as enormous, truly gigantic

glass gardens and pavilions. But where am I? On a

concrete lot behind

the giant Aviapark shopping mall

There are stores here for every taste

but there is no museum here. And now, you won't believe this, I am standing where

you absolutely won't believe it—I am at the spot where

according to the investment contract there was supposed to

be a city school for 550

students. We look around and

see that there is no school here

Where is the school?

There was supposed to be a hotel

and residential complex, with what people now fashionably call

public spaces. But what do we

see? A huge apartment building, exactly like the one

at the other end of Aviapark

So, instead of a garden city, there is now

a huge and very ugly

shopping mall and two residential buildings on

either side of it. All right, we can

set aesthetics aside here—we need to return to

the investment contract that

Zhora mentioned at the beginning

Let me remind you of the terms: the developer builds its own

residential buildings for sale and gives 30

percent of the floor space to the city, and the museum and

the school also go to the city. Don't forget: instead of

the school, there is emptiness; instead of the museum and exhibition

complex, a concrete lot. As for the 30

percent of the floor space, the developer

did indeed transfer it to the same company

Aviapark—according to VKontakte—and it also did not

change; only this Aviapark

now belongs not to the city, but to offshore companies

one of which is a family offshore company

of Sobyanin's deputy, Khirvonen

and all this land—93,000 square meters—until

2046 is leased by

the offshore-owned Aviapark. They lease out this land

they rent out apartments in the buildings that were constructed

which they built on essentially someone else's land

and receive their guaranteed 150 to 200

million a year. Well, they built neither the museum

nor the school—this whole mess, from the mayor's office side,

will of course be smoothed over: they'll pass

a little amendment, and there will be no questions

That is what this transfer of corruption across

the decades looks like: instead of the crook Luzhkov (former Moscow mayor)

who handed half the construction projects in Moscow to his wife

Baturina, there came Sobyanin, our 'European'

mayor and urban innovator. The only

change is that they have become slightly better at hiding their

relatives and their offshore companies

but in essence nothing has changed. Moscow should be governed

by honest, competent people, but they will never

appear if we keep sitting on the

couch. Sobyanin, Putin, and Sergunina simply will not

let them in, just as they did not allow independent candidates onto the ballot

in the elections

but we still have no right

to voluntarily hand over to these people neither

the Moscow City Duma nor St. Petersburg's municipal councils

nor any other body of government. We need

to show them that they will not be able to push through

their own candidates. That is exactly why

on September 8 you need to go vote and take part

in Smart Voting. If you stay

home, you will help Sergunina steal

because you do not

want that