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Let’s talk about those enormous salaries
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that you decided to pay to the heads
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of state-owned companies. But please, don’t
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start exclaiming at me from the other side
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of the screen, “Alexei, I didn’t set anyone’s salary,”
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“I didn’t pay anyone anything. I wish someone
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would pay me—I’m broke, living
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paycheck to paycheck,” and so on. No—
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it was you who paid them. Let me explain
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how this works before we move on
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to the actual numbers. There is a state-owned company,
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for example VTB or Gazprom. Formally, it is
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a joint-stock company, but the shares
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belong to the state. Which means, in a sense,
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to all of us. But they are managed by
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the government through Rosimushchestvo (Russia’s federal state property agency). It is
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the government that votes those shares and
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appoints certain people to the boards
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of directors of these state-owned companies. And on the
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board of directors, people do not vote however
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they want—they again carry out a government directive,
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a special letter
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that is sent to them. So once again, they
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are voting, as it were, on our behalf. That is exactly
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why, when you hear the phrase, “The board
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of directors of a state corporation decided to award
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itself compensation of 1 billion rubles,” in fact
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it means that the state—meaning you and I—
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issued a directive to our board members
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to vote in such a way that
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the compensation would be that very 1 billion rubles.
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And don’t fool yourself by saying that
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bad Sechin, bad Miller, or bad
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Kostin gave themselves huge salaries.
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No. Those salaries were approved by
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the government—that is, Medvedev and his
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boss Putin—and they did it on behalf
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of the people, on behalf of you and me, claiming that
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they are supported by the overwhelming majority
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of Russian citizens. That majority would be quite
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surprised if it were to see
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today’s *Forbes* ranking of the 25 highest-paid
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company executives. We’re not going to go through all 25;
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let’s look
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at the richest of the top group. In fifth place:
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Dmitry Razumov of the Onexim Group, $10 million
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a year—and he is the only
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representative of a private company in the top five.
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In fourth place, the head of the state-owned
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Sberbank, German Gref: $11 million
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a year, or at today’s exchange rate, 59 million rubles
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a month—almost 2 million rubles a day. In third
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place, the head of the state-owned VTB, Andrei
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Kostin. The state bank hides his exact salary,
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but journalists estimated
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it somewhere between fourth place with
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$11 million and second place with $13 million, so let’s
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roughly take $12 million a year and
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we won’t be far off. That means Kostin of VTB gets 64
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million rubles a month, or
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2.1 million rubles a day. In second place, the head
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of the state-owned Rosneft, Igor Sechin,
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with a salary of $13 million a year, or 69
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million rubles a month—or here again
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you just want to cry—2.3 million rubles
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a day. And in first place we have
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the famously modest public servant,
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the head of the state-owned Gazprom,
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Alexei Miller. He receives
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$17.7 million, or 94 million rubles a month,
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which comes to more than 3 million rubles
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a day, every day. How much will you earn
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today? I doubt it will be very much.
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But by the end of the day, Alexei Miller will become
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3 million rubles richer. And tomorrow, and
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the day after tomorrow. He can buy
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an apartment a day. And all of this is thanks to you—
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you agreed to pay him all this, through the good offices
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of our dear Russian
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government and president. And you know what’s interesting?
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There really are, in
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Russia, outstanding businessmen and managers,
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talented people. They run
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businesses well. But still, the biggest
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salaries, as we can see from the ranking,
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go to officials sitting in state-owned companies.
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So it turns out that they, apparently, worked
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the best and deserved the most.
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And just look at who exactly they are. If
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there may still be something to argue about with German Gref,
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then Miller from Gazprom, Sechin from
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Rosneft, and Kostin from VTB simply
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belong only in a ranking called
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“Failure and Incompetence.” These are
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the worst managers, under whose leadership
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state-owned companies have steadily, year after
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year, worsened their performance, sunk into
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debt, reduced output and well
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flow rates, and developed huge holes in their balance sheets.
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And every single one of them endlessly begs for
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state aid, gets it, and then
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continues paying unimaginable
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salaries to its managers. And this is exactly
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what unites all of us. Whoever you may be,
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whatever ideological disagreements or views
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you and I may have, I am
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absolutely sure that not a single normal
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person in Russia agrees that
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the government, in his name, should pay
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these crooks 2–3 million rubles a day while
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the country has reached such a state that,
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for example,
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in the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur
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trams run through the streets with no floors
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in the literal sense of the word. Komsomolsk’s
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trams are literally
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missing their floors. All around is poverty; tens of
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millions of people are living below the poverty line.
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But of course, we have to scrape together
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our last pennies to throw Sechin another $13 million,
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otherwise he might not have enough to maintain his yacht.
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Let’s fight together against
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this kind of government and this kind of
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power that does exactly what we tell it
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not to do. Help spread this
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video. Subscribe to our channel—here
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we tell the truth.