Text version
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We keep saying it over and over: crooks and thieves.
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We say, just look at those mugs.
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But mugs or not, they are still people, and they
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have feelings, and these people are hurt by
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injustice, and we know for certain that
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there is one close friend of Vladimir
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Putin who is deeply upset, who has been beside himself
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over how unfairly he has been
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treated. And this video is about restoring
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justice.
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Lately, we have often been reading about
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probably luxurious and, above all, gigantic
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apartments owned by the heads of Russian state corporations.
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It feels as though the president of Russia
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has announced a contest among his associates.
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They are competing in size and exclusivity
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of their apartments, and especially in their price.
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There have been many serious contenders: Russian Post, and
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its chief owns apartments with an area of
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380.6 square meters and worth 1 billion
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rubles.
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Igor Sechin owns a five-story apartment of 1,229
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square meters. It seemed to us that this was a clear
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winner, but then the head of
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Gazprom, Miller, surged ahead. Last week we
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learned about his St. Petersburg penthouse
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with an area of 1,396 square meters, and many
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people said: that’s it, he’s won, there simply
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can’t be anything bigger.
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What do you mean, can’t? Don’t you
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believe in Putin and United Russia? He told us
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himself:
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we need a breakthrough. I said this in my
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address, you know.
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May his name not be mentioned at night, he spoke
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about the need for a breakthrough in the country’s
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development. So far, no breakthrough is happening; we
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say one thing and do another. But let us
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at least take pride in our records in the sphere of
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elite real estate. Restoring
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justice,
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I present to you the current winner in
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this category. He pulled it off. He is like
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a modest Cinderella, not well known to many.
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Few people talk about him. In fact, under
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this man’s control lies half of
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Russia. This is how Putin arranged it: all
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the oil he handed over to his friend Sechin, all
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the gas he handed over to his friend Miller, and
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everything else that had been created in the USSR and had not
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been privatized—the entire defense sector,
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the military industry, factories, machine tools,
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mechanical engineering—was handed over to the management of
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Sergei Chemezov. He understands nothing about any of it,
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but that does not matter. The important thing is that he
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once lived in neighboring
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apartments with Putin
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back in the 1980s in the GDR (East Germany), and now this
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former neighbor runs the state
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corporation Rostec (Russian state technology conglomerate).
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It is a unique enterprise; another monster like it
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has never existed anywhere in the world, not even in the USSR.
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Nothing like this existed there either: under the control of one
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man, Sergei Chemezov, were placed 700
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enterprises employing
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half a million people—a state that consists of
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hundreds of thousands of
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turners, mechanics, engineers, and technicians.
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You can study the list of these 700
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enterprises for a long time, trying to find at least
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some logic or system in it.
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But you will not succeed. The very same
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state corporation produces both tanks and
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Skype for officials; it also controls the entire
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defense sector—aircraft, helicopters, the Kalashnikov
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assault rifle. For some reason, they also haul
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garbage, and the Platon toll system collecting money from
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truck drivers is also theirs, as are AvtoVAZ and
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KAMAZ, pharmaceuticals, and all defense
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exports. And who comes to Putin with a promise to make a
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Russian iPhone? Also
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Chemezov.
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From Rostec.
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This is a textbook case, and on the internet it will work
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within the framework of school... But where is that very
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Russian smartphone? As I understand it, you
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said you would make it. Yes, we made it.
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Like Apple’s. But despite all this, our
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smartphone... If the thought has suddenly
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crept into your head that Rostec was created
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to improve management or, say,
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to cut costs,
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and to pay people higher wages, then
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banish that thought as far away as possible. Rostec
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—
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is an endless failure. It is unimaginable
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chaos. These are crisis-ridden enterprises, and
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above all, miserably low wages. A third-grade turner at the famous
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Uralvagonzavod plant
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earns 15,000 rubles. A picker at KAMAZ
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gets the same. At the Kalashnikov plant,
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a design engineer earns 25,000 rubles.
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Designing cars is even less
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profitable: an AvtoVAZ engineer in Tolyatti
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earns 22,000. All of this was gathered together and
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handed over into the hands of Putin’s friend
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Chemezov so that, while feeding the people fairy tales, one could
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steal by the billions and buy exactly
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the kind of apartment like this one. I am standing, as
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they say, in the very heart of our
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motherland. Here it all is, out in the open, and the views, all
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the main landmarks are here.
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Look: the Kremlin is behind me,
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the Zhukov monument, the State Historical Museum,
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the entrance to Red Square, the Moskva Hotel.
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And the apartment we are interested in is located
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less than 100 meters from this spot, and you
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will say: no, impossible, you can’t
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live here, there are no apartments here.
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But there is an apartment here, and a person can live here
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if, of course, that person is a close friend
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of Putin and if he has 5 billion
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rubles.
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The apartment is right here.
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You probably, like me, thought that here
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there simply could not be any apartments.
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What apartments could there be here? Shopping centers,
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hotels.
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But it turned out that wasn't the case: the former
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Hotel Moskva (a historic Moscow hotel), one of the symbols of our
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city, was demolished and rebuilt from scratch,
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but this time with the most luxurious
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and the most modern interior
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spaces.
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I myself had always thought that inside there was
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only the Four Seasons hotel, the most
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expensive in the city, plus some shops.
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But it turns out that the most luxurious areas
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of this building belong not to the hotel, but to
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some of the richest people in Russia and the world. See
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those lit windows?
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On the 12th and 13th floors there are
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gigantic 1,400-square-meter apartments
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belonging to state official Sergei Chemezov
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and his wife, Ekaterina Ignatova.
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Let's take a look at what the capital looks like
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from the windows of this modest head
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of a Russian state corporation.
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We're seeing all this from a flying
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drone, but just imagine: Chemezov looks
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at this beauty simply from his kitchen.
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He stands by the window, a cup of tea in one hand,
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a sausage sandwich in the other,
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thinking about Russia and admiring the view.
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But of course, that kind of pleasure is expensive. For such a
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view, you have to pay, and what did he pay for
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it? A fantastic price: 5 billion
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rubles (about $80 million). By the way, where do you think he got
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that money? Another apartment in this building,
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smaller and with a worse view,
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set a price record on the market.
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The price per square meter came to
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more than 3 million rubles, but Chemezov's apartment
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is far better than the one that
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was put up for sale, and the simplest
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calculation shows that its value is
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around 5 billion rubles (about $80 million), and we assume
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it's probably even more,
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taking the interior finish into account. But to go
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inside and film a tour for you, we were
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not allowed by Sergei Viktorovich (formal Russian patronymic), probably
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because he took pity on us: after all, with that much space,
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we might have gotten lost.
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Now let's look at Chemezov's asset declaration and
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be surprised: we won't find this apartment
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listed under his name. The trick is that it
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is entered in the declaration of his wife, Ekaterina
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Ignatova, and entered very cleverly. There are
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two non-residential premises of 700 square meters each.
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A nice disguise: some employee from Rostec
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looking over the bosses' property
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will see 'non-residential premises' and think: warehouses,
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probably, or maybe some barracks. But this is
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a 5-billion-ruble apartment.
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A perfectly normal story. So what does
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Chemezov's wife do? She's a businesswoman. And where does
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she conduct business?
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And where does she make money? That's right: in the structures
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of Rostec, headed by her husband. In a
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normal country,
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this situation would immediately be labeled
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in big letters: CORRUPTION.
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But not in Putin's Russia.
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Here, that's normal. The best-known and
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most frequently described of Ekaterina's businesses
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is that she
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founded a company called KATE,
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and announced that it would produce
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automatic transmissions for
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AvtoVAZ (Russia's largest carmaker, maker of Lada). A large stake in the company
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went to Rostec. Have you ever heard of Russian-made automatic transmissions
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being installed in our Ladas?
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Automatic gearboxes, I mean.
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Neither have I. So you and I already know
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how this story ends. But they pumped a sea of money into it.
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The company was created 15 years ago, in
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2004. Two years later, in 2006,
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a prototype transmission was shown at the Moscow
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motor show, and plans were announced: supposedly they had begun
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building their own plant in Kaliningrad
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that would produce as many as 260,000
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of these automatic transmissions a year. By the end of 2006,
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they promised to launch the plant's first
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production line with a capacity of 80,000 units a year.
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Naturally, nothing happened. Nothing
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happened in the following year, 2007, either.
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Only in blogs did people timidly ask, 'So what
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ever happened to that transmission?' And in 2008: silence. What
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was going on? Then in 2009,
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finally, the news was plastered
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everywhere: the Lada Priora, starting in
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2012, would be produced with an
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automatic transmission.
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This transmission would be
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made by KATE. A year later, AvtoVAZ itself, on
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its own website, was already promoting Chemezov's wife's transmission.
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Success seemed inevitable.
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Then 2012 arrives, and automatic transmissions
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really do start being installed.
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After 2012, there were many, many more
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announcements and promises: any day now, the transmission
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would be fitted to more and more new
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Lada cars. For promotion and support,
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everything possible was thrown at it,
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literally everything: administrative resources, financial support,
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whatever you like.
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Judging by the news, AvtoVAZ dreamed of getting
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these transmissions. Chemezov personally attended
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presentations in Kaliningrad. Land was allocated
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for the plant. A Rostec-affiliated bank issued
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a loan. But absolutely nothing happened: no
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plant, no Russian automatic transmissions in Ladas.
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The financial statements for all those years show
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microscopic turnover and nothing but losses.
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So that's the businesswoman and billionaire for you:
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a business that failed shamefully by every
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measure, a business that really ought to have
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been shut down long ago. But then
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a miracle happened.
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A good fairy — the very same good fairy
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that gave Chemezov Rostec —
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came to his wife's aid as well.
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And KATE received a contract to develop
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the transmission for Putin's limousine,
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the Aurus from the 'Kortezh' project. This is the car — you've all
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seen it at the inauguration that year, when Putin
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I drove it 500 meters through the city there.
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Inside, there is the real thing,
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an actual gearbox, and it was made
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by Chemezov's wife. Judging by KTP's financial reports, their
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suddenly revived website and newly launched
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YouTube channel suggest that Putin personally breathed
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new life into Yekaterina Ignatova's business
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plus another 1 billion rubles (about 10.8 million USD) as an advance payment
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just in case.
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The good fairy was so generous that
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she even awarded Chemezov's wife a medal
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of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland"
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2nd class. Here is the award document,
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so now you know
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what kind of
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"services to the Fatherland" our
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motherland values most. In summary:
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nothing worked out, it didn't work out, it didn't
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pan out.
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Well, except for an apartment worth 5 billion rubles (about 54 million USD), plus
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God knows how much money in
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offshore accounts. This is an absolutely
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Russian story: the wife of the head
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of a state corporation became a businesswoman,
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no one really knows what she does, everything she has
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has failed, yet she and her husband earn
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many times more than, say, the head of Apple or
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Microsoft. I very, very much want every
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employee of Rostec (Russian state defense and technology corporation) to see this video and
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stop asking stupid questions about why
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their salary is so low.
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It could be higher,
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but then how would Sergei Chemezov and his wife buy
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an apartment like that? They would have to give something
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up. Subscribe to our channel
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— this is where the truth is told.